At the Appointed Time

Read Genesis 20 and Genesis 21 in full before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

The LORD visited Sarah just as he had said he would and did for Sarah what he had promised. So Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the appointed time that God had told him.
— Genesis 21:1–2

Two chapters today, full of unexpected turns. Genesis 20 brings us a startling repeat: Abraham, after all that has happened — the great covenant, the sign of circumcision, the new name, the visit at Mamre, the bargaining for Sodom — once again represents Sarah as his sister rather than his wife, and once again the seed-line is endangered through a foreign king’s household. The same failure as Genesis 12. The same lie. The same near-loss of the promise. And the LORD again intervenes to protect what His patriarch has put at risk.

Then Genesis 21 brings, at long last, the fulfillment. Twenty-five years after the call in Haran. Fourteen years after Ishmael’s birth. One year after the three visitors at Mamre. The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceives. Sarah bears a son. The promise that has waited a quarter-century is kept. Isaac is in the world.

The chapter then turns to the painful sorting of the household. Sarah sees Ishmael mocking Isaac. She demands the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham, who loves Ishmael, resists. God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah — but with a promise that Ishmael, too, will be made a great nation. Hagar and Ishmael are sent into the wilderness. The water runs out. Hagar lays the boy under a bush, sits a bowshot away, and lifts her voice and weeps. God heard the voice of the boy. The wilderness opens around a well. Ishmael lives.

And the chapter closes with a treaty between Abraham and Abimelech at Beersheba — the well of the oath — where Abraham plants a tamarisk tree and calls upon the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God. The patriarch who began the chapter sojourning is now established, with treaties, with wells, with the name of El Olam on his lips.

Two chapters. Failure and fulfillment. Sorting and settlement. And in the middle, a single sentence that has waited twenty-five years: Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.

At Gerar Again

Abraham journeyed from there to the Negev region and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he lived as a temporary resident in Gerar, Abraham said about his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent for Sarah and took her.

Genesis 20 opens with a deeply discouraging echo. We have read these verses before — back in Genesis 12, when Abraham went down to Egypt during the famine and told the same lie about Sarah to Pharaoh. The pattern is being repeated. The patriarch has not, evidently, learned his lesson. The lie that endangered the seed-line in Egypt is now endangering it again, in Gerar.

The timing of the episode is significant. Where does this fall in the narrative? Between the LORD’s announcement that Sarah will bear a son within the year (Genesis 18) and the actual birth of Isaac (Genesis 21). Sarah is, very likely, already pregnant when Abraham hands her off to Abimelech. The seed of the promise, the very child for whom the patriarchs have waited a quarter-century, may be in Sarah’s womb when she enters the foreign king’s household. The risk to the promise has never been higher.

And the patriarch lies anyway.

Abimelech, king of Gerar. Gerar was in the southern part of what would become the land of Israel, in territory that would eventually be Philistine (the biblical text uses the name Philistines; the Aegean Philistines of the later period postdate the patriarchs, so the term here is likely used proleptically or as an editorial-update place-marker). Abimelech is not Pharaoh; he is a smaller-scale king, ruling over a city-state. But he holds the same kind of power that Pharaoh did — the power to take a beautiful woman into his household at his own will. He does. Sarah is again separated from her husband, again at the disposal of a foreign monarch, again carrying the seed-line of the LORD’s promise into hostile territory.

But God appeared to Abimelech in a dream at night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken, for she is someone else’s wife.” Now Abimelech had not gone near her. He said, “Lord, would you really slaughter an innocent nation? Did Abraham not say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I have done this with a clear conscience and with innocent hands!”

The LORD intervenes. He comes to Abimelech in a dream — the same kind of nocturnal revelation that will later come to Jacob, to Joseph, and to many prophets. The message is direct. You are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken. Abimelech is being told he stands under divine sentence.

But the text immediately clarifies. Now Abimelech had not approached her. The threat to the seed-line, though real, has not been actualized. Abimelech has not consummated the relationship. Sarah is still in his household, but she has not been taken to his bed. Whatever the LORD did to keep this from happening — perhaps illness, perhaps fear, perhaps simple delay — the seed-line is, at this moment, still intact.

Abimelech protests with what is, in the text, a striking moral coherence. Lord, will you kill an innocent people? The king of Gerar appeals to the LORD’s justice — the same justice Abraham himself had appealed to at the oaks of Mamre when bargaining for Sodom. Abimelech makes a credible case. Did he not himself say to me, ’She is my sister’? And she herself said, ’He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this. Abimelech was deceived. He acted on what he was told. He did not knowingly take another man’s wife.

