Genesis 16

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "handmaid" (KJV) / "maid" (RSV)

   Rulings 76, 113, 2

   שִׁפְחָה is a woman's own servant, and the texts tie her to a mistress (גְּבֶרֶת): Hagar to Sarai (vv. 1–8); Zilpah and Bilhah, given by Laban with Leah and Rachel (29:24, 29); "a maid when she displaces her mistress" (Prov 30:23), which reads like this chapter in a proverb; "as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress" (Ps 123:2); "as with the maid, so with her mistress" (Isa 24:2). אָמָה is the slave-woman of the household and the law (Exod 21:7, 20), and the word of deferential self-address (1 Sam 25:24–31). The two are kept apart (76). 1 Sam 25:41 sets them side by side: "your servant-woman is a maid to wash the feet of my lord's slaves," and the maid is the lower. Ruth calls herself שִׁפְחָה at Ruth 2:13 and אָמָה at 3:9. When Sarah demands that Hagar be driven out, the word changes to אָמָה, "this slave-woman" (21:10–13); the change is kept visible. "Maid" does not hide what she is: she is given (v. 3) and is "in your hand" (v. 6), and the narrative says so. The LXX has παιδίσκη for both Hebrew words and the Vulgate ancilla; Paul builds his allegory of the two covenants on Hagar the παιδίσκη (Gal 4:22–31), and the NT follows its own Greek (4). The root is shared with מִשְׁפָּחָה "clan" (10:5): the maid belongs to the household's kin.

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   הָגָר sounds like הַגֵּר "the sojourner" (גֵּר). Abram was told that his seed would be "sojourners in a land not theirs," serving and afflicted (15:13). In the next chapter of the story an Egyptian sojourns in Abram's house and is afflicted there (v. 6). Genesis Rabbah 45:1 makes her Pharaoh's daughter, given to Sarai with the gifts of 12:16: "better that my daughter be a maid in this house than a mistress in another." Paul reads her as Mount Sinai in Arabia (Gal 4:24–25). Names table.

   See the table

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 23

   אִבָּנֶה "I shall be built" sounds like בֵּן "son": the house is built by sons. Rachel says the same words when she gives Bilhah to Jacob (30:3); the brother who will not marry his brother's widow is the one who "does not build his brother's house" (Deut 25:9); Rachel and Leah "built the house of Israel" (Ruth 4:11). English has no pun that keeps the home gloss "build" (17), so it stays here. Genesis Rabbah 45:2: whoever has no child is like one torn down.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   "Heard the voice of" is to heed, and it is the phrase of 3:17: "because you heard the voice of your woman." The next verse goes on in the words of 3:6: the woman "took" and "gave to her man." Genesis Rabbah 45:4 and the medieval commentators read the echo, and Nahmanides counts what follows as a fault in Sarai and in Abram both (see the note at v. 6).

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 113, 11

   Sarai gives Hagar "for a woman," the word used of Sarai herself in the same verse; the text does not call her פִּילֶגֶשׁ "concubine," as it does Bilhah (35:22) and Keturah (1 Chr 1:32). "For a woman" is a לְ of role, so "be" or "for," not "become" (113). The ten years are the span after which m. Yevamot 6:6 and b. Yevamot 64a let a childless marriage be dissolved, reasoning from this verse.

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "her mistress was despised in her eyes" (KJV) / "she looked with contempt on her mistress" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 37, 105

   וַתֵּקַל is the qal of קָלַל "be light," the verb of the waters that "became light" (8:8, 11). Its piel is the word of 12:3: "the one who makes light of you I will curse." Abram's woman is now made light in the eyes of her maid, and v. 5 repeats it. The home gloss holds so the reader hears 12:3 (37). Weight is honour in Hebrew (כָּבֵד "heavy," 13:2): "those who despise me shall be light" (1 Sam 2:30).

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "My wrong be upon thee" (KJV) / "May the wrong done to me be on you!" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 39

   חֲמָסִי has an objective suffix, "the violence done to me": Jer 51:35 uses the same form, "my violence and my flesh be upon Babylon." "On you" lays the responsibility on Abram. Targum Onkelos has "my judgment is on you," and Genesis Rabbah 45:5 explains that Sarai blames Abram for hearing her shamed and keeping silent. חָמָס keeps its home gloss "violence," the word of the flood's cause (6:11, 13).

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 79

   The Masoretic text sets a dot over the second yod of וּבֵינֶיךָ, one of the ten dotted passages of the Torah (Avot de-Rabbi Natan A 34). The word is translated as written (79). Genesis Rabbah 45:5 and Rashi read the dot as a sign to read the word feminine, וּבֵינַיִךְ, "between me and you" said of Hagar: Sarai cast an evil eye on Hagar's pregnancy and she miscarried, which is why the messenger says "you are pregnant" in v. 11 as if for the first time.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   עִנָּה "afflict" is the verb of 15:13: Abram's seed will be afflicted in Egypt four hundred years. Here an Egyptian is afflicted in Abram's house. Exod 1:11–12 has the same verb ("the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied"), and Deut 26:7 the noun of v. 11 ("Adonai heard our voice and saw our affliction"). Nahmanides on this verse: "our mother sinned in this affliction, and Abraham too by permitting it; and Elohim heard her affliction and gave her a son who would be a wild ass of a man, to afflict the seed of Abraham and Sarah."

