human effort — Faves of Dave - Bible Study

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

Let’s cover this story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar over the course of a few episodes. We’ll observe how the problem or conflict created by Abram and Sarai’s actions, apart from God’s promise to them, complicate things. While this story is about a specific situation with specific people to a particular audience, we can glean a principle that is valuable to us today.

This story begins with another reminder that Abram and his wife Sarai still have no children despite the LORD's promise that Abram’s descendants would be innumerable. The reader is next told that Sarai had a female Egyptian servant named Hagar. In all likelihood, Hagar was given as a servant to Sarai when Abram and Sarai traveled to Egypt, and the pharaoh took Sarai into his house to marry her. This detail should interest the intended audience of Israelites who had been in servitude to the Egyptians. The Egyptians were descendants of Ham through his son Mizraim. (See Gen. 10:6) Of course, Ham was the one who dishonored his father, Noah. Abram had risked compromising the LORD’s plan for him by telling the Egyptians that Sarai was his sister and allowing the Egyptian Pharaoh to take her into his house. Now, Abram is the one lying with an Egyptian.

As tragic stories unfold, sometimes the details seem a bit humorous. In this case, the humor is in how Sarai asserts fault in everyone in the story except for Sarai, who instigated this train wreck of a plan to give Abram a descendant. First, it is the LORD’s fault for preventing Sarai from having children. She told Abram to have sexual relations with Hagar in order to have children by her. The story seems to echo the Adam and Eve story, where Abram, like Adam, did not appear to question the wisdom of this opportunity. He just did it. When Hagar conceived, we’re told that “she looked with contempt upon her mistress” (v. 4). Sarai, understandably, could not deal with that but blamed Abram and treated Hagar harshly.

While I’m tempted just to shake my head and chuckle at this mess, I find myself more inclined to empathize with the pain each individual must have felt at some point. If we stop and think about it, Sarai must have been pained over her inability to have a child. The LORD’s promise of many descendants to her husband must have added fuel to that fire when it wasn’t happening, and her biological clock was ticking or perhaps had “tocked.” Abram likely shared that pain to some degree and mostly empathized with his wife’s concern. The LORD’s delay or perceived failure in giving them a child as they were getting older led to his pondering how that promise might be fulfilled. So, when Sarai came up with the plan, he just went along with it. Hagar was a servant to Sarai, a second-class citizen. When she was able to have a child by Abram, it seems to have evoked her pride because she finally had one thing over her mistress. But this backfired on her. It wasn’t her fault in the first place because she was at the mercy of Sarai and Abram’s will.

What it comes down to is that Abram and Sarai decided to help the LORD by devising their own plan to bring about God’s promised descendant. They are successful in producing a descendant of Abram. But was this the promised seed to Abram? Is this the “seed of the woman” who will crush the head of the serpent? We’ll see how this plays out in our next episode.

The theological principle coming to light already is that when God makes a promise, our attempts to make it happen through our own devices will likely create a bigger mess for ourselves. As Abram and Sarai will learn, we need to trust the LORD and wait on him. God can and will bring about every single promise he has made.