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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 ill-treated 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 towards 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.