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Ishmael Is Born

¹ Sarai, Abram's wife, had no children, but she had a slave girl from Egypt named Hagar. ² Sarai said to Abram, "Look, the Lord has not allowed me to have children, so have sexual relations with my slave girl. If she has a child, maybe I can have my own family through her."

Abram did what Sarai said. ³ It was after he had lived ten years in Canaan that Sarai gave Hagar to her husband Abram. (Hagar was her slave girl from Egypt.)

⁴ Abram had sexual relations with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When Hagar learned she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress Sarai badly. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, "This is your fault. I gave my slave girl to you, and when she became pregnant, she began to treat me badly. Let the Lord decide who is right—you or me."

⁶ But Abram said to Sarai, "You are Hagar's mistress. Do anything you want to her." Then Sarai was hard on Hagar, and Hagar ran away.

⁷ The angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the desert, by the road to Shur. ⁸ The angel said, "Hagar, Sarai's slave girl, where have you come from? Where are you going?"

Hagar answered, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai."

⁹ The angel of the Lord said to her, "Go home to your mistress and obey her." ¹⁰ The angel also said, "I will give you so many descendants they cannot be counted."

¹¹ The angel added,

¹³ The slave girl gave a name to the Lord who spoke to her: "You are ‘God who sees me,'" because she said to herself, "Have I really seen God who sees me?" ¹⁴ So the well there, between Kadesh and Bered, was called Beer Lahai Roi.^[b]

¹⁵ Hagar gave birth to a son for Abram, and Abram named him Ishmael. ¹⁶ Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.