Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 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. 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. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 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.”
“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 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.
Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
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.
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.”
Genesis 16:1-12
Ok, seriously....there's about 10 things wrong with this whole story. It's like a 4 thousand year old Jerry Springer episode, isn't it?
From reading this, here's my list of things that simply intrigues me about this story:
- Sarai, in what world did you think it would be a good idea to have your husband sleep with the maid? are you kidding me?
- Abram, clearly when she suggested that, it was just an emotional reaction because she felt responsible for not giving you your kids. This is cleary one of those situations where maybe you should have heard what she meant instead of what she actually said! Come on man! Even I know that!! dumb! She was right to blame you even though it was her suggestion! You were supposed to say no!
- Really Abram? did you seriously just respond to her by saying it's not your problem? Your slave, your issue Sarai. Really? It's a good thing this happened 4,000 years ago and not today. If you said this to her in today's culture, she would have had your bags on the porch by that night!!!
- More seriously, the most intriguing thing to me is that God still kept his promise to Abram. God promised Abram that his descendants would become a great nation. Now, when He made that promise, it was intended to be the descendants of him and his wife Sarai. Even though Abram had kids with another woman, God kept his promise.
Today, we continue to suffer the consequences of that sin. God promised Abram that his descendants would be given the promised land. Because Abram had 2 different sons, those 2 nations continue to fight even today over the nation that they were both technically promised.
As we go through the day, let's think about this. Sometimes we think this small sin won't hurt anyone. The reality is that sin has lasting consequences beyond what we know at the time we commit the sin.
So, before we think about that next "small" sin, let's think about the time where, one day, a regular guy decided to do something really stupid, that at the time he probably thought was no big deal, but ended up causing an issue between many thousands of people over a 4,000 year time, and still continues today.
