Chapter 5: The Impossible Command

The angel's first words to Hagar were not comfort. They were a command.

ANGEL OF THE LORD“Go back to your mistress and submit to her. I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”— Genesis 16:9-10

The command came attached to a promise so enormous it echoed the one God had given Abram himself. Descendants too numerous to count, given not to a patriarch or a king, but to a runaway slave sitting by a spring in the desert.

Then the angel told her about the child she was carrying.

ANGEL OF THE LORD“You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.”— Genesis 16:11

Ishmael. In Hebrew, it means "God hears." Every time she would call her son's name, she would be saying out loud what happened at this spring. God heard me.

Then he described what this boy would become.

ANGEL OF THE LORD“He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”— Genesis 16:12

In the ancient world, a wild donkey was not an insult. It was a creature that roamed free, untamed and beholden to no one. Hagar had been owned her entire life. Her son would never be.