The integrity of Abimelech’s protest is striking. He is not a Sodomite. He is not a violent king. He is, evidently, a man with some moral conscience — a Gentile ruler who, when threatened with divine judgment, asks the LORD whether the judgment would be just. The chapter is making a quiet point. The line between the patriarch and the pagan king is not, at this moment, as clear as we might want it to be. The patriarch lies; the pagan king has integrity. The patriarch endangers the seed-line; the pagan king protects himself by appealing to God’s justice. The household of the LORD’s chosen man is not, at this moment, the household with the clearest moral witness.

Then in the dream God replied to him, “Yes, I know that you have done this with a clear conscience. That is why I have kept you from sinning against me and why I did not allow you to touch her. But now give back the man’s wife. Indeed he is a prophet and he will pray for you; thus you will live. But if you don’t give her back, know that you will surely die along with all who belong to you.”

The LORD acknowledges Abimelech’s integrity. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. And He makes a remarkable theological statement: it was I who kept you from sinning against me. The LORD has been actively preventing the sin from happening. The reason Abimelech has not approached Sarah is not that Abimelech is morally heroic; it is that the LORD has been at work to protect both Sarah and Abimelech. The protection of the seed-line is the LORD’s doing, not the result of Abimelech’s restraint or Abraham’s foresight.

This is one of the deeper points of the chapter. The promise of God moves forward through history not because the people involved are particularly capable or virtuous, but because the LORD Himself is at work to keep what He has promised. Abraham lies; the LORD protects. Abimelech is deceived; the LORD restrains him. Sarah is taken; the LORD ensures she is not touched. At every point of human failure, the LORD acts to preserve what He has promised.

For he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you. Here is the first use of the word prophet (Hebrew navi) in the Bible. And it is applied — surprisingly — to Abraham, in a moment when Abraham has been lying. The patriarch who has just deceived a foreign king is also the prophet of the LORD, the one whose prayers reach God, the intercessor for the very man he has deceived. The prophetic vocation is, in this strange moment, not contingent on the prophet’s moral consistency. Abraham is a prophet even in his failure. The LORD will use the prophet’s intercession to deliver the man the prophet has deceived.

This is the gospel-shape again. Abraham failed in Gerar. The LORD still calls him prophet. The LORD still uses his prayers. The LORD still works through this profoundly inconsistent man to deliver others. The covenant office is not voided by the office-holder’s failure. The mercy of God outruns the merit of His servants.

Early in the morning Abimelech summoned all his servants. When he told them about all these things, they were terrified. Abimelech summoned Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? What sin did I commit against you that would cause you to bring such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done!” Then Abimelech asked Abraham, “What prompted you to do this thing?”

Abimelech, like Pharaoh in Genesis 12, rebukes the patriarch. The pagan king again shows clearer moral instinct than the man of the LORD. What have you done to us? The deception has put Abimelech’s whole kingdom at risk. You have done to me things that ought not to be done. The lie has consequences. The seed-line was protected, but the relationship with the host kingdom has been damaged.

Abraham’s excuses are weak. I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. But the chapter has just shown that there is more fear of God in Gerar than Abraham had assumed. Abimelech, the pagan king, did fear God; he protested his innocence on the basis of divine justice; he accepted the dream’s warning and acted on it. Abraham’s assessment of the moral character of Gerar was wrong.

Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. The half-truth is named. Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister. But she was also his wife, and to represent her as only his sister was a deception. Abraham tries to justify himself with the technicality. The technicality does not erase the deception.

When God made me wander from my father’s house, I told her, ‘This is what you can do to show your loyalty to me: Every place we go, say about me, “He is my brother.”’”

This is a particularly painful disclosure. Abraham reveals that the deception in Gerar was not a one-time response to an emergency. It was a systematic policy. Abraham had instructed Sarah, at every place to which we come, to identify herself as his sister rather than his wife. The Egypt episode was the first execution of this policy. The Gerar episode is the second. There were, presumably, others we are not told about. Abraham has been living his whole patriarchal vocation with this lie as a contingency plan, ready to deploy whenever he felt at risk.

The text does not editorialize. It simply lets the disclosure stand. The reader is left to weigh what this means. The chosen patriarch, the man through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, has lived his calling with a lie as his back-pocket strategy. He has trusted the LORD with the big things — the great covenant ceremony, the sign of circumcision, the wait for Isaac — but he has not trusted the LORD with his own safety. He has reserved that to his own management. The lie is the area of his life where he is not, finally, depending on the LORD.

Every believer can read this with appropriate self-examination. The places where we do not trust the LORD are usually small. They are the contingencies we hold back for ourselves. They are the back-pocket strategies. The believer’s most persistent failures are often not in the dramatic moments of the spiritual life but in the quiet management of personal risk.

So Abimelech gave sheep, cattle, and male and female servants to Abraham. He also gave his wife Sarah back to him. Then Abimelech said, “Look, my land is before you; live wherever you please.” To Sarah he said, “Look, I have given 1,000 pieces of silver to your ‘brother.’ This is compensation for you so that you will stand vindicated before all who are with you.”

