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16. Hagar and Ishmael

   Abram agreed to what Sarai said. ³ So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. ⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

   When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”

    ⁶ “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

    ⁷ The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

   “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

    ⁹ Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” ¹⁰ The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

    ¹¹ The angel of the LORD also said to her:

   “You are now pregnant
   and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael, Ishmael means God hears.
   for the LORD has heard of your misery.
¹² He will be a wild donkey of a man;
   his hand will be against everyone
   and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
   toward Or live to the east / of all his brothers.”

    ¹³ She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen Or seen the back of the One who sees me.” ¹⁴ That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi Beer Lahai Roi means well of the Living One who sees me.; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

    ¹⁵ So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. ¹⁶ Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.