16:1,2
After 15:6 where it says that Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness that everything was now sorted. Now he would head on a more or less straight path towards the goal. One might have thought that but one would be completely wrong. We are now going to get the biggest mistake of his life. Abram and Sarai had been following God’s path for many years, but still there were no children. They did have an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. Now it was within normal custom of the times that Abram could have a child with Hagar and the child would be his heir. And from Sarai’s words it seems that the child would effectively be adopted by Abram and Sarai. The plan makes perfect sense from a human point of view, but it was completely against God’s plan. We should appreciate how appealing the plan would seem. They had not had children despite trying for many years, nothing has changed on that front since God’s promise. God had said Abram would have a child from his own body, and under this scheme that would happen. Human wisdom can so easily lead us astray.
16:3,4a
“Abram agreed to what Sarai said”, just as Adam agreed to eat the fruit. Abram was as responsible as Sarai, and he had not been the husband he should have been. This occurred some ten years from Abram arriving in Canaan. So Sarai gave Abram the servant girl. The servant girl is being treated as an object, but we will see as the story unfolds that God does not treat her, nor the son she would have, as a mere object. We also see that Sarai was actively involved in the scheme, even leading in the scheme. If anything, Abram is also being treated as a sex object. Anyway, he slept with Hagar and she conceived.
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