- Text of the passage in Nawat
It is an issue with cultural, literary, historical and religious repercussions from the reader's viewpoint. Cultural because family continuity was high on the agenda of all Middle Eastern societies then (and perhaps even now), and the standing of individual men and women depended on it (men as "successful fathers", women as "successful mothers"), or to put it another way, in such societies an heirless man was seen as a failure and so was a childless wife. Children were power! This is translated into God's constant blessing / command: p'ru ur'vu 'be fruitful and multiply.'
Literary because the future, first of the human family and then of the patriarchal family, is one of the overriding concerns of the whole book of Genesis, from beginning to end, and that future always depends on keeping the "generations" coming and continuing to "beget." Here are some statistics: the Hebrew verb y-l-d 'give birth' and 'be born' (which by the way is the fifth word in today's passage in the form yal'da) occurs altogether in 133 verses of Genesis (and in several of those, more than once!), and that's not counting derived words other than verbs, one of which is of course toledot 'generations' which alone occurs in thirteen verses; the noun ben 'son' occurs in a whopping 306 verses, and bat 'daughter' in 90; and since this is also about fatherhood, let us note that the noun av 'father' occurs in 170 verses. To put this into some perspective, the verb m-w-t 'to die' only occurs in 72 verses! So in literary terms one question that keeps the story (or the stories) going is the big one of how to keep the family line going, and in that sense, a barren wife is a matter of dramatic importance, to her, to him and to the audience.
This same audience saw this as a subject of pressing historical interest because the audience is made up of b'ne yisra'el 'children of Israel', so this is all about us and our family history! So hearing that Abraham almost didn't have any children is tantamount to hearing that we, the listeners or readers, were on the verge of never being born, if God hadn't made a miracle happen when Abram was a hundred years old.
Finally, this is a matter of religious importance for those who consider themselves to have inherited God's covenant with Abraham and his descendants. This is spelt out for us again and again in the text. God has made a covenant in which he has told Abraham that his zéra‛ will be under God's special protection, so to speak. But that can only happen if there is a zera‛. For the "people of the covenant", it is clearly important to ensure the continued existence of that zera‛ not only for all the other reasons mentioned but because this is the only way to keep alive the covenant which defines the relationship between God's people and God, which is to say, the audience's religion.
So these are the things that motivate the story's interest and the audience's sense of involvement in the biological continuity of the patriarchal family. This is why it matters to Abraham, Sarah and us that they are old and have not had any children yet; this explains why it's a problem and why this problem is a particular source of tension in the development of the plot.
What about the ways in which the characters of Genesis go about solving the problem? Now if we take a static view of human social institutions and adopt the assumption that there is just one right way for things to be, our way, and insist on projecting our values and suppositions on everyone else in all places and historical times, then what we read here is nonsense, awful or both. We assume that these things did not trouble the original audience because the story is told in terms of concepts and practices with which they were familiar and didn't find shocking. We are not that original audience, so we have a problem with that.
We cannot, however, successfully cross that gap by rationalizing our way through the story, projecting our own ideas onto it and so effectively rewriting the book in our minds. Rather, we need to take on board the notion that things have changed and we are no longer living in the world which gave us Genesis, and make allowances.
In that world, men could have several wives, like Jacob. They could also have concubines who did not have the same standing as "official wives" but could also give the man offspring who might be recognised as legitimate heirs, such as the Israelite tribes descended from Zilpah and Bilhah, Jacob's wives' maids! Likewise when Sarai suggests Abram should have a son with her maid Hagar in our passage, the entire point is that this will give Abram a legitimate heir, otherwise she might not have suggested it! These were not mad ideas, they were mechanisms fully contemplated in the legislation and social structures of their historical and cultural context. The same is true of other things we are going to read about later in Genesis such as the custom known as the Levirate which is clearly referred to in Tamar's story (ch. 38).
