1 Consequently Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not begotten children: but having an Egyptian handmaidan by the name of Agar, 2 said to her husband: Behold, the Lord has closed me up, so that I may not give birth. Go into my handmaidenm if perhaps in any way out of her I will beget sons. And he acquiesced with her intercession 3 ten years after she took Agar her Egyptian handmaiden to begin to dwell in the land of Canaan and she gave her as a wife to her husband. 4 He entered her. And she, seeing herself conceive, despised her mistress. 

5 And Sarai said to Abram: You act unjustly against me. I gave my handmaiden to you, who seeing that she has conceived has despised me: Let the Lord judge between me and you. 6 Abram answere: Behold, I affirm, your handmaid is in your hand, use her so that it pleases you. Consequently, Sarai striking against her, Agar went into exile.

7 And when the angel of the Lord found her near a font of water alone, which is on the road to Sur in the desert, 8 he said to her: Agar, handmaiden of Sarai, from where are you coming? And to where are you going?

She answered: I am fleeing from the face of my mistress Sarai.

9 And the angel of the Lord said to her: Return to your mistress, and humbe yourself beneath her hand. 10 And in return: Increasing, he said, I will increase your seed, and they will not be numbered in comparison with the multitude. 11 And thereafter: Behold, he said, you have conceived and you will bear a son and you will call his name Ismael, the Lord has heard your affliction. 12 He will be a wild man: his hand against all, and every hand against him: and out of all regions he will erect tabernacles against his brothers.

13 And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her: you are God who has seen me. Indeed she said: Assuredly I have seen the behind of he who sees me.

14 For that reason she called the well That Well of the One Who Lives and Sees Me. This same is between Cades and Barad.

15 And Agar gave birth to Abram’s son; she called his name Ismael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Agar bore Ismael to him.

Theological notes

It’s a bit hard to read this without thinking of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which posits this scenario as institutionalized in a near-future dystopian United States. Doing my best to put this aside, Sarai does not come across well in this story, first treating Agar as property rather than a human being and then being consumed with jealousy when, as was presumably the plan, Agar becomes pregnant with a son from Abram. And yet God insists that Agar return to Sarai and submit to her abuse and the promised outcome, an uncountable multitude of descendents, but descendents who will be at war with everyone doesn’t seem all that great to modern ears and yet it was sufficient for Agar to comply, although I do wonder whether Agar was herself a bit nonplussed by God’s offer since I could have legitimately translated the end of v. 13 as “Assuredly I have seen the butt of he who sees me.”