Genesis 21: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Sarah gives birth to Isaac at the time God had said, and Abraham circumcises him at eight days old and holds a feast when he is weaned. Sarah sees Hagar's son mocking and tells Abraham to send the slave woman and her son away; God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah and promises to make a nation from Hagar's son too. Hagar and the boy run out of water in the wilderness, God shows her a well, and the boy grows up in the wilderness of Paran. Abimelech and his army commander come to Abraham for a sworn agreement, Abraham raises the matter of a seized well, and the two men make a covenant at Beersheba.

Claim by Claim

1. 21:1
   • The LORD attended to Sarah as he had said.
   • The LORD did for Sarah as he had spoken.
2. 21:2
   • Sarah conceived.
   • Sarah bore Abraham a son.
   • The son was born in Abraham's old age.
   • The birth happened at the appointed time God had spoken of to Abraham.
3. 21:3
   • Abraham named the son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac.
4. 21:4
   • Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when Isaac was eight days old.
   • Abraham did this as God had commanded him.
5. 21:5
   • Abraham was one hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
6. 21:6
   • Sarah said that God had made laughter for her.
   • Sarah said that everyone who hears will laugh with her, or laugh at her; the wording does not settle which.
7. 21:7
   • Sarah said that no one would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children.
   • Sarah said she had borne Abraham a son in his old age.
8. 21:8
   • The child grew.
   • The child was weaned.
   • Abraham made a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned.
9. 21:9
   • Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian.
   • Hagar the Egyptian had borne that son to Abraham.
   • The son was laughing or mocking; the text names no object of the action.
10. 21:10
    • Sarah said to Abraham to drive out this slave woman and her son.
    • Sarah said the son of this slave woman would not inherit along with her son Isaac.
11. 21:11
    • The matter was very bad in Abraham's eyes.
    • It distressed Abraham on account of his son.
12. 21:12
    • God spoke to Abraham.
    • God told Abraham not to be distressed about the boy and about his slave woman.
    • God told Abraham to listen to Sarah's voice in everything she said to him.
    • God said that through Isaac Abraham's offspring would be named.
13. 21:13
    • God said he would also make the slave woman's son into a nation.
    • God said this because the boy is Abraham's offspring.
14. 21:14
    • Abraham rose early in the morning.
    • Abraham took bread and a skin of water.
    • Abraham gave them to Hagar.
    • Abraham placed them on her shoulder; whether the child was also placed on her shoulder or simply given over with the provisions is not settled by the wording.
    • Abraham sent Hagar away with the child.
    • Hagar went away.
    • Hagar wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.
15. 21:15
    • The water in the skin was used up.
    • Hagar put the child under one of the bushes.
16. 21:16
    • Hagar went and sat down opposite the child at a distance.
    • The distance was about a bowshot.
    • Hagar said she would not look on the death of the child.
    • Hagar sat opposite the child.
    • Hagar lifted up her voice and wept.
17. 21:17
    • God heard the voice of the boy.
    • The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven.
    • The angel asked Hagar what was wrong with her.
    • The angel told Hagar not to fear.
    • The angel said God had heard the voice of the boy where he is.
18. 21:18
    • The angel told Hagar to get up.
    • The angel told Hagar to lift up the boy.
    • The angel told Hagar to hold him with her hand.
    • The angel said God would make him into a great nation.
19. 21:19
    • God opened Hagar's eyes.
    • Hagar saw a well of water.
    • Hagar went and filled the skin with water.
    • Hagar gave the boy a drink.
20. 21:20
    • God was with the boy.
    • The boy grew up.
    • The boy lived in the wilderness.
    • The boy became an archer.
21. 21:21
    • He lived in the wilderness of Paran.
    • His mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
22. 21:22
    • At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army spoke to Abraham.
    • They said God was with Abraham in everything he did.
23. 21:23
    • Abimelech told Abraham to swear to him there by God.
    • Abimelech asked Abraham to swear that he would not deal falsely with him, nor with his offspring, nor with his descendants.
    • Abimelech said Abraham should act toward him according to the kindness Abimelech had done to him.
    • Abimelech said Abraham should act so toward the land in which Abraham had resided as an alien.
24. 21:24
    • Abraham said he would swear.
25. 21:25
    • Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water.
    • Abimelech's servants had seized the well by force.
26. 21:26
    • Abimelech said he did not know who had done this thing.
    • Abimelech said Abraham had not told him.
    • Abimelech said he himself had not heard of it until that day.
27. 21:27
    • Abraham took sheep and cattle.
    • Abraham gave them to Abimelech.
    • The two of them cut a covenant.
28. 21:28
    • Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart by themselves.
29. 21:29
    • Abimelech asked Abraham what these seven ewe lambs were that he had set apart by themselves.
30. 21:30
    • Abraham said Abimelech was to take the seven ewe lambs from his hand.
    • Abraham said the lambs were to serve as a witness for him that he had dug this well.
31. 21:31
    • For that reason the place was called Beersheba.
    • The name was given because the two of them swore an oath there.
32. 21:32
    • They cut a covenant at Beersheba.
    • Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army got up.
    • They returned to the land of the Philistines.
33. 21:33
    • Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba.
    • Abraham called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.
34. 21:34
    • Abraham resided as an alien in the land of the Philistines for many days.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

21:1

LORD printed in capitals marks the spot where the Hebrew text has God's personal name, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers said the ordinary word for "Lord" aloud in its place, and English translations have followed that custom ever since.