One thing that seems to have endured through all this is the abstract concept, no matter how it is crystalized, of legal fictions. Two examples have just been mentioned, both of which share the common purpose of enabling people to "have descendants", in a manner of speaking, in the face of serious biological obstacles. One is the levirate, the practice whereby, when a man dies, his brother should marry the widow for the purpose of giving her children who will be considered, for legal purposes, descendants of the deceased man. The other is what Abram and Sarai will now resort to, where the wife's maidservant "stands in" for the wife to give him children who are legally considered to be the wife's (since it was her maid, after all).
Acc. to EAS (p. 120), archaeology has brought to light documents which have updated current knowledge of the customs and laws of the region in ancient times. The area from where the patriarchs emigrated to Canaan, i.e. Haran, was in the land of the Hurrians, an ancient people with their own culture and language among whom the ancestors of the patriarchs presumably lived, and in that case it would be unsurprising if they had picked up many cultural features which were inherited by Abram and at least the first generations of his descendants. Now that some information has become available about Hurrian society, if it can be shown that such information helps to explain events narrated in Genesis, that would provide arguments in favour of the historical authenticity of the Genesis narrative (according to which the patriarchs existed and had originated from Haran, in the Hurrian cultural sphere). At the same time, if the hypotheis of that authenticity is adopted, then we might expect such information about Hurrian customs to enhance our understanding of the things that happen in Genesis. Bearing in mind that these are just hypotheses and the jury is still out on a lot of things, I shall quote the following information from Speiser about a certain Hurrian document:
The document as a whole records the adoption of a certain Shennima and his concurrent marriage to Gilimninu... There are certain provisions...: "If Gilimninu bears children, Shennima shall not take another wife. But if Gilimninu fails to bear children, Gilimninu shall get for Shennima a woman from the Lullu country (i.e., a slave girl) as concubine. In that case, Gilimninu herself shall have authority over the offspring..."The parallel is striking, but as Speiser notes, the additional points contained in this document are also instructive. If Abram and Sarai were practising similar marriage customs then, given that Sarai failed to bear children, it was actually her contractual obligation to provide Abram with a slave girl as concubine (not a personal decision to do so). But what we also learn is that, if these customs were being followed, there was no question about Sarai's legal rights over Hagar's child Ishmael, and it was not Hagar's prerogative, legally at least, to claim parental rights; as a matter of fact, it wasn't even Abram's prerogative as husband to resolve the matter as he wished, because Sarai's title was established in the marriage contract ("Gilimninu herself shall have authority over the offspring"). This actually puts Abram in the right when, in response to Sarai's complaints about Hagar, he shrugs and tells her: "It's up to you, you're the one in charge here."
There is some plot duplication between the present passage and ch. 21 (the expulsion of Hagar), which strongly suggests that these are in origin variants of the same story. Rather than analyse the story in detail at this point, I shall save some observations for then, when we shall be able to examine both passages side by side.
16:2 bo na el shifxati
The expression bo el lit. 'to enter/come to/unto' may be used in a variety of contexts and senses, e.g. (6:18) uvata el hatteva 'and you will enter into the ark', (6:20) yavóu elékha l'haxayot '[the animals] will come to you to be saved', (8:11) wattavo elaw hayyona 'the dove came to him', (14:7) wayyavóu el ‛en mishpat 'they came to En-Mishpat', and so on. Also, sometimes as in 6:4 or here it is a polite way of saying 'to have intercourse with'. This forces the translator to make a delicate decision. The options range from using a term in the target language which is unambiguous but which therefore lacks the finesse of the H to the opposite extreme of translating literally what the H words say (e.g. KJV I pray thee, go in unto my maid) which depending on how you look at it is either (a) nothing to do with what Sarai means, or (b) a very odd way of putting it. I suppose there is another option: say something that most people won't understand, while it doesn't really reflect what the original says either: (JPS) Consort wth my maid strikes me as a fair candidate for this honour. Never, perhaps, was there more call for a middle-of-the-road solution than here. Now