Abimelech, like Pharaoh in Genesis 12, releases Sarah with gifts. The patriarch leaves Gerar richer than he came. The compensation is generous — sheep, oxen, servants, a thousand pieces of silver. Abimelech is essentially saying: I had no idea. Now that I know, here is restitution. Take your wife and live anywhere in my land.

Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, as well as his wife and female slaves so that they were able to have children. For the LORD had caused infertility to strike every woman in the household of Abimelech because he took Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

The chapter closes with a remarkable detail. The LORD had closed all the wombs in Abimelech’s household during the time Sarah was there. The protection of Sarah’s womb (so the seed-line could continue) was paralleled by the closure of every other womb in the king’s house (so nothing could be conceived during that period that might confuse the lineage). Now, with Sarah returned, Abraham prays — the prophet whose prayers reach God — and the wombs are opened. The healing is in answer to the patriarch’s intercession.

The chapter that began with Abraham’s failure ends with Abraham’s intercession. The prophet is still the prophet. The intercessor is still the intercessor. The LORD’s purposes have not been derailed by the lie.

The LORD visited Sarah just as he had said he would and did for Sarah what he had promised. So Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the appointed time that God had told him.

After twenty-five years of waiting, the promise is fulfilled.

The vocabulary is rich. The LORD visited Sarah. The Hebrew verb is paqad, which carries the sense of attending to, paying mindful regard to, acting on behalf of. The LORD has been mindful of Sarah throughout the long wait, but now the mindfulness becomes action. He visits her. He attends to her. The closed womb is opened.

As he had said… as he had promised… at the time of which God had spoken to him. The text piles up the emphasis. The LORD did what He said He would do. The LORD did it when He said He would do it. The God who is faithful to His word has been shown to be faithful in the concrete and verifiable matter of a child’s birth. There is no ambiguity. There is no delay beyond what the LORD had specified. At the appointed time, one year after the visitors at Mamre, just as Genesis 18:14 had promised — About this time next year I will return to you, and Sarah shall have a son.

The patience of the LORD’s timing and the precision of the LORD’s timing should not be missed. The wait was long — twenty-five years from the original call. The wait was specific — about a year from the announcement at Mamre. The waiting believer must learn to hold these two truths together. The LORD’s promises are sometimes very long in coming. The LORD’s promises always come at the precise time He has appointed. At the appointed time is the believer’s hope and the believer’s discipline.

This is also what Paul will mean when he writes about the coming of Christ: When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Galatians 4:4–5). The pattern of at the appointed time runs through the whole of redemptive history. The promise to Eve waited many generations. The promise to Abraham waited twenty-five years. The promise of Christ waited centuries. The promise of the resurrection of the dead awaits His return. Every promise the LORD has made comes at the appointed time. The believer waits in confidence not that the LORD’s timing matches our preference but that the LORD’s timing is, in every case, precisely what He has determined.

Abraham named his son—whom Sarah bore to him—Isaac. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him just as God had commanded him to do. (Now Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.)

The son is named. Isaac. Yitzchaq. Laughter.

The name preserves, forever, the memory of the laughter that came before this moment. Abraham laughed when the promise was given to him (Genesis 17:17). Sarah laughed when she heard it through the tent door (Genesis 18:12). The LORD heard their laughter. The LORD did not condemn it. The LORD took it, and He named the son for it. Every time this child’s name is spoken, the family remembers the moment when the patriarch laughed at God’s word — and the moment when God’s word proved truer than the laugh. The unbelief is folded into the name of the son. The son becomes the living rebuke of the unbelief and the living proof of the promise.

Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. The covenant sign that was given in Genesis 17 is now applied to the son of the covenant. Isaac, the eighth-day infant, is brought into the covenant by the act of his father. The sign that was the focus of last session — circumcision as the marker of belonging — is now placed in the flesh of the long-awaited child. He belongs to the LORD before he can choose. He is in the covenant before he can speak. The covenant of grace is, from his eighth day, marked on his body.

Sarah said, “God has made me laugh. Everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” She went on to say, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have given birth to a son for him in his old age!”

Sarah laughs again. But the laugh is different now.

God has made laughter for me. The Hebrew is tsechoq, the noun form of the verb that gave us Isaac’s name. Laughter has been made for me. The same word that named her son names her joy. The laugh that began in unbelief at the tent door has now matured into the laugh of fulfilled promise. Sarah holds her son. She is nursing him in her old age. She, the woman who had given up on bearing children, is the mother of the son of the covenant.

Everyone who hears will laugh over me. The laugh is contagious. Sarah’s joy is not contained. Anyone who hears about a ninety-year-old woman bearing a son will laugh too. They will not laugh in mockery. They will laugh in astonishment, in wonder, in the surprise of the gospel. The laughter of the elderly mother becomes the laughter of all who hear that the LORD has done what He said He would do.

