Genesis 16
1 Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian servant named Hagar.
2 Sarai said to Abram, “Look, the LORD has kept me from having children. Please sleep with my servant; perhaps I can have children through her.” Abram listened to Sarai.
3 So, after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan for ten years, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.
4 He slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she saw that she was pregnant, she began to look down on her mistress.
5 Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me fall on you! I put my servant in your arms, but when she saw that she was pregnant, she began to look down on me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”
6 Abram replied to Sarai, “Your servant is in your hands; do with her whatever seems right to you.” Then Sarai mistreated her, and she fled from her.
7 The Angel of the LORD found her by a spring in the wilderness, the spring along the road to Shur.
8 The Angel of the LORD asked, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She answered, “I am fleeing from Sarai, my mistress.”
9 The Angel of the LORD said to her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”
10 The Angel of the LORD also said, “I will greatly multiply your descendants, so that they cannot be counted.”
11 The Angel of the LORD also said, “You are pregnant and will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, because the LORD has heard your affliction.
12 He will be like a wild donkey of a man: his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he will live in the presence of all his brothers.”
13 She gave the LORD, who was speaking to her, the name “You Are the God Who Sees Me,” for she said, “Have I also seen the back of the one who sees me, even here?”
14 That is why the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it is between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named the son Hagar had borne him Ishmael.
16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him.
Read and listen to this chapter in the Shalem app, free: narration, chapter video and reading progress. Get the app