I am not certain of the true origin of this turn of phrase but we know that the BH verb b-w-' (whence the imperative and infinitive bo, the perfect and participle ba, the imperfect yavo etc.) means primarily 'go in, enter' (whence sometimes 'come, arrive' or other secondary meanings), and that this range of meanings includes that of entering someone's house, which in patriarchal times often meant their tent; whereas the preposition el is simply 'to.' Thus when someone ba elékha 'enters unto you', this can perfectly well mean that they come into your tent, your private dwelling. Which is, it would seem, precisely what the young patriarchs and matriarchs did when they sought some private time together, since there is ample evidence in Genesis that each person had their own personal tent. So when the husband goes in to the wife['s tent], we may guess what he is looking for. In itself it is quite an innocent phrase and can indeed mean many different things, which is what makes it a good euphemism; from there the way is open for it to acquire a more conventionalized meaning. Usually, when this phrase is so used in Genesis, there is no actual mention of either betah 'her house', oholah 'her tent' or anything of the sort, just as in English we can talk about somone 'popping over' without any need to specify the type of accommodation, though some sort of domicile or other is implied. But as a possible confirmation of my theory, we are lucky enough to find this felicitous little passage about the recently bereaved Isaac and his new bride Rebekah upon their meeting, when Rebekah had just arrived from Padan-Aram and didn't have her own tent yet (24:67, JPS): way'vi'éha yitzxaq ha'óhola sara immo wayyiqqax et rivqa watt'hi lo l'issha wayye'ehavéha wayyinnaxem yitzxaq axare immo 'Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother's death.' Although wayyiqqax et rivqa watt'hi lo l'issha actually means literally 'he took Rebekah and she became his wife', in my opinion there is probably nothing explicitly sexual about anything this sentence says, but the closest it comes is with way'vi'éha... ha'óhola sara 'he brought her into Sarah's tent', because what else could they be up to, in those days, on their own in his late mother's tent?? On the basis of what we see elsewhere in Genesis, I think that wayyiqqax et rivqa 'he took Rebekah' does not mean what it sounds like in English, rather I believe it actually means the closest thing in that culture to what we understand by 'he married Rebekah.' Examples of l-q-x 'to take' meaning 'to marry' in Genesis are legion; in this very story, indeed, Abraham's instructions to his faithful servant were to go to Padan-Aram and find a suitable bride for his son and take her for Isaac, because: (24:3) w'ashbi‛akha... asher lo tiqqax issha livni mibb'not hakk'na‛ani 'I will have you swear... not to marry my son [lit. not to take a woman for my son] from the daughters of the Canaanites.' The following phrase in 24:67, watt'hi lo l'issha 'and she became his wife' is probably just the typical poetical redundancy, rounding off the end of this well-polished piece of verbal art which reads much like one of our favourite fairy stories: so in best style, they married and live happily ever after. So, Isaac didn't, as you might think on a superficial reading of the English, "take Rebekah into the tent and take her"; he took her into the tent (wink, wink) and then he married her. My suggestion, then, is that without mentioning the tent, to 'go in to' someone could be understood quite naturally in BH as implying sexual union while using neither vulgar implications nor arbitrary conventions. It is as expressive, or can be, as saying today that so-and-so "stopped by" (at her tent). I hope these thoughts are suggestive for translators at a loss about what to do with this expression in Genesis.
ibbane mimménna
See my comments here on this phrase.
16:3
Essentially this verse repeats the information we just read in v. 2. Source critics attribute v. 2 to J and v. 3 to P.
16:4 watteqal g'virtah b'‛enéha
The verb q-l-l is a little bit complicated. A better known derivative is the adjective qal 'light' whence also 'easy, simple, etc.' Acc. to EK the primary meaning of the verb root is 'to belittle'; meanings derived from this include 'to curse', and as an intransitive, 'to be slight, light, despised.' Here what is at stake is the relative status of the legal wife, Sarai, and the concubine, Hagar; the issue might seem (legally) straightforward, but there is another dimension now: Hagar is giving Abram a child, that all-important key to biological permanence within the cultural coordinates relevant to the text, whereas Sarai has failed to do so. Sarai considers herself the injured party and comes to Abram to do something about it.
16:5
Sarai lodges her complaint. Personally I find the way the dialogue is handled superb and ever-so real from a literary viewpoint!
