The Promise Delayed - Genesis 16

Bible Study Lesson for August 26

Introduction

In the last chapter, God renewed the covenant with Abram, reaffirmed the promise of land and offspring, and laid out a little more of how all that would happen. In the midst of the promise, God revealed to Abram that his descendants would be slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years before returning to take possession of the Promised Land (Genesis 15:13-14). We took an opportunity to reflect on the length of time we have to wait for God to bring some promises to completion. This week, we will see what happens when the recipients of the promise have their patience stretched to its limits.

16:1-6 Doubting the Promise

The story in chapter 16 is interesting on its own, because it gives us some historical insights into the world of the ancient near east. The cultural assumptions of characters here may be foreign to us, but we should resist the temptation to see the story condemning people for the same things we would condemn them for today. Historically, Abram and Sarai participate in a common cultural practice of using a slave-girl as a surrogate wife. Sarai gives her slave-girl Hagar to her husband in order that Hagar could produce the long-awaited heir. At this point in the story Sarai is in her mid-seventies, and in spite of God’s promise, she and her husband remain childless. While we rightly have moral qualms about slavery, and sexual slavery in particular, the story doesn’t comment on the morality of either. Instead, it focuses on the interpersonal dynamics that result.

When Hagar gets pregnant, Sarai gets sensitive. She has failed to produce an heir and now the promise of Abram’s first child looms, growing each day in the swelling of the slave-girl’s belly. Perhaps Hagar glances pityingly at her mistress, perhaps she assumes that she will rise in favor with her master because she is the vessel of the promise. Either way, she looks at Sarai in a way that makes Sarai uncomfortable. When Sarai takes this up with Abram, he allows her to do whatever she wants with Hagar. So she makes life hard for the slave-girl, who runs away.

From the perspective of Genesis, Abram and Sarai’s failure in this passage is primarily that they failed to trust the promise. Once again, they take the initiative in trying to do what God has promised to do for them. From a theological viewpoint, all the suffering that follows is a result of their failure to trust God. It is only after this that we can begin to question and criticize the other decisions that they make. Failing to trust God results in interpersonal strife, victimization, and the disruption of community. But Sarai’s plan is logical and understandable. She is too old to have children naturally; we can learn from this story that the promises of God sometimes happen supernaturally, but that will have to wait a bit longer.

6:7-16 The Promise Outside the Promise

Walter Brueggemann observes that at this point in the story, most of the major characters are content to “leave well enough alone.” Abram and Sarai are back at the camp, trying to rebuild their marriage. Hagar is out looking for a new life for herself and the baby inside her. But one character is not content with this outcome. God intervenes, sending an angel to work toward a different ending for Hagar and the child. Abram will have to take responsibility for the child, the fruit of his mistakes. In four speeches, the angel of the Lord changes the trajectory of the slave-girl’s life.

In this story, the child who will be Ishmael shows us God’s blessing of people outside of the community created by the promise to Abram. It is clear already that Ishmael is not the promised child. It will become more clear in the next chapter. Ishmael is the result of Abram and Sarai’s doubt and their attempt to help God out in achieving the promise. But God does not punish Ishmael for this. Indeed, God gives Hagar a new promise: many nations will come from her as well, and Ishmael will make a life outside the Promised Land.

The final words of Hagar in this story capture this element of promise for those outside the covenant quite well. She names God “El-roi” which in Hebrew means “The God Who Sees.” The direct explanation in the story is that she is amazed to have seen God and lived. As we have talked about in previous lessons, this is a common element of Old Testament encounters with God. But the name El-roi can also be interpreted as Hagar saying, “God has seen me.” It must be a marvelous thing to see God and live, marvelous and miraculous. But there is something marvelous and miraculous also about the everyday occurrence of being seen by God. To be noticed by this God is to be held in the providential plan. This God works in history— through, around, and in spite of our failures. And God sees.

Conclusion:

What lessons can we learn from this story? As Christians, we like Abram are recipients of God’s promise. We have been promised the coming of the Kingdom of God. Like Abram we have been waiting for this Kingdom for far longer than we originally expected. Like Abram, Christians have tried throughout history to establish the Kingdom on earth ahead of God’s schedule. This has always led to disastrous results.

In 1534-1535, a radical sect of Christians took over the City of Münster, Germany and drove out all of the Catholics and Lutherans in the city. They taught equality for all men and baptism of adults, but they enforced this belief violently. It wasn’t long before the king of the area sent a siege to take the city back. When it got hard to survive in the town, the leaders became oppressive. Late in the siege, the Mayor of the city, noting that there were far more women than men in the city, legalized polygamy and took sixteen wives for himself. He allegedly had one woman executed for refusing to marry him. Eventually, the siege was successful and the perpetrators were killed.

This is an extreme example, but we should take notice of it nonetheless. Human efforts to bring about the Kingdom are doomed to fail because there can be no Kingdom without the rightful King. The future God has planned for us is not a set of ideas or moral principles, but a life oriented correctly toward the person of Jesus. Any other project for “Christianizing the Social Order” is, however well intentioned, doomed to end up in oppression and violence. 

In a more everyday sense, we must wait on God’s answer to our prayers instead of claiming them for ourselves. There is of course a balance between waiting and participating, but we learn from Abram the disastrous consequences of taking the initiative for ourselves. We cannot achieve God’s ends by imperfect means.