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Genesis 16
The birth of Ishmael
1 Abram’s wife Sarai had borne him no child, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.
2 So Sarai said to Abram, ‘Listen, now! Since Yahweh has kept me from having children, go to my slave-girl. Perhaps I shall get children through her[*a].’ Abram agreed to what Sarai had said.
3 Thus after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan for ten years Sarai took Hagar her Egyptian slave-girl and gave her to Abram as his wife.
4 He went to Hagar and she conceived. And once she knew she had conceived, her mistress counted for nothing in her eyes.
5 Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘May this insult to me come home to you! It was I who put my slave-girl into your arms but now she knows that she has conceived, I count for nothing in her eyes. Let
6 Yahweh judge between me and you.’ ‘Very well,’ Abram said to Sarai ‘your slave-girl is at your disposal. Treat her as you think fit.’ Sarai accordingly treated her so badly that she ran away from her.
7 The angel of Yahweh[*b] met her near a spring in the wilderness, the spring that is on the road to Shur.
8 He said, ‘Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?’ ‘I am running away from my mistress Sarai’ she replied.
9 The angel of Yahweh said to her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her’.
10 The angel of Yahweh said to her, ‘I will make your descendants too numerous to be counted’.
11 Then the angel of Yahweh said to her: ‘Now you have conceived, and you will bear a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for Yahweh has heard[*c] your cries of distress.
12 A wild-ass of a man he will be, against every man, and every man against him, setting himself to defy all his brothers.’
13 Hagar gave a name to Yahweh who had spoken to her: ‘You are El Roi’, for, she said, ‘Surely this is a place where I, in my turn, have seen the one who sees me?'[*d]
14 This is why this well is called the well of Lahai Roi; it is between Kadesh and Bered.
16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him lshmael.