In the Beginning: A Study in Genesis 15-26نموونە

How Is God Faithful Even When We Are Faithless?

Throughout God’s dealings with Adam, Noah, and Abraham, we have witnessed a pattern of God speaking to them, calling them into covenant, establishing them as the head of a new humanity, promising to bless them, and inviting the men to respond to Him in faith. We then see each man falter in faith and sin against the Lord, despite His patient kindness to them.

In Genesis 16, we see this pattern repeated in yet another mini-fall of sorts, as, instead of two trees, one of which is forbidden, we now have two women, one of which is forbidden. After the establishment of God’s covenant in Genesis 15, Abram sought to take matters into his own hands by bearing a son with his Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. The faithless plot was conceived by Abram’s wife, Sarai, who, like her first mother Eve, failed to trust the simple words of God and at least inferred that God had not kept His promise to her. Their actions were likely motivated at least in part by the fact that the elderly Sarai had been waiting 10-plus years since God had promised them a child.

Abram married Hagar in addition to Sarai and the pattern of polygamy is here introduced for the first time in Scripture. God’s intention is that each man would have one wife (Genesis 2:18). When practiced, polygamy is wrought with favoritism, fighting, jealousy, and mistreatment (Genesis 25:28, 27:1-45, 35:22, 38:18-28).This also helps to explain why, in the New Testament, church leaders who serve as the pattern for Christian families are to be one-woman men (1 Timothy 3:2,12). Also, the Lord Jesus has one bride, the Church, and serves as the perfect example of fidelity to the covenant of marriage.

Abram slept with Hagar, and she bore him a son. And, in bitter irony, Sarai blamed Abram for the rift in their family because he slept with Hagar as Sarai wanted. Sarai mistreated Hagar, which caused Hagar to flee from her and be alone and heartbroken near a spring in the desert.

Thankfully, God intervenes as the hero of both this chapter of Genesis and all the rest of Scripture. The angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar to inquire of her circumstances, and she explained that she was running from the abusive Sarai. The angel of the Lord instructed Hagar to return to Sarai and trust that God would protect her and provide for her and her son like He had Abram. God also promised that her son would become the father of a great nation because he was a son of Abram, though not the son of the promise as that would eventually be Isaac. God also told Hagar that his name would be Ishmael, which means God hears, because God had heard her weeping and responded with kindness. God then promises that Ishmael would be a “wild donkey of a man” and that he would be a warrior in hostility with his brothers, who would descend from Abram.

Ishmael was born to a Hebrew father and Egyptian mother and became the father of the Arab nations that, to this day, are in hostility with Jews and Christians alike as promised. And they are also a very wealthy people as God has blessed them with the wealth of oil.

As mentioned earlier, there is some question as to who the “angel of the Lord” is in Genesis 16. The word for angel generally means messenger and the Old Testament seems to distinguish between “an angel of the Lord,” which refers to one of God’s angels, and “the angel of the Lord,” which seems to refer to God Himself coming down (Judges 6:11, 13:22). In Genesis 16:13-14, Hagar named “the angel of the Lord” El Roi, which means “the God who sees me.” Therefore, it seems likely that Jesus Himself came down to comfort and bless Hagar, and she recognized that it was God who had appeared to her in love.

Questions:

1. What lessons can be learned about the implications of sexual sin in this chapter?
2. There are many parallels between the story of Hagar and the story of Jesus sitting with the Samaritan woman in John 4, as well as the angelic birth announcements of Ishmael in this passage and that of Jesus in Luke 1:26-28. Study these more to see how God’s character and involvement in peoples’ lives is steadfast.