Fr. Stephen De Young: We’re going to go ahead and get started, and when we get started we’ll be picking up at the beginning of Genesis 16. People listening to the recording, it’s been a week; people here, it’s been a while. Some of us have been through a lot in that time. Not a lot compared to what actual suffering people in the world suffer, but a lot, you know, for whiny me, yeah.

Last time—I mean, we won’t go all the way through the life of Abraham up to this point, but last time we talked about God sort of making an official covenant with Abram, and that whole process of cutting a covenant, cutting the animals in half, the presence of God moving through the midst of the halves, all of those sorts of things. Coupled with that was the reiteration of the promises that God had already made to Abraham about his descendants and about one descendant in particular. We talked about those: each time those were repeated as we go through Genesis, little elements were added; it’s said a little differently each time, and so we get— It’s not just repetition, but we get sort of another angle on what’s going on from each of them.

But the core issue right now that sparked God officially making this covenant, doing this covenant ritual with Abram, was—“doubt” might be too strong, but Abram pointing out that despite these promises he’s received about his descendants and one descendant in particular and all of this—he has no heir. So from his perspective, the day is going to come, he is going to die, and he’s looking around—he’s in his 90s; Sarah’s in her 80s—and he’s going: “Well, you… There’s sort of not a lot of time left here for the fulfillment on this,” and he mentions specifically that because he had no biological heir or family heir that it was going to be sort of one of his head servants who was going to take over the big extended family when he died, as things currently sat.

This is then what prompted God to do this cutting of a covenant ritual. We talked about how normally in this kind of covenant it would’ve been Abram who walked through the split animals, thereby taking a vow: “If I break my end of this covenant, then may I end up like these animals,” but in this case it’s actually God himself who walks, or who passes through, between the halves. So this is about as sure an oath that you can get from God that he’s going to keep his promises and that Abram is going to have an heir from his own body. This is important because of what we’re about to read; that’s why I focus on that and what we said.

So unless anybody has any leftover questions, comments, readings from bizarre contemporary English translations of the Bible for us to scoff at collectively, we’ll go ahead and pick up in Genesis 16:1.

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children, but she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar.” We’ve got a little bit of politeness here in that Hagar is not a servant in the sense of being a hired hand; she’s a slave. She is of Egyptian descent. Being that she’s Egyptian, it is very likely that— Remember back when they went into Egypt to get into the famine and Abram lied and said Sarai was his sister instead of his wife and all that; remember it said that Abram was given servants and herds and oxen and all this by the Egyptians. That’s probably how she became part of their extended clan.

So it’s important when talking about slavery in this era in history that we don’t err on one of two sides. One side of erring on that would be to think that it was like modern chattel slavery, like the North Atlantic slave trade, which is sort of uniquely horrific in human history. And this ancient slavery and Roman slavery was not like that. But then sometimes people go to the other side to try to apologize for it and act like: “Oh, no it was cool! This was the good kind of slavery,” and it’s like: No, there’s not a good kind of slavery.

So this is in an area in between. This is slavery. This is one human being claiming to own another human being. As we’re going to see as this unfolds, Hagar literally could’ve been killed by Abram or any other male who’s part of the biological family at any time, because she was considered property, had to do whatever she was told, up to and including, as we’re going to see, sexual matters. So that’s all real and all a problem. On the other hand, she would not have been subject to continued abuse; she was not thought to not be a human being. She was not— So there are differences, but there’s a basic similarity in terms of slavery.

This raises the question throughout the Scriptures of why you see slavery tolerated. We’ll talk about that a little more when we get into Exodus and we get into the actual commandments about slavery. We’ll go into that in more detail. For this, it’s important to remember that in Genesis the fact that the Bible describes something does not mean that it’s endorsing something. So the most obvious example in the stories we’re now reading about the patriarchs in Genesis is polygamy, because there’s going to be a bunch of polygamist people we’re going to read about, and that is not God saying, “Oh, hey, polygamy’s cool.” [Laughter] Like there’s no problem with this. In fact, every story we read that involves polygamy is going to give us a bunch of examples of why polygamy is a bad idea. You can’t— The fact that the Bible describes it happening is not saying, “Therefore this is a good thing that happened; this is a wonderful thing that happened.” And there doesn’t have to be a direct narrative comment, like a narrator to step in and say, “Oh, and by the way: this was bad,” in order for us to be able to read and understand: “Oh, hey, look at the consequences of this.”

