Abstract
Introduction
Following source criticism, many commentators interpret Gen 21:8–21 as an Elohistic doublet to the Yahwistic story of Genesis 16. In both instances, Hagar, fearing for the life of her child, flees from Sarah into the wilderness, and an angel announces to her the establishment of a new nation through her son. At the end of both episodes, there is an etiology of a well as a place of theophany of the deity ɔēl, identified as a desert avatar of YHWH. Although Genesis 21 has the etiology of Beer-sheba outside of the Hagar narrative proper (Gen 21:22–34), Beer-sheba is mentioned at Gen 21:14 out of sequence with the following narrative. It seems that the purpose of the Hagar story in Genesis is to establish this identity between the deity ɔēl of the desert dwellers and YHWH of the Israelite federation, and thus to provide a narrative incorporating the nomadic hunter populations into the urban religious and political system of the kingdom of Judah.
Structure
Genesis 21:1–21 is an intrusion into Genesis 20 and 21:22–34. At Gen 21:22, Abimelech and Phicol declare to Abraham, “God [Heb. ɔĕlōhîm] is with you in all that you do,” continuing the end of the episode of the closing and opening of the wombs of Abimelech’s women in Genesis 20. The original core of the intruding narrative is the announcement of the birth of Sarah’s firstborn son, Isaac (Gen 21:2–5). Genesis 20:18–21:1 offers comments that are added in order to tie the Elohistic narrative into the final framework of the Octateuch (i.e., the Pentatuech and the books of Josuha, Judges, and Ruth).
Detailed Discussion
Although the story told in Gen 21:8–21 seems to be about two mothers, one human father, God as a provider, and two children, much of the narrative depends on the recognition of a prophetic role for Sarah. When Gen 21:1 introduces the relationship between YHWH and Sarah, the text uses the verb pāqad, “he visited” or “dealt with” (NRSV) Sarah. This verb frequently describes contact between YHWH and a human being, often a prophet or some other faithful person, aimed at indicating the fulfillment of a promise by YHWH. The parallelism in the verse (“as he had said . . . as he had promised”) underlines this goal of fulfillment. With the figure of Sarah being set up in this way, her actions and words gain prophetic quality.
Many commentators read Gen 20:18 and 21:1 as a later Yahwistic (“J”) interpolation into the Elohistic story. Furthermore, the story of Hagar and her son in Genesis 21 functions as an interpolation into the story of Abraham and Abimelech. The story of the birth of Isaac and the establishment of the son of Hagar as the founder of a desert nation of hunters seems to be an elaboration of Gen 20:17, in which God heals Abimelech, his wife, and his slave-women, and they give birth to children.
Genesis 21:2 presents Sarah’s conception and bearing a child to Abraham. The verse emphasizes Abraham’s old age. Any reader though, then as now, was or is aware that the husband’s old age was a less significant factor in the exceptional manner of this pregnancy than Sarah’s own well-advanced age.
Genesis 21:3 has a parallel in the naming of Isaac: “Abraham called the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.” The clause with Sarah as grammatical subject appears to be a later addition. Similarly, Gen 21:10 presents another doublet “along with my [Sarah’s] son Isaac,” with Isaac most likely being a later addition. The mention of Isaac at the end of both 21:3 and 21:10 stands in contrast to the unnamed son of Hagar; only from Genesis 16 and 17 does the reader deduce this is Ishmael.
Genesis 21:4 reveals why the text sets up parallels between Abraham and Sarah. Abraham executed the circumcision according to how God had commanded him. Here, the reader realizes that parallels involving Abraham serve as guides for how to fulfill God’s commandment.
At Gen 21:2 and 21:5, this same Elohist tradition is concerned about Abraham’s age. Genesis 21:6–7 develops the etymology of Sarah’s son. Abraham names him Isaac (yiṣḥāq, meaning “he laughs”) in 21:5, but this verse implies that Sarah was the one who understood what the name meant, and thus, that she was the one who named him. Sarah elaborates and refers back to old age in 21:2. That Abraham was old is not as strange as Sarah’s old age when having her firstborn, Sarah being roughly as old as Abraham. One may wonder whether these verses intend to make fun of the fact that Abraham was supposed to be the center of the narrative and Sarah was supposed to be subordinate, although, in fact, Sarah holds the threads in her hands. In other words, the final redaction of these verses conveys a far greater role for Sarah.
