1And the LORD singled out Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as He had spoken. 2And Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the set time that God had spoken to him. 3And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. 4And Abraham circumcised Isaac his son when he was eight days old, as God had charged him. 5And Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac his son was born to him. 6And Sarah said,
Whoever hears will laugh at me.”
7And she said,
“Who would have uttered to Abraham—
‘Sarah is suckling sons!’
For I have born a son in his old age.”
8And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. 9And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, laughing. 10And she said to Abraham, “Drive out this slavegirl and her son, for the slavegirl’s son shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac.” 11And the thing seemed evil in Abraham’s eyes because of his son. 12And God said to Abraham, “Let it not seem evil in your eyes on account of the lad and on account of your slavegirl. Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice, for through Isaac shall your seed be acclaimed. 13But the slavegirl’s son, too, I will make a nation, for he is your seed.”
14And Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, placing them on her shoulder, and he gave her the child, and sent her away, and she went wandering through the wilderness of Beersheba. 15And when the water in the skin was gone, she flung the child under one of the bushes 16and went off and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away, for she thought, “Let me not see when the child dies.” And she sat at a distance and raised her voice and wept. 17And God heard the voice of the lad and God’s messenger called out from the heavens and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the lad’s voice where he is.
18Rise, lift up the lad
and hold him by the hand,
for a great nation will I make him.”
19And God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the skin with water and gave to the lad to drink. 20And God was with the lad, and he grew up and dwelled in the wilderness, and he became a seasoned bowman. 21And he dwelled in the wilderness of Paran and his mother took him a wife from the land of Egypt.
22And it happened at that time that Abimelech, and Phicol captain of his troops with him, said to Abraham, saying, “God is with you in whatever you do. 23Therefore swear to me by God that you will not deal falsely with me, with my kith and kin. Like the kindness I have done you, so you shall do for me, and for the land in which you have sojourned.” 24And Abraham said, “I indeed will swear it.” 25But Abraham upbraided Abimelech concerning the well of water that Abimelech’s servants had seized. 26And Abimelech said, “I do not know who has done this thing, and you, too, have not told me, and I myself never heard of it till this day.” 27And Abraham took sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them sealed a pact. 28And Abraham set apart seven ewes of the flock, 29and Abimelech said to Abraham, “What are these seven ewes that you set apart?” 30And he said, “Now, the seven ewes you shall take from my hand, so that they may serve me as witness that I have dug this well.” 31Therefore did he call the name of that place Beersheba, for there did the two of them swear. 32And they sealed a pact in Beersheba, and Abimelech arose, and Phicol captain of his troops with him, and they returned to the land of the Philistines. 33And Abraham planted a tamarisk at Beersheba, and he invoked there the name of the LORD, everlasting God. 34And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days.
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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6. Laughter has God made me. The ambiguity of both the noun tseḥoq (“laughter”) and the accompanying preposition li (“to” or “for” or “with” or “at” me) is wonderfully suited to the complexity of the moment. It may be laughter, triumphant joy, that Sarah experiences and that is the name of the child Isaac (“he-who-laughs”). But in her very exultation, she could well feel the absurdity (as Kafka noted in one of his parables) of a nonagenarian becoming a mother. Tseḥoq also means “mockery,” and perhaps God is doing something to her as well as for her. (In poetry, the verb tsaḥaq is often linked in parallelism with laʿag, to scorn or mock, and it should be noted that laʿag is invariably followed by the preposition le, as tsaḥaq is here.) All who hear of it may laugh, rejoice, with Sarah, but the hint that they might also laugh at her is evident in her language.
7. uttered. The Hebrew milel is a term that occurs only in poetic texts and is presumably high diction, perhaps archaic.
For I have born a son in his old age. In a symmetrical reversal of God’s report in chapter 18 of Sarah’s interior monologue, where Abraham’s advanced age was suppressed, Sarah’s postpartum poem, like the narrator’s report that precedes it, mentions only his old age. Hers is implied by her marveling reference to herself as an old woman suckling infants, a pointed reversal of her own allusion in chapter 18 to her shriveled body.