16:6 hinne shifxatekh b'yadekh ‛asi lah haTTov b'‛enáyikh
Abram, it seems, can do little more than shrug his shoulders and assure her of his verbal support for Sarai.
watt'‛annéha saray
No details about what exactly Sarai did to Hagar, to the obvious annoyance of commentators who would love to know, but we are never going to find out.
16:7 mal'akh YHWH
Even as angels go, the "angels" of Genesis are mysterious beings. The name "angel" is suspect, since this is an English word borrowed from Greek via Latin, and popularized along with Christianity, so that whatever attributes "English angels" have (or angels of any other country, for that matter) stem from the way the concept has been elaborated in the western mind. The H word in question, mal'akh, actually means 'messenger' (as does the Greek word angelos); so we might say that the H text doesn't say "angel", what it says is 'messenger', so perhaps that is what we should be saying too. But of course it says here mal'akh YHWH, YHWH's messenger; and of course we don't know what that is, or looks like, or consists of beyond what it says about such messengers in the text, and it doesn't say a great deal! The appearances of such mal'akhim in Genesis are such as to make them seem to resemble ordinary humans; they are often described as men, only then it turns out that they are also called mal'akhim. And then they are liable to suddenly being called YHWH, so that they seem to be simultaneously men and God. What does that make them? If only I knew. Here is a quick summary of all the mal'akhim in Genesis who are called that:
- (ch. 16) A mal'akh YHWH speaks to Hagar.
- (ch. 19) Two mal'akhim (previously presented as "men") reach Sodom. They help Lot.
- (ch. 21) A mal'akh elohim speaks to Hagar from heaven.
- (ch. 22) A mal'akh YHWH speaks to Abraham twice from heaven, when he is about to sacrifice Isaac.
- (ch. 24) When Abraham is ordering his servant to go to Padan-Aram to find a wife for Isaac, he assures the servant that God will send mal'akho 'his servant' ahead of him.
- (ch. 28) When Jacob dreams of the staircase or ladder to heaven at Bethel, he sees mal'akhe elohim going up and down it.
- (ch. 31) When Jacob talks to his wives about his troubles with Laban, he describes to them a dream in which the mal'akh ha'elohim spoke to him.
- (ch. 32) In a strange dream-like sequence, Jacob encounters mal'akhe elohim
- (ch. 48) In Jacob's blessing of his grandchildren Menasseh and Ephraim, he calls on hammal'akh haggo'el oti mikkol ra‛ 'the angel who has redeemed me from all harm' to bless the boys.
b'dérekh shur
Shur is said to be a locality near the Egyptian border. This fits in with the fact that Hagar is said to be a mitzrit, a woman of Egyptian origin (v. 1 above).
16:12 w'‛al p'ne exaw yishkon
Let us recall Noah's words: w'yishkon b'ohole shem 'let him dwell in the tents of Shem'. In the present passage we again find yishkon 'will dwell', with ‛al p'ne exaw 'in the presence of his brothers' as against b'ohole shem 'in the tents of Shem', which sounds not all that different, since in the cultural context, dwelling is done in tents. The expression ‛al p'ne is notoriously polysemic: lit. it is 'on the face of', but its senses may range from 'over, above' (as in 1:2) to 'nearby, in the presence of' to 'in the face of, against' which is the reading defended by Speiser here.
16:13 hagam halom ra'íti axare ro'i
Commentators agree that these words don't make any sense. The translators have done their best with a bad job, e.g. (KJV) Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?, (JPS) Have I not gone on seeing after he saw me?, and so on. Speiser tells of Wellhausen's attempt to posit an original text that may have got mangled, such as hagam elohim ra'íti wa'exi(?) 'Did I really see God, yet remained alive?' This makes internal sense (elsewhere in the Torah there are indications of a belief that if someone saw God, they would not live unless given special divine dispensation) and it would also fit better with the next verse where it turns out that we are explaining the well's name, which is b'er laxay ro'i, but the MT here doesn't say anything about xay 'to live, living' which forms part of that name! Speiser concedes, however, that even if so, the corruption of the text (which in any case is almost certain to have happened, since as it stands it is really unintelligible) would have occurred quite a long way back in the history of the text.
16:14 ‛al ken qara...
Name game.
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