In light of that, let me suggest that as we read this story about Abram and Sarai owning a slave and how they treat her, we need to be attuned to what’s actually going on in the story. I think we’ll see that it’s not actually presenting it as a good thing; actually quite the opposite, as we go. And as I said, once we get into later in the Torah and we get into the laws, the commandments regarding slavery, we’ll get into that more and talk about the way it worked in the Ancient Near East in general and how that’s different from what the Torah says, and if it’s bad why didn’t the Torah just abolish it. We’ll get into all those questions later on. But for now it’s important, again, that we not assume that anything described is endorsed, and that we see actually what unfolds to see what it’s saying about these relationships.

Verse two: “Sarai said to Abram, ‘See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her.’ Thus Abram obeyed the voice of Sarai.” So this is another place where, again, we’re just getting this narrative description, but there’s more than a little subtext here. Number one, notice how Sarai phrases that. “The Lord has kept me from bearing children.” She’s in her 80s. From her perspective, it’s not possible that she’s going to have any now, as would be the usual medical case. But she says, “Go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” Not “perhaps you, Abram, because, hey, this’ll be your son,” but “perhaps I, Sarai, will obtain children by her.” So this shows you the level to which Sarai, Abram’s wife, thinks she owns this person, that if she wants to take one of her children and make it her own child, then that’s what she’s going to do, and anything else is irrelevant. Now we’re going to see that’s not going to work out quite how she’s thinking right now, but that’s how she’s thinking right now, number one.

Number two, the other subtextual thing that we should notice that probably doesn’t stand out that much as modern people because we’re a little more egalitarian about relationships between men and women is: “Thus Abram obeyed the voice of Sarai.” Is Abram supposed to be doing what his wife tells him to do?

Q1: My wife would say yes.

Fr. Stephen: That’s why I said we’re modern people; we’re contemporary people. But in the context here, should he be obeying his wife or obeying God? We’ll put it that way, so fewer people at least call me a sexist. [Laughter] Should he be obeying her or God?

Q1: God.

Fr. Stephen: Right!? Whom he’s just made this covenant with. So it’s phrased that way very deliberately. It could have just said, “Abram did it,” but it says, no, “Abram obeyed her.”

Q1: If I’m remembering properly, God told Abram that he would have a child by Sarah, didn’t he?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. [Laughter]

Q1: So he’s not trusting God here.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. Or, you know, a little bit of lust and was taking an opportunity that presented itself.

But there’s another thing we should be thinking about, and that’s a story earlier in Genesis. Where before this in Genesis have we read about somebody obeying his wife?

Q1: Oh, Adam obeys—

Fr. Stephen: Eve. Follows her lead rather than saying to her, “Uh, no, God said we’re not supposed to.” What Abram should have done is say, “No, God said that he’s going to, and we should trust him, and we’re not going to do this.” But instead, just as we read that Eve—at that point, the Woman—takes some of the fruit and hands it to Adam and he says, “Oh, okay,” and does it.

But even a little deeper than that, between those two stories, what’s happening in that story in Genesis 3? There’s something there, the knowledge of good and evil, that God is going to give humanity when humanity is ready for it, when humanity has reached a certain point of maturity. It’s not that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was evil—God didn’t create anything evil. And what the serpent says to Eve has elements of the truth in it, like any good lie. Any good lie is not just a completely falsehood; it’s got bits and pieces of the truth in it. So when the serpent says, “Oh, you’ll become like gods, knowing good and evil,” that is what God had in store for humanity: theosis, salvation. That was down the road for humanity. But what the devil’s saying to Eve, with Adam standing right there, as we talked about, is: “Why don’t you just reach out and grab it? Why don’t you just make this happen yourself? Jump the queue. Move ahead and lay hold of it yourself.”

And what’s happening here? God has made this promise. He’s just sworn it on this oath. But what is Sarai actually saying to Abram? “We need to make this happen. I’m old. I’m not going to have a baby. So we’re not going to trust. We’re not going to obey. We’re not going to follow what God said and trust him to keep his promise and keep his oath. We’re going to make this happen ourselves. We’re going to make this happen ourselves, through our own devices.” So while there isn’t a big narrator holding up a sign saying, “This is bad,” over this scene we’re reading about, if we pay close attention and we read into the context, we can see: this is bad. This is wrong.