There are now three Isaac-laughs in the patriarchal narrative. Abraham’s laugh of unbelief (Genesis 17:17). Sarah’s laugh of unbelief (Genesis 18:12). And now Sarah’s laugh of joy (Genesis 21:6). The LORD has carried the patriarchs through their laughs. The unbelieving laughs have given way to the believing laugh. The same word — tsachaq — that named the doubt now names the joy. Isaac — Laughter — is the proof that the LORD’s promises bring forth laughter in the end.

Through Isaac Your Offspring Shall Be Named

The child grew and was weaned. Abraham prepared a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah noticed the son of Hagar the Egyptian—the son whom Hagar had borne to Abraham—mocking.

Isaac grows. He is weaned — probably at around three years old, by ancient Near Eastern custom. Abraham throws a great feast to mark the milestone. The family is gathered. And Sarah, watching the celebration, sees something.

But Sarah noticed the son of Hagar the Egyptian—the son whom Hagar had borne to Abraham—mocking.

The Hebrew word is metsacheq — the same root that gave us Isaac’s name. The verb is a piel form, which carries the sense of intense or playful action — laughing, joking, mocking, sporting. Translators have rendered this word variously: playing (older translations), mocking (KJV and many others), making sport (some readings). The ambiguity is in the Hebrew. What is Ishmael doing?

The connection to Isaac’s name is unmistakable. Ishmael is engaging in something Isaac-like — making Isaac-action, whether playful or mocking or something between. He is, in a sense, taking the laughter that belongs to Isaac and making it his own.

Paul, in Galatians 4:29, gives us the apostolic interpretation: But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. For Paul, what Ishmael was doing was persecuting — mocking, harassing, lording it over the younger brother. The piel verb that the older translations rendered mocking is, in the apostolic reading, persecution. The son of Hagar was treating the son of Sarah with the contempt that an older sibling can show a younger one. And the elder son was, by the cultural conventions of the ancient Near East, in a position to claim the inheritance.

Sarah sees this. And Sarah acts.

So she said to Abraham, “Banish that slave woman and her son, for the son of that slave woman will not be an heir along with my son Isaac!”

The demand is sharp. The language is harsh. Sarah does not call Hagar by name; she calls her this slave woman. She does not call Ishmael by name; she calls him the son of this slave woman. The relational warmth that might have existed in the household has, by this moment, been replaced by sharp lines of demarcation. Sarah is drawing a boundary. The slave-woman’s son will not share the inheritance with the wife’s son. The covenant promise will not be diluted across two lines of heirs. Cast out this slave woman with her son.

The pastoral honesty here is severe. Sarah’s demand is, in its tone, lacking in tenderness. It is also, in its theological content, correct. The covenant promise is with Isaac (Genesis 17:19). The seed-line of Genesis 3:15 will run through Sarah’s son, not through Hagar’s. If Ishmael remains in the household as a potential rival heir, the inheritance will be muddied. Sarah is acting to protect what the LORD has Himself promised — though she is acting harshly, without the warmth one might wish she had shown.

Sarah’s demand displeased Abraham greatly because Ishmael was his son.

Abraham, who loves Ishmael, is distressed. Ishmael is his son. Ishmael has been with him for about sixteen years. Ishmael is the son Abraham has known and raised. The thought of casting him out is grievous. The text says the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son.

But God said to Abraham, “Do not be upset about the boy or your slave wife. Do all that Sarah is telling you because through Isaac your descendants will be counted.

The LORD intervenes. He tells Abraham to listen to Sarah. The expulsion will happen. But the LORD gives Abraham a double comfort. Through Isaac shall your offspring be named. The seed-line of the covenant runs through Isaac. This will become one of the most theologically important phrases in the Old Testament. Paul will quote it in Romans 9:7 to argue that the true children of Abraham are not all who are descended from him physically but those who are children of the promise. Through Isaac — through the son of laughter, through the son of the covenant, through the son who was given when the natural means were closed — shall your offspring be named.

And the LORD makes provision for Ishmael also. I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring. Ishmael is not abandoned by the LORD. He is given his own promise. The promise to Hagar in Genesis 16 — that her descendants would be innumerable — and the promise to Abraham in Genesis 17 — that Ishmael would be made into a great nation — are reaffirmed here. Ishmael is the son of the slave, but he is also the son of Abraham. The LORD is not callous to him. The LORD will make him a great nation in his own right.

Early in the morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He put them on her shoulders, gave her the child, and sent her away. So she went wandering aimlessly through the wilderness of Beer Sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she shoved the child under one of the shrubs.

Abraham obeys. The morning after Sarah’s demand, he packs bread and a single skin of water and sends Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness (the Hebrew of Genesis 21:14 is textually awkward — literally reading as though Ishmael, now around sixteen, were placed on Hagar’s shoulder with the water skin; most translators understand the phrase as placing the provisions on her shoulder and sending the boy alongside her). The provision is meager. A skin of water will not last long in the wilderness of Beersheba. The walk is unscripted. Hagar wanders.