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 62, 46

    The first "messenger of Adonai" in the Bible, and the word stays "messenger" (62). He speaks as Adonai in the first person ("I will make many your seed," v. 10), and Hagar names "Adonai who was speaking to her" (v. 13). The same shift returns at 21:17–18, 22:11–18, Exod 3:2–6 and Judg 6:11–23; 13:21–22. Genesis Rabbah 45:7 counts the three "the messenger said" of vv. 9–11 as several messengers. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 56–60) takes the messenger who is called God for the Logos before the incarnation; Augustine (De Trinitate 3.11) takes him for a created messenger speaking in God's person. The WPB keeps the word and the shift as the text has them. Hagar, a foreign slave-woman, is the first person to whom a messenger of Adonai appears.

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "by a fountain of water" (KJV) / "by a spring of water" (RSV)

    Rulings 37, 2

    עַיִן is the eye and the spring, the land's eye; "spring" is מַעְיָן's (H4599). The chapter is built on eyes and seeing: "light in her eyes" (vv. 4–5), "the good in your eyes" (v. 6), the eye of the waters (v. 7), El Roi and "the one seeing me" (v. 13), the well of the one who sees me (v. 14). The chain wins (37). The WPRB has "spring."

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "submit thyself under her hands" (KJV) / "submit to her" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    הִתְעַנִּי is the hithpael of the verb of v. 6, "afflict yourself" or "let yourself be afflicted" (1 Kgs 2:26, "you were afflicted in all that my father was afflicted"). The messenger sends her back into the affliction she ran from, and the next words promise her a seed.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 10, 6

    הַרְבָּה אַרְבֶּה, the infinitive absolute, is kept: "making many I will make many." The same two words are spoken to the woman in 3:16 ("making many I will make many your pain") and to Abraham at 22:17 ("making many I will make many your seed"). Hagar receives the promise of seed in her own right; no other woman in Genesis does.

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 17

    יִשְׁמָעֵאל is "El hears," and the reason given uses the other name: "for Adonai has heard." The name is answered again at 17:20 ("and for Ishmael, I have heard you") and 21:17 ("Elohim heard the voice of the lad"). The words follow the form of a birth announcement: "look, you are pregnant and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name" recurs at Judg 13:5 and, letter for letter with the unusual form וְקָרָאת, at Isa 7:14; compare Luke 1:31. On "you are pregnant," see the note at v. 5. Names table.

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a wild man" (KJV) / "a wild ass of a man" (RSV)

    Rulings 11, 87, 25

    פֶּרֶא is the onager of the steppe, which no one tames: "who sent out the wild ass free … he laughs at the tumult of the city" (Job 39:5–8); Jer 2:24; Hos 8:9. The image is freedom more than savagery. The KJV reads פֶּרֶא as an adjective. אָדָם is "man" under ruling 11, since the woman addressed is in the verse and the next (87). Genesis Rabbah 45:9: "everyone robs, and he robs."

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 96

    עַל־פְּנֵי "on the face of" means opposite, in defiance of, or east of, since Hebrew faces east (23:19; 25:18, where the same words close Ishmael's genealogy). The WPB keeps the phrase and its range; the WPRB's "facing" keeps it too. "Tent" is שָׁכַן (96).

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Thou God seest me" (KJV) / "Thou art a God of seeing" (RSV)

    Rulings 9, 18, 1

    רֳאִי is the noun of רָאָה "see," "seeing, sight": "good of seeing" (1 Sam 16:12), "a spectacle" (Nah 3:6). So אֵל רֳאִי is "El of seeing," "El who sees me," or "El whom I see." The LXX has Σὺ ὁ θεὸς ὁ ἐπιδών με, "you are the God who looked on me," and the Vulgate Tu Deus qui vidisti me. El compounds are names (9), so El Roi is printed and its senses are given here and in the names table. "She called the name of Adonai" is the formula of naming a child. No one else in the Bible gives Adonai a name.

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?" (KJV) / "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 20, 46

    The Hebrew is הֲגַם הֲלֹם רָאִיתִי אַחֲרֵי רֹאִי. (a) אַחֲרֵי of place: she has seen the back of the one who sees her, as Moses is told "you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen" (Exod 33:23). (b) Of time: Rashi, "did I think to see messengers here in the wilderness, after seeing them in Abraham's house?" (c) The RSV emends, reading אֱלֹהִים for הֲלֹם and adding וָאֶחִי "and lived" (Wellhausen), from the fear of death after seeing Elohim (Exod 33:20; Judg 13:22) and the "living one" of the well's name (v. 14). The LXX has καὶ γὰρ ἐνώπιον εἶδον ὀφθέντα μοι, "for I have seen face to face one who appeared to me." The Masoretic text is printed. אַחַר splits by construction into "after" and "behind" (20), and the construction here does not decide; English "after" holds both, as in "she looked after him as he went."

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 74

    בְּאֵר לַחַי רֹאִי is three words and one name: "the well of the Living One who sees me," or "of the living one of my seeing." Isaac comes from it to meet Rebekah (24:62) and settles by it (25:11), so the well of Hagar's son becomes the well of Sarah's. Kadesh is "holy" (14:7). Bered is unknown; the word means "hail." Names table.

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    Abram calls the son by the name the messenger gave Hagar to call him (v. 11). The narrator does not say how he learned it. In 17:19 Elohim gives Abraham the name of Isaac for the father to call.