Verse three: “Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.” The Greek nices that up a little. They didn’t, like, have a wedding in the original; we’ll put it that way. She’s more of a concubine. Because for her to become a wife would have been a huge change in her status. If she was actually a wife, even a second wife, they couldn’t do what they’re going to do in a few verses in the way things worked at the time. A slave they totally could.

Verse four: “So he went in to Hagar”—euphemism—“and she conceived. And when she saw she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.” So she gets pregnant. On one level: oh, okay, their plan worked. But all is not well, because Hagar is not necessarily on board with “oh, this is going to be Sarai’s baby and not mine; and this is going to be the heir to everything and I’m still going to be a slave.” Literally if Abram died, she would end up being her son’s slave. Now, presumably he’d free her. [Laughter] Presumably that relationship wouldn’t last.

Q1: But that didn’t always happen.

Fr. Stephen: But, yeah, that didn’t always happen, and even then she should have a different kind of status if she’s the mother of the heir. Once she gets pregnant, now there’s this… She and Sarai are not on the same page.

Verse five: “Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘My wrong be upon you. I gave my maiden to your embrace, and when she saw she had conceived I became despised in her eyes. May God judge between you and me.’ ” So even though this was her plan, she blames Abram. She says, “This is your fault, and God can judge between us who’s in the right, because it’s me, and you did this to me. You went and got my servant pregnant.”

So you might think, “Well, maybe now, a little too late, Abram will step up to the plate and get things straightened out.” You might be wrong.

Verse six: “Thus Abram said to Sarai, ‘Indeed, your maid is in your hand. Do with her as you please.’ So when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence.” So Abram, rather than trying to correct this, says of the pregnant mother of his child, “Hey, she’s your slave; do whatever you want with her.” And “dealt with her harshly” here is again a euphemism. This is talking about beating her; this is talking about abusing her, to the point that Hagar runs away.

Abram: not doing so great here. [Laughter] Remember, we talked about, back with the whole episode in Egypt: one of the places where Abram really needs some work, as he goes through his life and as he’s struggling with sin like we all do, is in relationship to his wife, and how he values and doesn’t value her, and how he treats her, his relationship with her, and her role in the family. And we’re seeing this manifest here again. There’s a certain irony that “Sarai” means “princess,” and he’s not treating her like that. [Laughter] But so we see— And you can see, as I said, is this saying slavery is okay? Ehhh… no. It’s pointing out how this is deeply wrong. That was the wrong answer for him to give his wife: “She’s your slave; do what you want.”

Verse seven: “Now the Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.” This isn’t like the Angel of the Lord was walking around and just happened to bump into her. That’s not what “found her” [means]; that means he came to her there. Of course, she’s out in the wilderness, out in the desert, so of course [when] she finds a spring of water, she stays there.

“Then he said, ‘Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?’ She replied, ‘I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai.’ The Angel of the Lord then said to her, ‘Return to your mistress and humble yourself under her hand.’ Again the Angel of the Lord said to her, ‘I will surely multiply your seed exceedingly, that it may not be counted because of its multitude.’ ” So first, that would be a downer. The Angel of the Lord shows up and says, “You’ve got to go back.” You’ve got to go back, and she’s like: “Well, I ran away because I was being abused.” But he adds to that. He says, “You have to go back but…” And notice this promise. What does this promise sound like?

Q1: It’s similar to what Abram got.

Fr. Stephen: Right, the promise made to Abram. And it’s not that “oh, this is a repeat of the same promise”; it’s “this is part of the promise, because it’s Abram’s baby.” It’s Abram’s baby, so it’s not just—I’m emphasizing this because this is here in the Torah— God is not just concerned and the promises to Abraham are not just about what will become Israel. Israel’s a slice of that, that’s descended from Isaac, that’s descended from Jacob. There’s a whole bunch of other people who are Abrahamites, who are descended from Abram, who also become nations. And we’re going to see when we get into the book of Deuteronomy—next year probably— We’re going to see in Deuteronomy that all of them are part of these promises to Abram. Remember, he’s going to be the father of many nations.