The chapter is painful here. The patriarch is sending away his son. The mother is being expelled with what little she can carry. The household of the covenant has just cast out the slave-woman who, fifteen years earlier, had been brought into it for the very purpose of producing an heir. The seed-line is being sorted at terrible human cost.

The LORD’s words at Mamre — that He had chosen Abraham to command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice (Genesis 18:19) — must hover in the background here. Abraham is, in this moment, doing what the LORD has told him to do. But the doing is not pretty. The household of righteousness and justice is, this morning, casting a mother and child into the wilderness with a skin of water. The work of the LORD does not always look beautiful from the outside.

God Heard the Voice of the Boy

When the water in the skin was gone, she shoved the child under one of the shrubs. Then she went and sat down by herself across from him at quite a distance, about a bowshot, away; for she thought, “I refuse to watch the child die.” So she sat across from him and wept uncontrollably.

The water runs out. The wilderness has done its work. Hagar lays Ishmael under a bush — the only shade she can find — and walks away. She sits a bowshot away. She cannot watch her son die. She lifts her voice and weeps.

This is one of the most pastorally raw moments in Genesis. The slave-woman who was used by Sarai, despised by Sarai, harshly treated by Sarai, sent into the wilderness once already in Genesis 16, has now been sent out a second time. She has no resources. She has no people. She is alone in the wilderness of Beersheba with a teenage boy who is dying of thirst. The first time she fled the household, she did so by choice. This time she has been pushed out. The grief is total.

And the LORD meets her — again.

But God heard the boy’s voice. The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and asked her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard the boy’s voice right where he is crying. Get up! Help the boy up and hold him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” Then God enabled Hagar to see a well of water. She went over and filled the skin with water, and then gave the boy a drink.

God heard the voice of the boy. The name Ishmael, given to him by the LORD in Genesis 16, means God hears. The name has come true. The boy whose name memorialized God’s hearing of his mother’s affliction is now himself heard by God. God heard the voice of the boy where he is. The boy who is dying in a wilderness under a bush is heard by God in heaven. The hearing is not abstract; it is precise. Where he is. God knows where the boy is. God hears the boy where the boy is. The wilderness is not a place beyond God’s hearing.

Fear not, Hagar. The angel addresses her by name. The same El Roi who met her at the spring in Genesis 16 — the God who sees me — is meeting her again in the wilderness of Beersheba. The patriarchal narrative, even at this moment of household expulsion, will not let us forget that Hagar is also seen, also heard, also addressed by name, also given a future.

I will make him into a great nation. The promise of Genesis 17:20 is reaffirmed. Ishmael will be a great nation. The covenant is not with him, but the blessing is. He has his own promise. He has his own future. The expulsion from Abraham’s household is not the end of his story. The Arabian peoples will descend from him. He will, in the LORD’s reckoning, become exactly what the LORD promised.

Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. The well was there all along. Hagar had not seen it. The wilderness was not, in fact, as resourceless as her despair had told her. God opens her eyes — the Hebrew is paqach, to open — and the well becomes visible. The water is real. The boy is saved.

The pastoral application is rich. The believer in extremity often does not see what the LORD has provided. The wilderness around us, when we are most desperate, can be hiding a well we have not yet had eyes to see. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw. The opening is the LORD’s. The seeing is the believer’s. What was always there is only now revealed.

God was with the boy as he grew. He lived in the wilderness and became an archer. He lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother found a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

Ishmael grows. The text closes its account of him in this chapter with a kind of summary. God was with the boy. The same phrase that will be used of Joseph in Egypt (the LORD was with Joseph, Genesis 39:2). The LORD’s presence with Ishmael is, in this verse, named directly. Ishmael is not the son of the covenant of promise. But the LORD is still with him.

Ishmael grows up in the wilderness of Paran. He becomes an archer. His mother — Hagar — secures a wife for him from Egypt, her own native land. He is now established. He will become the father of twelve princes (Genesis 25:13–16). The Arabian peoples will descend from him.

The chapter has, in these few verses, given us one of the tenderest pictures of God’s care for the marginalized in all of Genesis. Hagar is heard. Ishmael is given a future. The wilderness is not beyond the LORD’s reach. The expulsion is not the end of the story.

El Olam at Beersheba

The chapter has one more episode. After all the household drama — the deception in Gerar, the birth of Isaac, the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael — Abraham settles into the long work of his patriarchal life. He establishes himself in the southern country, near Beersheba.

At that time Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do. Now swear to me right here in God’s name that you will not deceive me, my children, or my descendants. Show me, and the land where you are staying, the same loyalty that I have shown you.” Abraham said, “I swear to do this.”

