Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Sarai said to Abram, “See now, Yahweh has restrained me from bearing. Please go in to my servant. It may be that I will obtain children by her.” Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband to be his wife.”
(Genesis 16:2-3)

This is THE classic mistake humans have been making for thousands of years and will probably continue to make until we are all in glory. God says something. We accept what He says. Then time passes. We don’t give up on what He said, but we work to bring about the promise. We want it to happen, it doesn’t SEEM to be happening, so we try and HELP it to happen. Nothing good EVER comes of this.

Abram makes the mistake of listening to the voice of someone who isn’t God. If we listen to God, we will have His words to hold onto. When we listen to ANYONE else, we are NOT holding onto His words. In this context, listening is more than simply hearing. It is putting weight on the words and obeying them. This is what Adam did with Eve. This is what Ahab did with Jezebel. Anytime we put someone else’s words into God’s rightful place, we are doing the wrong thing. God’s opinion is the ONLY opinion that really matters.

Sarai makes the mistake of blaming her barrenness on the Lord. Yet in spite of this belief, she still tried to get the answer (children) from another source. Clearly she believed and desired the promise of a child, but she couldn’t see how it could be from HER. Logically, if the Lord was preventing her pregnancy, then getting pregnant through a surrogate would be going against the will of God. It’s like when people say God brings sickness on us to teach us something (which is an un-scriptural lie), but then go to the doctor to get well. It makes NO sense. Neither does Sarai’s logic. Sadly, that is what human thinking will get you.

Abram doesn’t seem to resist this suggestion – or if he did his protests are not recorded. We can clearly see that he didn’t inquire of the Lord about it. Questioning an idea is not a bad thing. Mary questioned when the angel spoke to her. Questioning for clarity is never a bad thing because you’re clarifying that you are being obedient in the correct way – it’s never about NOT doing what God has asked you to do.

Even though Hagar was given to Abram as a wife, her status as the property of Sarai did not change. Abram had relations with her, but her status didn’t change. Abram did not own her. She was not his.

At this point Abram was about 85 and Sarai would have been around 75-76.

The sage Sforno writes: ‘הנה עצרני ה’ מלדת, “even though G’d has promised to grant you offspring to whom I will give this land, (Genesis 12,7) He has not said that the mother of Avram’s offspring would be I.” אולי אבנה ממנה, Sarah hoped that the jealousy which would develop within her when she saw that Hagar gave birth to a child for Avram would stimulate her own biological and sexual urges so that in due course she too would become pregnant by her husband. (based on Megillah 13) שרי לקול, the Torah wants to make plain that Avram was not motivated by sexual lust to sleep with Hagar, but had only fallen in with Sarai’s reasoning, hoping to assuage her feelings in the matter.’

The sage Radak writes: ‘ותאמר … עצרני ה’ מלדת, she meant that seeing that G’d had prevented her from giving birth during all these years, she had now abandoned hope of ever bearing a child as she had aged in the interval. אבנה, the son from this union would be called אבנה, “I shall be built up.” All children are a building consisting of genetic input by father and mother. Sarai said that any son from this union with her husband would be accepted by her as if he were part of her biological family. She would treat him as her own son. וישמע אברם, he agreed with Sarai’s plan, preferring not to wait any longer for G’d to fulfill His promise in giving him children from Sarai as he had understood this promise up until now. He decided that since Sarai had stopped menstruating she would not be able to become pregnant. As a result, he reasoned that G’d’s promise to him was to be fulfilled via Hagar who would become the mother of any children of his. Seeing that even Sarai had arrived as such an interpretation of G’d’s promise, he had no reason to disagree with her. This is why Avram did not pray to G’d asking Him to make Sarai bear him a son, as opposed to his son Yitzchok later on who did pray to G’d for Rivkah to bear him a son. It is also possible that Avram did pray concerning this matter, but that he had concluded that G’d had seen fit to deny his request. In that event, we must understand G’d’s delay in answering Avram’s prayer as being designed to show that He could make even a ninety year old barren woman become pregnant and give birth to a healthy child.’

The Torah: A Woman’s Commentary writes: ‘“maybe I will have a son through her.” The Hebrew is more ambiguous since the word “son” does not appear. Instead, Sarai is using a verb that can mean either “I will have a child” or “I will be built”—that is, established—which refers to creating a family and continuity with no reference to the offspring’s gender. | Sarai’s motive is not clear. Is it to ensure her own position, to fulfill Abram’s dream of having a child as an heir (Genesis 15:2–3), or both? | Modern scholars have long pointed to extra-biblical evidence for varieties of surrogate motherhood in the ancient Near East, such as was regulated in the Laws of Hammurabi (¶ 146). Sarai participates in an unspecified version of that widely practiced system and seeks to be empowered within its contours. Abram heeded Sarai’s voice. In Genesis 3:17, the first man was chastised for heeding the woman’s voice. In contrast, in Genesis 21:12, God will need to explicitly instruct Abraham to obey Sarah: “Do whatever Sarah tells you”—more literally “All that Sarah tells you, heed her voice.” Here, however, Abram shows no reluctance to follow his wife’s instructions. In household matters, women exercised authority.’