21:3

Isaac stands for a Hebrew name meaning roughly "he laughs" or "he will laugh." The laughing in verses 6 and 9, and the laughter of Abraham and Sarah when the birth was first promised, all play on the same root.

21:4

Circumcision is the cutting away of the foreskin of the penis. In Abraham's household it was the bodily mark of the agreement between God and his family, and chapter 17 fixed the eighth day after birth as the time for it.

21:5

Abraham was a hundred and Sarah was ninety. Both were far past the age when people have babies.

21:6

Sarah's words face two ways at once. The Hebrew can mean that everyone who hears will share her joy, or that everyone will laugh at the idea of a woman her age with a newborn. The wording does not settle which.

21:7

"Given children suck" is 1611 English for breastfed. Sarah's point is the sheer impossibility of it, a woman of ninety nursing a newborn.

21:8

Children were normally nursed for two to three years, so Isaac would have been a toddler by now. Surviving to weaning was a genuine milestone in a world of high infant death, and the feast marks it.

21:9

The word translated "mocking" comes from the same root as "laugh" and Isaac's name. It can mean playing, joking, laughing, or making fun of someone, and the Hebrew does not say who was on the receiving end. Some ancient copies add "with her son Isaac." Translators have to pick a sense; the Hebrew leaves it open.

21:10

Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian slave, handed to Abraham to bear a child on Sarah's behalf while Sarah was childless (chapter 16). Under the customs of the time a son born that way could hold a claim on his father's estate, which is what Sarah is moving to shut down.

21:12

"Your descendants will be counted through Isaac" means the line that carries the promise is traced through Isaac. It is a statement about which branch is reckoned as the line of inheritance, not a denial that Abraham's other sons are his.

21:13

A nation is a very big group of people living together. God says Ishmael's family will grow that big.

21:14

A skin of water is a bag made from a whole animal hide, sewn shut, the ordinary water container of the region. "Wilderness" means dry open country used for grazing, not sand dunes: land you can cross and pasture animals in, but not farm. The Hebrew word order also leaves it unclear whether Abraham put only the bread and water on Hagar's shoulder or the child as well; and on the chapter's own arithmetic Ishmael would be in his mid-teens by now, though verses 15 to 18 speak of him as a small boy.

21:16

A bowshot was a common rough measure of distance, about as far as an archer could send an arrow, something like a hundred yards.

21:17

"Angel" translates a Hebrew word that simply means messenger. Note too that the chapter never gives the boy's name: he is "the lad" or "the son of the slave woman" throughout. Ishmael's name means "God hears," and the repeated line that God heard the boy's voice plays on the name without saying it.

21:20

In this landscape an archer lived by hunting and by defending or raiding. It is the trade of someone with no land and no inherited household, surviving on the margins of settled country.

21:21

Paran is the dry region south of Canaan, in the area of the Sinai peninsula. Hagar was Egyptian, so choosing an Egyptian wife for her son keeps the marriage inside her own people, which was the normal expectation; arranging a son's marriage was a parent's job.

21:22

Abimelech is the local king of Gerar, the man Abraham dealt with in chapter 20. The name means something like "my father is king" and may be a royal title rather than a personal name. Phichol is his army commander, present as a witness to the treaty.

21:23

Abraham lives here as a resident foreigner: he owns flocks but no land, and depends on the goodwill of the local ruler. That is why a sworn treaty matters so much to him. Swearing "before God" made God the witness to the promise and the one who would punish a breach, since there was no court to appeal to.

21:25

In dry country a dug well is serious property, and whoever controls the well effectively controls the grazing land around it. Seizing one is an act of aggression, not petty theft.

21:26

"I wot not" is old English for "I do not know."

21:27

A covenant is a formal binding agreement, closer to a treaty between two parties than to a modern contract. Handing over animals both sealed the agreement and served as its visible record, since nothing was written down.

21:28

Seven is the number of oath-taking in Hebrew: the verb "to swear" is built on the same consonants as the word "seven." The lambs are set aside as the physical token of the sworn agreement.

21:30

Accepting the lambs from Abraham's hand is the public act by which Abimelech acknowledges the well is Abraham's. The animals are the evidence, standing in for a deed of ownership.

21:31

Beersheba can be heard as "well of the oath" or "well of seven," and the story leans on both senses at once: seven lambs handed over, and an oath sworn.

21:32

The Philistines were a people of the coastal plain southwest of Canaan. Later books show them established there as a military power; Genesis applies the name to the people around Gerar in Abraham's much earlier time.

21:33

A tamarisk is a long-lived, deep-rooted tree that survives in dry ground; planting one is what a man does when he means to stay and is staking a claim to the place. "Called on the name of the LORD" covers both praying to God by name and proclaiming that name publicly. "The everlasting God" renders the Hebrew title El Olam, one of several such compound names for God in Genesis, each attached to a particular place.

21:34

"Sojourned" means he lived there as a foreigner. He owned no land of his own and had none of the rights a citizen would have.