So there is a certain relationship between Israel as such and God, but that is not an exclusive relationship, as in that God has no relationship to these other people. This isn’t even like the Egyptians or the Sumerians or the Akkadians, where, well, yeah, God’s the Creator of the world and he’s everybody’s God. Later on, the Edomites, the Ishmaelites, the Moabites, the Ammonites were all descended from Abram and his family: all have a kind of special status here in the Torah because of Abraham. So it says here— He’s saying to her, “You’re part of that promise.” And that’s why she has to go back, because this isn’t a separate thing. “Oh, okay, I’m going to make the same kind of deal with you as I made with Abram.” It’s like: “No, you’re part of the promises. You’re part of the blessings. You have a share in that, and that’s why you need to stay within this orbit of Abram’s household.”

Verse eleven: “Once again the Angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Behold, you are with child and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, for the Lord has taken notice of your humiliation.’ ” Does that ring any bells to anybody, that phrasing?

Q1: Yeah, just substitute Emmanuel.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, in Isaiah, and then even some of the language directly talking about Jesus in the New Testament. Notice that’s parallel to language used about Ishmael. So again, there are differences between the way God is going to relate to Israel and the way he’s going to relate to the nations, but— There are distinctions, but there’s not opposition. They’re not radically different things. And the differences, as we’re going to see, are going to be that all of the nations are going to be blessed through Israel. Israel is going to be the instrument through which. They’re going to have this special role in relation to the other nations, but they’re not going to have a special role as opposed to the other nations. That’s an important distinction.

You have a question?

Q2: I was wondering if the Angel of the Lord here is an example of theophany.

Fr. Stephen: It is, and we’re going to see why here in just a minute, but, yes, you’re tracking in the right way.

Q1: Is there any significance to the name Ishmael?

Fr. Stephen: So “Ishmael” means literally “God hears.” And that’s going to be built on a little in a couple of verses, too.

Q1: “Hagar” means?

Fr. Stephen: “Hagar” we’re not sure; it’s an Egyptian name. [Laughter] Verse twelve— Oh, but also notice the “for the Lord has taken notice of your humiliation.” That part may resonate a little bit from the Magnificat from the Theotokos. “For he has beheld the lowliness of his handmaiden.”

Verse twelve: “ ‘He shall be a rustic man.’ ” There’s an interesting translation! “A rustic man.” “ ‘And his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.’ ” Which is cryptic and weird, right?

So the “rustic man” actually in the original Greek is “he’ll be a wild donkey of a man,” which I guess… [Laughter] But the idea is sort of that he’s not going to be the king of a city. This is pointing to the fact that the Ishmaelites are going to live nomadically; they’re going to live in the wilderness. The Ishmaelites are primarily— I mean, there are people who are going to be identified as Ishmaelites later on, but primarily they’re going to show up as the Midianites. The Midianites are kind of Ishmaelite and Edomite groups who intermarried in nomadic clans and tribes, when they show up later. But they’re going to live that way, and “rustic” is I think trying to point at that.

It’s important again to keep our context here, that— Especially when we say “wild donkey of a man”: donkeys don’t have a lot of great associations, culturally for us. [Laughter] But this is not like an insult. This is not saying he’s going to be a “insert…” [Laughter] At least in the Arabic, it’s not saying he’s going to be a jahash. [Laughter] Remember, in the context, when we talked about with the separation of Abram and Lot, that the city life, this is associated in Genesis with Cain. So saying he’s going to be a great king would actually be more of an insult in the context of Genesis here, because Abram is called to live like a nomad; Lot’s the one who’s going and living in Sodom. So saying he’s going to live this nomadic lifestyle, and these clans are going to be out and they’re not going to be settled in any territory, that’s the whole “every man’s hand will be against him,” and that he’s not going to be settled in one place and making treaties and laying down institutions: that’s a good thing in Genesis. That’s the way people are called to live in Genesis, so that’s not a negative directed at him. Yes, sir?

Q1: Is there anything to the idea that the Arabs are descendants of Ishmael?

Fr. Stephen: Um, sort of.

