Genesis - Chapter 21

¹ Yahweh treated Sarah as he had said, and did what he had promised her.

² Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time God had promised.

³ Abraham named the son born to him Isaac, the son to whom Sarah had given birth.

⁴ Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.

⁵ Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

⁶ Sarah said: God has given me cause to laugh! All who hear about this will laugh with me!

⁷ She added: Whoever would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children! Yet I have borne a son in his old age.

⁸ The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham gave a great banquet on the day Isaac was weaned.

⁹ Now Sarah watched the son that Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.

¹⁰ 'Drive away that slave-girl and her son,' she said to Abraham, 'this slave-girl's son is not to share the inheritance with my son Isaac.'

¹¹ This greatly distressed Abraham, because the slave-girl's child too was his son,

¹² but God said to him, 'Do not distress yourself on account of the boy and your slave-girl. Do whatever Sarah says, for Isaac is the one through whom your name will be carried on.

¹³ But the slave-girl's son I shall also make into a great nation, for he too is your child.'

¹⁴ Early next morning, Abraham took some bread and a skin of water and, giving them to Hagar, put the child on her shoulder and sent her away. She wandered off into the desert of Beersheba.

¹⁵ When the skin of water was finished she abandoned the child under a bush.

¹⁶ Then she went and sat down at a distance, about a bowshot away, thinking, 'I cannot bear to see the child die.' Sitting at a distance, she began to sob.

¹⁷ God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven. 'What is wrong, Hagar?' he asked. 'Do not be afraid, for God has heard the boy's cry in his plight.

¹⁸ Go and pick the boy up and hold him safe, for I shall make him into a great nation.'

¹⁹ Then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well, so she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

²⁰ God was with the boy. He grew up and made his home in the desert, and he became an archer.

²¹ He made his home in the desert of Paran, and his mother got him a wife from Egypt.

²² About then, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, 'Since God is with you in everything you do,

²³ swear to me by God, here and now, that you will not act treacherously towards me or my kith and kin, but behave with the same faithful love to me and the land of which you are a guest as I have behaved to you.'

²⁴ 'Yes,' Abraham replied, 'I swear it.'

²⁵ Abraham then reproached Abimelech about a well that Abimelech's servants had seized.

²⁶ 'I do not know who has done this,' Abimelech said. 'You yourself have never mentioned it to me and, for myself, I heard nothing of it till today.'

²⁷ Abraham then took sheep and cattle and presented them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant.

²⁸ Abraham put seven lambs of the flock on one side.

²⁹ 'Why have you put these seven lambs on one side?' Abimelech asked Abraham.

³⁰ He replied, 'You must accept these seven lambs from me as evidence that I have dug this well.'

³¹ This was why the place was called Beersheba: because there the two of them swore an oath.

³² After they had made a covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, left and went back to Philistine territory.

³³ And Abraham planted a tamarisk at Beersheba and there he invoked the name of Yahweh.

³⁴ Abraham stayed for a long while in Philistine territory.

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