Abimelech returns. The king of Gerar, who had so awkwardly received Sarah from Abraham only chapters ago, now comes with the commander of his army to make a treaty with Abraham. The reason is given. God is with you in all that you do. Abimelech has recognized something. The patriarch he had been deceived by, the man whose half-truth had endangered his household, is also the man whose God is evidently with him. The blessing on Abraham is visible enough to a pagan king that the king now wants a covenant with the patriarch.

This is striking. The same Abraham who failed at Gerar is now recognized at Gerar as a man whose God is with him. The patriarch’s witness, despite his failures, has been real. Abimelech does not see Abraham’s lies; he sees the LORD’s blessing. The pagan king reads Abraham’s life by its larger trajectory, not by the embarrassing moment in his household.

Abraham said, “I swear to do this.”

The covenant is made. The patriarch and the king pledge mutual faithfulness. Then comes a small dispute about wells — a recurring concern in the ancient Near East, where access to water was access to life — and Abraham gives Abimelech seven ewe lambs as witness that the well at Beersheba belongs to him.

That is why he named that place Beer Sheba, because the two of them swore an oath there. So they made a treaty at Beer Sheba; then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, returned to the land of the Philistines.

The place is named. Beersheba. The Hebrew can be read two ways. Be’er-sheba means either well of the oath (from sheba, oath) or well of seven (from sheva, seven — for the seven lambs). The text plays on both meanings. The well becomes a marker — a permanent geographical reminder of the day Abraham and Abimelech made a covenant.

Beersheba will become a major landmark in the geography of the patriarchs. Isaac will live near here. Jacob will pass through. The phrase from Dan to Beersheba will come to mean from the northernmost point to the southernmost point of Israel. The southern frontier of the eventual land of promise has its name set, in this chapter, in the patriarch’s well.

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer Sheba. There he worshiped the LORD, the eternal God.

Abraham, the sojourner who has been pitching tents and building altars across the land, now plants a tree. The tamarisk is a slow-growing tree that lives for centuries. The patriarch is putting down something rooted. He is making a mark on the land that will outlast his lifetime. The man who has lived as ger, a sojourner, is putting his hand on the soil in a small but real way.

And he calls on the name of the LORD by a new name. El Olam. The Everlasting God. The God of olam — the same Hebrew word we met in Genesis 17 in the phrase berith olam, the everlasting covenant. Olam carries the sense of vast, perpetual, beyond the horizon. El Olam — the God whose existence and whose covenant reach back before time and forward beyond time. The patriarch, looking back over twenty-five years of waiting and looking forward to the inheritance that will reach beyond his own life, calls on the name of the Everlasting God.

It is fitting that this name appears here. Abraham has finally seen the son of promise. He has settled in the land. He has made a treaty with his neighbor. He has planted a tree that will outlive him. He is, at this moment, a man who has been brought to a kind of established rest within the long patience of God. And he calls upon El Olam — the God who is forever, the God who keeps everlasting covenants, the God whose plans extend long before and long after a single patriarch’s life. The name fits the moment.

And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines. The chapter closes with this single quiet sentence. The years pass. Abraham lives. Isaac grows. The land of promise is becoming home, slowly. The patriarch is being prepared, though he does not yet know it, for the great test that is coming.

The Son of Promise

The apostle Paul, writing centuries later to the Galatian churches, will take up the story of Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac, and use it as one of his most extended typological readings of the Old Testament.

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother… So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. (Galatians 4:21–26, 31)

Paul is doing typology, not historical reconstruction. He is reading the relationship between Hagar and Sarah, between Ishmael and Isaac, as a figure of two covenants and two ways of being related to God. He himself uses the Greek word allegoroumena — being allegorized — though what he is doing is what we have called typology throughout this series: reading the historical narrative for the prophetic pattern that points to Christ and the gospel.

Paul’s typological reading runs like this. Hagar — the slave-woman, the one through whom Abraham tried to produce a son by his own effort — corresponds to the Sinai covenant of law, to the present Jerusalem, and to the way of the flesh. This covenant produces children for slavery, because it asks for what we cannot deliver. Sarah — the free woman, the one through whom the son was given by the LORD’s promise alone — corresponds to the Jerusalem above, the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of all who are children of God by promise. The Jerusalem above is free, and her children are free.

This is the gospel-shape of the chapter, on Paul’s reading. The way the LORD’s people are produced is not by the flesh — not by what we can do, not by what we can engineer, not by Hagar-style workarounds when the LORD’s timing seems slow. The way the LORD’s people are produced is by promise — by the LORD’s word, received in faith, fulfilled at the appointed time. Isaac was born not because Abraham and Sarah finally figured out how to produce him but because the LORD made the promise and kept it. We who are in Christ are children in exactly the same way. We were born of promise. We are children of the free woman.