Q1: See? [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Right, so… sort of. I mean, it’s hard to do DNA that far into the future. But you’re dealing with tribes of Idumeans. The Idumeans, that’s what Herod— Herod was an Idumean. That comes from Edom. So these are descended from the Edomites, the Midianites, the Ishmaelites. Very loosely, yes, the Arab tribes of the southern— of the Arabian Peninsula are descended from Midianite and Ishmaelite groups, very broadly. And that that’s— So the thing is the word “Arab” gets used loosely and weirdly now, so now it gets used to refer to anyone who speaks Arabic. But don’t call an Egyptian an Arab. It won’t go well for you. [Laughter] So there actually are other ethnic groups in the Middle East who speak Arabic but are not, properly speaking, Arabian, as in descended from these tribes on the Arabian Peninsula.

It gets really complicated when you look at the Muslim conquests, because you have people who were descended from those tribes, who go and conquer and colonize parts of North Africa. So there are people in Egypt of Egyptian descend, of Arabian descent, of Greek descent, and intermarriage has happened, and things have happened. So, yeah. Does that answer your question?

Q1: Yeah, it does.

Fr. Stephen: Or just muddied the water to make it appear deep? [Laughter] Okay.

Verse 13: “Then Hagar called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have seen the one who appeared to me face to face.’ ” So here’s where we get to the answer of your question about a theophany here, pretty clearly. In the original—and I looked this up and verified it, actually, right before we started—in the Hebrew— What this literally says in the original is: “And then Hagar called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, ‘El Ra’i,’ which is what’s translated there “God who sees me.” Ra is the verb “to see”; the i is “me”; el is “God,” obviously. So it literally says that Hagar called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, El Ra’i, for, she said, “I have seen the one who appeared to me face to face.” So she’s literally saying there she saw Yahweh face to face. So this is one of the passages where the Angel of the Lord is clearly being presented as a theophany.

You can put here— I’m not going to go through it all again, but everything we said in terms of Yahweh appearing to Abram, about the second Person of the Trinity, the second Person of God, that this is ultimately Christ who goes and speaks to Hagar, which creates this interesting thing when some of that same language is used about his own birth later on in the Scriptures.

Verse 14: “Therefore she called the well”—the spring of water she was at. “She called the well, ‘the well of him I saw before me.’ Observe—” Observe! [Laughter] “It is between Kadesh and Bered.” This is telling you exactly where it is. If you want to know where this well is, where this happened, you can go over down there by— You can hang a left at Kadesh and head toward Bered. [Laughter] And you’ll find it there, this well along the way. Notice the “therefore”: “the well of him I saw before me.” So it’s “God who sees me”; “well of him I saw before me.” That’s the face-to-face part, which is how Moses is going to see Yahweh later on.

So she’s saying and Scriptures are reporting: she’s having the same experience Moses is going to have, and she’s a slave woman. Why is that important? The God who created the universe just came and appeared in person and spoke face-to-face between a slave woman who had to flee being beaten by the woman who claimed to own her out in the middle of the desert. So what does that say to us about the value of a human person, regardless of where they are in terms of their status with respect to earth civilization at the time? Like, there is not a lower rung of civilization in 2000 BC than runaway female slave. There literally is not a lower level in society. But God hears her, knows her, calls her by her name, is interested in her, makes these promises to her, and comes and speaks to her face-to-face. That says everything you need to know about what the Torah thinks about the institution of slavery and whether it’s justified or not.

And it represents a fundamentally different view of God than anything going anywhere else in the Ancient Near East at any time, until you get to the New Testament—well, the rest of the Old Testament, and then the New Testament—is the only place where you find a God like this. When we get to Exodus, the next book, part of the reason why Moses and Aaron are basically going to get laughed at by Pharaoh when they show up is they’re going to say they’re representing Yahweh the God of Israel, and he’s going to say, “Oh, yeah, the god of a bunch of slaves. I’m trembling.” [Laughter] That’s how radically different: this presentation of who God is. And we’re not that many chapters of him away from him creating the earth and everything in it, just a few pages.

So that doesn’t strike us as much as it should, because we’re Christians: we have this understanding. “Oh yeah, God knows my name and cares about…” Like, that would be absurd in the ancient world. Maybe if you were caesar, maybe if you were the emperor, and you were therefore one of the gods, they might know who you are—but a runaway female slave? Ha ha ha ha! So this is important that this hit us with its full force.

Verse 15: “So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Now Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.” So he’s not in his 90s yet; he’s pushing 90. [Laughter] And Sarai is about ten years younger than [he is].

Q1: He’s 99 in the next verse.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah! [Laughter] Time lapse!