Isaac Arrives, Hagar Departs and a Well Is Secured

“Visited” is paqad, the verb of Joseph’s dying words, “God will surely visit you” (50:24), and of the LORD visiting Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:21. It means to attend to someone, to come and act. The verse says it twice in two forms, “as he had said” and “as he had spoken”.

“In his old age” is lizqunav, the phrase that makes Joseph “the son of his old age” to Jacob in 37:3. God has spoken of the set time twice, in 17:21 and 18:14, and it is kept exactly.

The verse piles up claims on the child: his son, born unto him, whom Sarah bare, to him. After Ishmael, whose mother was never allowed to drop out of the record, Genesis leaves no doubt whose this son is. Abraham gives the name he was told to give in 17:19.

Isaac is the first child in Scripture circumcised on the eighth day, as 17:12 required. Stephen sums up the whole sequence in Acts 7:8: “and so Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day.”

Abraham will die at a hundred and seventy five (25:7). So he lived seventy five years before leaving Haran, waited twenty five for this son, and has seventy five still to come after the birth.

“Made me to laugh” is literally “God has made laughter for me”, tsechoq, the noun. “Will laugh with me” is ambiguous in Hebrew and can equally mean “laugh at me”. Sarah’s laugh in 18:12 was denied; this one she owns.

“Would have said” is millel, a rare poetic verb, fitting the little song Sarah makes. “Children” is plural though she has one son. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 87a) told of neighbours who doubted the birth, and of Sarah nursing their infants too to silence them.

Children were weaned late, at two or three: the mother in 2 Maccabees 7:27 says she nursed her son three years, and Hannah keeps Samuel until he is weaned before bringing him to Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:24). Isaac has survived the years when most infants died.

“Mocking” is metsacheq, from the root of Isaac’s name, as if the son of Hagar were “Isaac-ing”. The same verb means sporting in 26:8 and playing at the golden calf in Exodus 32:6. Paul in Galatians 4:29 reads it as persecution; Genesis names only the laughing.

“Cast out” is garash, the verb used when God drove the man out of Eden in 3:24. Sarah does not use Hagar’s name or Ishmael’s, and in fact the name Ishmael does not appear anywhere in this chapter. Paul quotes this verse in Galatians 4:30.

“Very grievous” is literally “very evil in his eyes”. Genesis rarely records what Abraham feels; this is the first time he is said to be distressed. The cause is given in three words: “because of his son”. Ishmael is his son, and the verse calls him nothing else.

Abraham’s grief was for his son; God’s reply names the bondwoman as well, the woman Abraham’s distress left out. “Hearken unto her voice” is the phrase of 16:2, now a command. “In Isaac shall thy seed be called” is quoted in Romans 9:7 and Hebrews 11:18.

Ishmael is promised nationhood four times: to Hagar in 16:10, to Abraham in 17:20, to Abraham again here, and to Hagar in verse 18. The reason given here is his father: “because he is thy seed.”

The “bottle” is a chemet, a skin water bag. Bread and one skin of water is a thin provision from a man with flocks, servants and silver. The Hebrew can be read as putting the child on her shoulder too, though Ishmael is by now about sixteen.

“Cast” is hishlikh, the verb used when Joseph’s brothers cast him into the pit in 37:24. “Shrubs” is siach, the word of 2:5, “every plant of the field”, the scrub of the dry country.

“A bowshot” is literally “as those who draw the bow”, and the boy will grow up to be an archer (verse 20). She sits “over against him”, and the phrase is said twice. Lifting up the voice and weeping is how Genesis describes Esau in 27:38 and Jacob in 29:11.

This is the first call from heaven in Scripture. The next comes in 22:11, when the angel of the LORD calls to Abraham out of heaven over Isaac. Each son is saved at the edge of death by a voice from above. “Where he is” was read by the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 16b) to mean: judged as he is now.

“Hold him in thine hand” is literally “make thy hand strong upon him”. The boy whose hand would be “against every man” (16:12) is first to be held up by his mother’s hand.

“Opened” is pakach, the verb of 3:7, when the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, and of 2 Kings 6:17, when Elisha prays that his servant’s eyes be opened to see what was already there.

“God was with the lad” is the phrase Genesis uses of Joseph in Egypt, “the LORD was with Joseph” (39:2, 21, 23). “Archer” is roveh qashshat, a shooter of the bow, a skill for a man living on game in the desert.

Paran is the wilderness south of Canaan that Israel crosses in Numbers 10:12. With an Egyptian mother and now an Egyptian wife chosen by that mother, Ishmael’s household is Egyptian on both sides.

Phichol, the captain, appears again with an Abimelech in 26:26, in Isaac’s day: either a long-lived man or, more likely, a title passed down. “God is with thee” to Abraham stands two verses after “God was with the lad”.

“My son, nor my son’s son” is nin and neked, a rhyming pair meaning offspring and descendants, found again in Isaiah 14:22. “Kindness” is chesed, the word Abraham used in 20:13 for the deception he asked of Sarah; Abimelech uses it of his own conduct.

Abraham’s answer is two words in Hebrew, anokhi ishave’a. “Swear” is shava, from the same root as sheva, seven: to swear is, by its sound, to bind oneself by seven. The next verses turn on that.

The form of “reproved” can suggest a complaint made repeatedly. It is the verb of 20:16; the man who was rebuked in Gerar now rebukes the king. Wells will be fought over again in Isaac’s time, when the Philistines stop them with earth (26:15).

“I wot not” is 1611 English for I know not. The denial comes in three parts: I do not know who did it, you did not tell me, and I heard nothing until today.

Abraham, who was asked for the oath, is the one who brings the animals. This is the first covenant in Scripture made between two men rather than between God and a man, and “both of them” stresses that it binds each side.

The lambs are kivsot, ewe lambs, the future of a flock. The same word is the “one little ewe lamb” of Nathan’s parable in 2 Samuel 12:3. Setting them apart is a deliberate act meant to be noticed.

Abimelech’s question is the one a sign exists to provoke, like “What mean ye by this service?” in Exodus 12:26 and “What mean ye by these stones?” in Joshua 4:6. Abraham has staged it so that it will be asked.

The lambs are to be an edah, a witness, as Jacob and Laban’s heap of stones will be a witness in 31:48. “I have digged this well” is the claim, and in 26:18 Isaac re-digs his father’s wells and calls them by the names Abraham gave them.

Beer-sheba can mean “well of seven” or “well of the oath”, and the verse holds both, the seven lambs and the sworn oath. It becomes the southern limit of Israel’s land, “from Dan even to Beer-sheba” (Judges 20:1).

The Philistines are usually dated to the twelfth century BC, long after Abraham, so “the land of the Philistines” names the coastal region by the people later known there, as Dan was called by its later name in 14:14.

The “grove” is an eshel, a tamarisk tree; the King James follows older translations. Saul sits under a tamarisk in 1 Samuel 22:6 and is buried under one. A tamarisk is slow-growing and long-lived, so planting one is the act of a man expecting to stay. El Olam, “the everlasting God”, is heard here first.

“Many days” is left uncounted. The chapter ends as chapter 20 began, with Abraham sojourning, and the next chapter opens “after these things”, by which time Isaac is old enough to carry wood up a mountain.