The Lutheran tradition has held this Pauline reading dear. The two covenants of Galatians 4 — Hagar / Sinai / flesh / slavery and Sarah / Jerusalem above / promise / freedom — correspond to the deepest distinction in Lutheran theology: the distinction between law and gospel. The law gives us what we cannot keep. The gospel gives us what we cannot produce. We are not justified by the works of the law (Hagar’s way); we are justified by faith in the promise (Sarah’s way). The whole Reformation theology of justification is, in a real sense, an exposition of what Paul saw in Galatians 4. The children of promise are not the children of the slave-woman. The freedom of the gospel comes through the promise, not through the law.

This does not denigrate Hagar personally. The chapter we have read shows the LORD’s tender care for her in the wilderness — God heard the voice of the boy — and gives her a real promise of her own. Paul’s typological move is not a personal evaluation of Hagar; it is a use of the figures in the narrative to teach the difference between two modes of relating to God. Hagar herself was a real person, loved by the LORD, given her own promise, named the first divine name in Scripture (El Roi). She was not, in herself, a symbol of slavery. The narrative of which she was a part can, in Paul’s hands, become a figure for the difference between flesh and promise.

The pastoral application is rich. Every believer is tempted, at moments, to do what Sarai did in Genesis 16 — to produce by the flesh what the LORD has said He will give by promise. To run ahead of the LORD’s timing. To engineer the outcome we are sure the LORD must want. To make a Hagar where the LORD has only promised a Sarah. The chapter shows us, in concrete narrative terms, what happens when we do this. The Hagar-strategy produces real consequences — Ishmael was a real son, with real complications, with real costs to the family. But the Hagar-strategy is not the way the LORD’s promise is finally kept. The promise is kept at the appointed time, through the channel the LORD Himself has specified, by means we could not engineer.

The believer who is waiting on the LORD must learn the discipline of the appointed time. At the time of which God had spoken to him. This is the believer’s anchor. We do not produce the LORD’s promises by our own effort. We receive them when the LORD gives them. The wait may be long. The wait may be twenty-five years. But the appointed time is real, and the appointed time will come.

Gathering the Threads

Genesis 20 and Genesis 21 have given us a chapter of failure and a chapter of fulfillment, a chapter of sorting and a chapter of settlement.

The session has shown us several things.

It has shown us the LORD’s faithfulness in the face of the patriarch’s persistent failures. Abraham lied about Sarah a second time. He told us, in his own words, that he had been planning to lie about her at every place they went. The lie was not a one-time failure; it was a back-pocket strategy. And yet the LORD called him prophet. The LORD protected the seed-line. The LORD answered his prayers for Abimelech’s household. The patriarchal vocation is not contingent on the patriarch’s moral consistency.

It has shown us the appointed time. Twenty-five years after the call in Haran, fourteen years after Ishmael’s birth, one year after the three visitors at Mamre — Sarah conceived and bore a son. The LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. The God of El Shaddai is also the God of the appointed time. He keeps His word on His own schedule.

It has shown us Sarah’s three laughs — the laugh of unbelief in Genesis 18, and now the laugh of joy in Genesis 21. God has made laughter for me. The Hebrew word that named the son of promise has now named the joy of the mother. Isaac — Laughter — is the proof that the LORD’s promises bring forth joy in the end.

It has shown us the painful sorting of the household. Sarah’s demand. Abraham’s grief. The LORD’s word: Listen to her, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. The covenant promise narrows further. The seed-line of the woman of Genesis 3:15 will run through Isaac, not Ishmael. The narrowing is painful. It is also necessary. The Christ who will come is descended from Isaac, not Ishmael.

It has shown us the LORD’s care for the cast-out. Hagar in the wilderness with a dying boy. The angel calling from heaven. God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. The eyes opened to see the well. The promise of a great nation. The God who chose Abraham is the same God who, on this morning, finds Hagar in the wilderness of Beersheba and saves her son. El Roi. The God who sees. The God of the marginalized.

It has shown us Abraham at Beersheba — settled, treatied, planting a tree, calling on the name of El Olam, the Everlasting God. The patriarch who began as a sojourner is now a man making a small claim on the land. The Everlasting God is being worshiped in the southern frontier of the land of promise.

And it has shown us, through Paul’s reading of the chapter in Galatians 4, the gospel-shape of the whole. Hagar is the figure of the law and the flesh — the way of producing children by what we can do. Sarah is the figure of the promise — the way of receiving children as the LORD gives them at the appointed time. We are not children of the slave but of the free woman. The believer who trusts the LORD’s promise is a child of Sarah, a child of the Jerusalem above, a child of grace.

