Home Master Index
←Prev   Genesis 16 as rendered by/in  Next→ 


16:1  Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar;
16:2  so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her." Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
16:3  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.
16:4  He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
16:5  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."
16:6  "Your slave is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
16:7  The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.
16:8  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.
16:9  Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her."
16:10  The angel added, "I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count."
16:11  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, for the LORD has heard of your misery.
16:12  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 all his brothers."
16:13  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 the One who sees me."
16:14  That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
16:15  So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne.
16:16  Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.