1 Sarai, Abrams wife, had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.
2 She said to Abram: »Jehovah has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my maidservant. Perhaps I can build a family through her.« Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
3 After Abram lived in Canaan ten years, Sarai, his wife, gave her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to her husband to be his wife.
4 Abram had intercourse with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
5 Then Sarai said to Abram: »You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms; she knows she is pregnant and she despises me. May Jehovah judge between you and me.«
6 »Your servant is in your hands,« Abram said. »Do with her whatever you think best.« Then Sarai mistreated Hagar. So she ran away from her.
7 The angel of Jehovah found Hagar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.
8 He said: »Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?« »I am running away from my mistress Sarai,« she answered.
9 Then the angel of Jehovah told her: »Go back to your mistress and submit to her.
10 »I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.«
11 Jehovahs angel also said: »You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael means: God hears. Jehovah has heard of your misery.
12 »He Ishmael will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyones hand against him. He will live in hostility toward all his brothers.«
13 She called the name of Jehovah, who spoke to her: »You are the God who sees me, for she said, I have not seen the one who sees me."
14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi Well of the Living One Who Sees Me. It is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar bore Abram a son. Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne.
16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.