A barren woman tries to fulfill God’s promise on her own timetable, and it costs her household years of grief. A runaway servant, alone in the desert with nothing, becomes the first person in the Bible to give God a name of her own choosing. And a ninety-nine-year-old man laughs out loud at the news that he is about to become a father.
A study in Genesis 16-17 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
Take Thy Maid
“Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her.”
Genesis 16:1-2
Ten years had passed since the call to leave Ur, and the heir promised in that call still had not arrived. Sarai’s plan was not rebellion against God’s word — she still believed a child was coming, and giving her own servant to Abram to bear that child on her behalf was a recognized custom of the time. It was a reasonable-looking shortcut to a promise she still believed. That is exactly what made it dangerous.
“Abraham had accepted without question the promise of a son, but he did not wait for God to fulfill His word in His own time and way. A delay was permitted, to test his faith in the power of God; but he failed to endure the trial.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 123
Notice what actually failed. Abram did not stop believing the promise would come true. He stopped believing it would come true on God’s timeline, and moved to make it happen on his own. That is a subtler kind of unbelief than denying a promise outright, and it is the kind believers fall into far more often.
“And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.”
Genesis 16:4
“Hagar’s haughty spirit would not brook the harshness which her insolence had provoked.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 123
Two women, one household, and a plan meant to bring peace to Sarai’s barrenness instead produced contempt on one side and harshness on the other. Sarai dealt hardly with Hagar, and Hagar fled into the wilderness alone.
The God Who Sees Me
“And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness… And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.”
Genesis 16:7-8
An Egyptian servant, alone in the desert, running from the household of the man God had called — and God finds her anyway, by name, and asks her a question she has to answer honestly before help comes. The instruction that follows is not comfortable: go back, and submit.
“Addressing her as ‘Hagar, Sarai’s maid,’ to remind her of her position and her duty, he bade her, ‘Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.’ Yet with the reproof there were mingled words of comfort.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 123-124
The comfort was substantial: a multiplied posterity, and a son to be named Ishmael — “God shall hear” — because, the angel told her plainly, “the LORD hath heard thy affliction” (Genesis 16:11). But what Hagar says back is the real turning point of the chapter.
“And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?”
Genesis 16:13
Hagar is the first person in the entire Bible recorded giving God a name of her own. Not Abram, not Sarai — a foreign servant with no status, no inheritance, and no future she could see from where she sat by that well. And the name she chose was not about power or majesty. It was about being seen when she believed no one was looking.
I Am The Almighty God
“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.”
Genesis 17:1-2
Thirteen years pass in the silence between chapters 16 and 17 — Ishmael has grown from an infant to a teenager, and Abram has apparently stopped expecting anything different from what he already has. Then God speaks again, and opens with a title He has not used before: El Shaddai, the Almighty God, the one whose power is not limited by a woman’s age or a man’s exhausted hope.
“Walk before me, and be thou perfect” is not a demand that Abram achieve sinlessness by effort. It is a call to wholehearted, undivided loyalty — the same word used elsewhere for an animal without blemish fit for sacrifice, or a heart not split between two masters. The covenant God is about to renew is not being handed to a man who has earned it by getting everything right. Genesis 15:6 already settled how Abram stands with God, and the Hagar chapter that comes right before this one is proof he is still capable of getting things badly wrong.
Father Of Many Nations
“Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.”
Genesis 17:5
“In token of the fulfillment of this covenant, his name, heretofore called Abram, was changed to Abraham, which signifies, ‘father of a great multitude.’”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 115
God changes the name before there is any visible evidence to justify it. Abram is still childless by Sarai at the moment he becomes “father of many nations,” and every time anyone in the household uses his new name for the next year, they are speaking a promise out loud whether they mean to or not. Sarai’s name changes too, from a term for her own personal standing to Sarah, “princess” — “she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her” (Genesis 17:16).
A Token In The Flesh
“This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised… and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.”
Genesis 17:10-11
Paul later makes a point of this exact sequence in Romans 4: Abraham was declared righteous by faith in Genesis 15, while still uncircumcised, and only received circumcision as a sign afterward. The sign never was the basis of his standing with God. It marked a household that already belonged to Him.
“It was to be observed by the patriarch and his descendants as a token that they were devoted to the service of God and thus separated from idolaters, and that God accepted them as His peculiar treasure.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 116
The rite fell on every male in the household on the same day — Abraham, Ishmael, and every servant born in his house or bought with his money (Genesis 17:23-27). Whatever this covenant meant, it was never meant to belong to one man alone.
Shall A Child Be Born?
“Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?”
Genesis 17:17
The father of the faithful, mid-covenant, face down before God — laughing at Him. Scripture does not scrub that detail out or soften it. It simply records it, right alongside Abraham’s obedience, the same way it recorded his failure in Egypt without excusing it and his rescue of Lot without inflating it.
Then Abraham does what a man half-convinced tends to do: he offers God the option already sitting in the room. “O that Ishmael might live before Thee!” (Genesis 17:18). Thirteen years of watching Ishmael grow had made him the obvious, reasonable heir. God’s answer does not reject Ishmael — he is blessed, promised a great nation of his own (Genesis 17:20) — but it will not let the promise be quietly redirected onto him either.
“And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.”
Genesis 17:19
The name Isaac means he laughs — sealing Abraham’s doubt permanently into the name of the child born to answer it. Every time anyone said the boy’s name for the rest of his life, the household would remember exactly how his father had first responded to the news.
What These Two Chapters Have Already Settled
Genesis 16 is what happens when belief tries to manufacture its own fulfillment; Genesis 17 is God renewing the same promise in stronger, more specific terms immediately after that failure, not instead of it. Neither chapter waits for Abraham to become someone who would not have needed either lesson.
What ties both halves of this study together is a single, recurring pattern: God keeps speaking to the people the promise seems to have passed by. He speaks to Hagar in the wilderness with no less attention than He speaks to Abraham under the oaks of Mamre. Genesis 1-3 already showed a God who sought out Adam and Eve after they hid from Him; here, a runaway Egyptian servant discovers the same thing on her own and gives Him a name for it. The God who sees is not a comfort reserved for the covenant family alone.
What is still unresolved at the end of Genesis 17 is Sarah’s own reaction to the promise. Abraham has already laughed once. Genesis 18 is about to find out what she does when she hears the same news.
