Ishmael and the Start of the Arab People

¹ Sarai bare no children. She had an Egyptian servant named Hagar.

² Sarai told Abram:

Enki had restrained me from bearing: Please have sex with my maid so you can have a child by her.

Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

³ Sarai took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

⁴ He had sex with Hagar and she conceived. Sarai then despised Hagar.

⁵ Sarai said to Abram:

I made a mistake. I have given my maid to you. When she saw that she had conceived, she despised me. May Enki judge between you and me.

⁶ But Abram said unto Sarai, Your servant is in your hand. Do whatever you want with her. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.

⁷ A worker for Enki found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. ⁸ He said,

Enki-Agent

Hagar where are you going?

Hagar

I flee from Sarai.

Enki-Agent

⁹ Return to Sarai and submit yourself to her authority. {16:10} I will multiply your offspring exceedingly, that they will be innumerable. {16:11} You are pregnant with a son who will be named Ishmael because Enki had heard your affliction. {16:12} He will be a wild man; his hand [will be] against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

Hagar

¹³ I will call you El-roi. Here, I have seen the one who sees me.

¹⁴ And so that well was called Beer-lahai-roi, between Kadesh and Bered.

¹⁵ Hagar bare Abram a son which he named Ishmael.

¹⁶ Abram was 86 years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.