9. laughing. Hebrew metsaḥeq. The same verb that meant “mocking” or “joking” in Lot’s encounter with his sons-in-law and that elsewhere in the Patriarchal narratives refers to sexual dalliance. It also means “to play.” (Although the conjugation here is piʿel and Sarah’s use of the same root in verse 6 is in the qal conjugation, attempts to establish a firm semantic differentiation between the deployment of the root in the two different conjugations do not stand up under analysis.) Some medieval Hebrew exegetes, trying to find a justification for Sarah’s harsh response, construe the verb as a reference to homosexual advances, though that seems far-fetched. Mocking laughter would surely suffice to trigger her outrage. Given the fact, moreover, that she is concerned lest Ishmael encroach on her son’s inheritance, and given the inscription of her son’s name in this crucial verb, we may also be invited to construe it as “Isaac-ing-it”—that is, Sarah sees Ishmael presuming to play the role of Isaac, child of laughter, presuming to be the legitimate heir.
10. Drive out this slavegirl. In language that nicely catches the indignation of the legitimate wife, Sarah refers to neither Hagar nor Ishmael by name, but instead insists on the designation of low social status.
12. listen to her voice. The Hebrew idiom has the obvious meaning “to obey,” but the literal presence of hearing a voice is important because it resonates with the occurrence of the same verb and object at the heart of the wilderness scene that immediately follows.
acclaimed. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “called.”
14. rose early in the morning. This is precisely echoed in the story of the binding of Isaac (22:3), as part of an intricate network of correspondences between the two stories.
and he gave her the child. The Hebrew has only “the child,” with an accusative prefix. This has led many commentators to imagine that Abraham is putting Ishmael on Hagar’s shoulders together with the bread and water—a most unlikely act, since the boy would be about sixteen. But biblical syntax permits the use of a transitive verb (“gave [them] to Hagar”) interrupted by a participial clause (“placing [them] on her shoulder”), which then controls a second object (“the child”). The only way to convey this in English is by repeating the verb.
16. a bowshot away. This particular indication of distance is carefully chosen, for it adumbrates the boy’s vocation as bowman spelled out at the end of the story.
when the child dies. Like the narrator in verses 14 and 15, Hagar refers to her son as yeled, “child” (the etymology—“the one who is born”—is the same as enfant in French). This is the same term that is used for Isaac at the beginning of verse 8. From the moment the angel speaks in verse 17, Ishmael is consistently referred to as naʿar, “lad”—a more realistic indication of his adolescent status and also a term of tenderness, as in the story of the binding of Isaac in the next chapter.
17. And God heard the voice of the lad. The narrator had reported only Hagar’s weeping. Now we learn that the boy has been weeping or crying out, and it is his anguish that elicits God’s saving response. In the earlier version of the banishment of Hagar (chapter 16), the naming of her future son Ishmael stands at the center of the story. Here, as though the writer were ironically conspiring with Sarah’s refusal to name the boy, Ishmael’s name is suppressed to the very end. But the ghost of its etymology—“God will hear”—hovers at the center of the story.
20. a seasoned bowman. There is an odd doubling of the professional designation in the Hebrew (literally “archer-bowman”), which I construe as an indication of his confirmed dedication to this hunter’s calling, or his skill in performing it.
22. This episode is clearly a continuation of the Abimelech story in chapter 20, interrupted by the linked episodes of the birth of Isaac and the expulsion of Ishmael. Abimelech had offered Abraham the right of settlement in his territories (“Look, my land is before you”). Now, as Abraham manifestly prospers (“God is with you in whatever you do”), Abimelech proposes a treaty which will ensure that the Hebrew sojourner does not unduly encroach on him or his land.
25. concerning the well. The particular instance of the clash between Abimelech’s retainers and Abraham links this story with the immediately preceding one, in which Ishmael is rescued by the discovery of a well in the wilderness.
31. the name of that place Beersheba. The Hebrew makes a transparent etymological pun. Beʾer means “well.” Shebaʿ can be construed as “oath” but it is also the number seven, ritually embodied here in the seven ewes Abraham sets apart. A second etymology may be intimated, not for the place-name Beersheba but for the term shevʿuah, “oath,” which seems to be derived by the writer from the sacred number seven, made part of the oath-taking.
32. the land of the Philistines. This is an often-noted anachronism, the incursion of the Philistines from Crete to the coastal area of Canaan postdating the Patriarchal period by more than four centuries. The writer may mean merely to refer casually to this region in geographical terms familiar to his audience; it is not clear that Abimelech with his Semitic name is meant to be thought of as a “Philistine” king.
33. at Beersheba. The cultic tree is planted “at” rather than “in” Beersheba because it is evident that the site of the oath is a well in the wilderness, not a built-up town.