A remarkable grammatical construction at Gen 21:5 and 21:8 combines a participle with passive meaning with a direct object marker featuring an unnamed agent, likely God: “when his son Isaac was born to him” (v. 5); and “The child grew, and was weaned” (v. 8). With this connecting element that highlights God’s role, the reader enters the second part of Genesis 21. The introduction of another female, Hagar, the Egyptian woman, in Gen 21:9 signals challenges Sarah is going to confront. The real challenge is clear at the end of the verse with the participle mĕṣāḥēq, which can mean “mocking” or “playing” (NRSV). This participle shares its root with the name Isaac. But who is the one mocking here? Given that the participle is masculine, Sarah is not the likely agent. The two possible candidates are Abraham and the son of Hagar, who remains without a name for the time being. It is the son of Hagar. Within the logic of the story, Hagar’s son could challenge the son of Sarah, doing so through imitation, (i.e., mocking), because Abraham was old, as the story itself emphasizes, and Isaac would be vulnerable when Abraham died.
Sarah recognizes the danger that the situation poses to her son’s ability to exercise his right of inheritance. Abraham has not noticed the role that the son of Hagar might play in this. Thus, Sarah stands up for her son (Gen 21:10) and emphasizes his rights by naming him. The later introduction of the name Isaac at Gen 21:3 had already shown that the initial strand of the story was transformed in order to highlight Sarah’s active and prophetic role concerning her son.
Abraham, instead, remains confused and does not know what to do. Genesis 21:11 declares that the matter became “very distressing to Abraham on account of his son,” but leaves open which son is in view here, Isaac or the son of Hagar. If we allow ourselves to see two strands developing at different times within this story, and if we assume that the present verse belongs to the earlier strand, then the reference remains ambiguous. The struggle between the “legitimate” and “illegitimate” sons is also a foreshadowing of the conflict between Jacob and Esau.
In parallel to Matthew’s Gospel, at Gen 21:12 the matter is resolved when God speaks to Abraham, offering the patriarch the confirmation that Sarah is the prophet whom Abraham must obey. This level of the story belongs to the earlier, Elohistic layer of the redaction process. Abraham is unable to defend his son. His only option is to continue to obey Sarah as he had done before, when he obeyed Sarah in conceiving a son through Hagar. Obeying Sarah is tantamount to obeying YHWH; hence, the son of Hagar is also the son of a promise, and God (in this passage) will defend this promise.
Since the son of Hagar, as Gen 21:13 sees it, is also the seed of Abraham, a nation shall be ascribed to him as well. That the two nations to arise are closely associated with one another is clear from the similar fates they share. The motif of the wandering in the wilderness of Beer-sheba in 21:14, for instance, is a foreshadowing of the wandering of the Israelites in the desert. Here, the desert emerges as a central site at which both of these nations encounter their God. The reference to the motif of the water vessel, and thus to a site associated with water in the midst of the dry desert, in which the child of Hagar is weaned, in which Hagar’s breasts are dry, and in which a child is cast under a shrub, left to die, prepares the reader’s expectations for a theophany.
Yet Hagar is not a prophetess like Sarah. Although Hagar’s actions foreshadow later events, her intentions only crescendo at her child’s impending death. In Gen 21:16, she acts in order not to have to hear her child’s cries. God, however, is in control, and able to hear the boy’s voice, which his mother does not want to hear. The remarks in Gen 21:17 reveal the limitations of Hagar’s assumptions. The angel speaks to her as if her motive were to call out to the Deity in the open, while the boy rests under the shrub, as though the Deity cannot hear the voice of the boy under the shrub. Then the theophany becomes directly manifest. In Gen 21:18, God speaks to Hagar directly, telling her to stand up, lift the child up, and take the child in her hand, “for I will make a great nation of him.” Genesis 21:19 then offers the direct revelation of water in the desert, the most ancient form of theophany.
Hagar’s son will be an accomplished archer (Gen 21:20; see foreshadowing in 21:16). God is with the child; he grows up and dwells in the desert, and becomes an archer. We find here very clearly the motif of the hunter vs. the (at least partially) sedentary farmer. As Gen 21:21 has Hagar’s son dwell in the wilderness of Paran, while his mother brought for him a women from Egypt, the story closes with a foreshadowing of the exodus.