Next session, we turn to Genesis 22. The chapter we have all been waiting for, and the chapter every honest reader of Genesis approaches with some apprehension. The Akedah. The Binding of Isaac. The LORD will speak to Abraham again — lekh-lekha, the same doubled imperative we heard at the original call — and will tell him to take his son, his only son, whom he loves, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain in the land of Moriah. The greatest test of Abraham’s life will come. The faith that has been growing through twenty-five years of promise will be tested in a way Abraham never imagined. And the typology of the chapter — the father offering his beloved son on a mountain, the ram in the thicket, the substitutionary sacrifice — will be one of the most important christological moments of the entire Old Testament.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

Abraham repeats in Gerar the same lie he told in Egypt — and even tells us he has been planning to tell it at every place to which we come. The patriarch’s most persistent failure is in the small area where he never quite trusted the LORD with his own safety. Where does Scripture press you to examine the back-pocket strategies — the contingencies you have not turned over to the LORD?
God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me.” The protection of the seed-line in Gerar was the LORD’s doing, not Abimelech’s restraint or Abraham’s foresight. How does this verse shape your understanding of how the LORD preserves His promises in the face of human failure?
The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised… at the time of which God had spoken to him. The promise that began twenty-five years earlier was fulfilled at a specific moment, exactly when the LORD had said. What does this teach us about the LORD’s faithfulness across long waits? Where does Scripture call us to trust the appointed time when we are tempted to engineer our own?
Through Isaac shall your offspring be named (Genesis 21:12). Paul quotes this verse in Romans 9:7 to argue that the true children of Abraham are not those who are merely descended from him physically, but those who are children of promise. What does it mean to you that the line of redemption runs through the child of promise — and that, by grace, you are part of that line?
God heard the voice of the boy. In the wilderness of Beersheba, the LORD met Hagar and Ishmael with tenderness, opened her eyes to a well, and reaffirmed His promise that Ishmael would become a great nation. How does this episode shape your understanding of the LORD’s care for those who are not in the covenant line of promise but are still His creatures?
In Galatians 4:21–31, Paul reads Hagar and Sarah as figures of two covenants — Hagar / Sinai / flesh / slavery and Sarah / Jerusalem above / promise / freedom. We are not children of the slave but of the free woman. How does this Pauline reading shape your understanding of the gospel? Where in the contemporary church do you see the Hagar-strategy still being tried — the production of children by works rather than by promise?

Looking Ahead

Session 17 brings us to the great test of Abraham’s faith — the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, the chapter that is often considered the most theologically loaded narrative in all of Genesis.

The LORD will speak to Abraham again, using the same doubled Hebrew imperative — lekh-lekha — that He used at the original call. Take your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. The greatest test of the patriarch’s life will come. The son who has waited twenty-five years to be born will be asked of his father as a sacrifice. Abraham will rise early in the morning, saddle his donkey, take Isaac and two young men, and travel three days to the place the LORD has told him. The three-day journey is itself theologically suggestive.

At the mountain, Abraham and Isaac will go up alone. Isaac will carry the wood. Abraham will carry the fire and the knife. Isaac will ask, Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham will answer, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. The bond between the patriarch and the son will be unbearable. The altar will be built. Isaac will be bound. The knife will be raised. And the angel of the LORD will call from heaven: Do not lay your hand on the boy.

The ram will be found in the thicket. The substitutionary sacrifice will be offered. The mountain will be named YHWH-yireh — the LORD will provide — on the mount of the LORD it shall be provided. And the LORD will swear by Himself — the only oath in the Old Testament where the LORD swears by His own name — that He will bless Abraham, multiply his offspring, and that in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

The chapter is, as the Lutheran tradition has read it, one of the deepest christological texts in the Old Testament. The father offering his beloved son. The son carrying the wood of his own sacrifice up the mountain. The substitutionary ram. The provision on the mount of the LORD. All of this points, with terrible precision, to a different Father offering a different beloved Son on a different mountain in the same general region, two thousand years later. The LORD will provide.

Read Genesis 22 in full before next session. Pay particular attention to the doubled imperatives, the three-day journey, the dialogue between father and son on the way up the mountain, the moment of the binding, the angel’s intervention, the ram in the thicket, and the LORD’s oath at the end of the chapter. We will spend the whole session on this single, dense chapter.

Closing Prayer

Lord God, the Everlasting One — El Olam — who keeps every promise You make at the appointed time You have determined — we worship You. You visited Sarah as You had said. You gave the son of laughter to the woman who had laughed in unbelief. You called Abraham a prophet even in his lying. You protected the seed-line through Abimelech’s restraint and through Hagar’s wilderness. You heard the voice of the boy where he was. You opened the eyes of the slave-woman to see the well. You made every promise come true, and You made it come true on Your schedule, not on ours. Where we are tempted, like Sarai, to engineer Your promises by our own means, slow our hands and teach us to wait. Where we are, like Hagar, sitting a bowshot away from despair, find us and open our eyes to the wells we cannot yet see. Where we are tempted, like Abraham, to keep back-pocket strategies for our own safety, draw us into the full trust that Your blessings rest on. And bring us, as You brought Abraham, to the place of the tamarisk tree at Beersheba — to a kind of settled rest in the long patience of Your covenant, calling on Your name as the Everlasting God. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, the true Son of Promise, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.