Genesis 21
1 Now the LORD attended to Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what He had promised. 2 So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised. 3 And Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore to him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 Then Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me.” 7 She added, “ Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” 8 So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. Sarah Turns against Hagar (Galatians 4:21–30) 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking her son, 10 and she said to Abraham, “ Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman ’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac!” 11 Now this matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son Ishmael. 12 But God said to Abraham, “ Do not be distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to everything that Sarah tells you, for through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned. 13 But I will also make a nation of the slave woman’s son, because he is your offspring.” 14 Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar ’s shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba. 15 When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she said, “ I cannot bear to watch the boy die!” And as she sat nearby, she lifted up her voice and wept. 17 Then God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, “ What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies. 18 Get up, lift up the boy, and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” 19 Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. 20 And God was with the boy, and he grew up and settled in the wilderness and became a great archer. 21 And while he was dwelling in the Wilderness of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. The Covenant at Beersheba 22 At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do. 23 Now, therefore, swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants. Show to me and to the country in which you reside the same kindness that I have shown to you.” 24 And Abraham replied, “ I swear it.” 25 But when Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized, 26 Abimelech replied, “ I do not know who has done this. You did not tell me, so I have not heard about it until today.” 27 So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. 28 Abraham separated seven ewe lambs from the flock, 29 and Abimelech asked him, “ Why have you set apart these seven ewe lambs?” 30 He replied, “ You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well.” 31 So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath. 32 After they had made the covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army got up and returned to the land of the Philistines. 33 And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God. 34 And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for a long time.
✦ What the text says
## Summary
Genesis 21 narrates the birth and naming of Isaac, whose name plays on the root "to laugh," followed by the weaning feast and Sarah's demand to expel Hagar and Ishmael. God reassures Abraham and provides for Hagar's son in the wilderness. The chapter closes with a covenant oath between Abraham and Abimelech at Beersheba.
## Key words
- *pa.Kad* ("he visited/attended to", H6485I) — qal perfect describing Yahweh's completed action toward Sarah, framing the whole birth account as fulfillment of prior promise.
- *yitz.Chak* ("Isaac", H3327) — the boy's name, built on the same consonantal root as *tze.Chok* ("laughter", H6712, v.6) and *me.tza.Chek* ("mocking", H6711, v.9), creating a wordplay that runs through the chapter.
- *ga.Resh* ("drive out", H1644H) — piel imperative, Sarah's direct command to Abraham regarding Hagar and her son, intensive in force compared to a simple qal command.
- *be.Rit* ("a covenant", H1285) — feminine singular noun, the formal agreement "cut" (*yikh.re.Tu*, H3772H) between Abraham and Abimelech, repeated in vv.27 and 32.
- *hi.Sha.ve.'a* ("swear", H7650) — niphal imperative, Abimelech's request for an oath "by God" (*bei.lo.Him*, H0430G), structurally paired with Abraham's niphal imperfect response *'i.sha.Ve.a'* ("I will swear", v.24).
## What the text says
The narrative divides into three movements marked by shifts in narrative vav chains (*va-yiqtol* forms): the birth and naming of Isaac (vv.1–8), the Hagar-Ishmael episode (vv.9–21), and the Beersheba covenant (vv.22–34). In verse 1, the double structure *ka.'a.Sher 'a.Mar* ("as he had said") and *ka.'a.Sher di.Ber* ("as he had spoken") uses two different verbs for divine speech (qal *'a.Mar* H0559 and piel *di.Ber* H1696I) to frame Yahweh's action as exact correspondence to earlier utterance — a formal repetition the Hebrew marks with parallel *ka.'a.Sher* clauses that most translations render identically in English, flattening the lexical variation.
The Isaac naming wordplay is grammatically layered: Sarah's statement in v.6 uses the noun *tze.Chok* ("laughter") with the verb *'A.sah* ("he has made"), then a qal participle *sho.Me.a'* ("the one hearing") paired with imperfect *yitz.chak* ("he will laugh") — the same consonants as the child's name, so the text itself performs the etymology rather than merely stating it. In verse 9, Ishmael's action is described by the piel participle *me.tza.Chek* ("mocking"), from the identical root, which the underlying Hebrew consonants tie back to the name and to Sarah's earlier laughter, though the semantic range shifts from joyful to hostile.
The covenant section (vv.22–34) is structured around the root *sh.b.'* ("to swear," H7650), appearing as niphal imperative (v.23), niphal imperfect (v.24), and niphal perfect *nish.be.'U* ("they swore," v.31) — the same verbal root in three aspectual forms binding the oath scene together and explaining the etiology of *be.'Er Sha.va'* ("Beersheba," lit. "well of the oath/seven").
## Differences between versions
In verse 14, the LXX names the location where Hagar wandered somewhat differently in transmission (κατὰ τὸ φρέαρ τοῦ ὅρκου, "by the well of the oath") compared to the Hebrew *mid.Bar be.'Er Sha.va'* ("wilderness of Beersheba"), reflecting the same place-name tradition later explained in v.31.
In verse 9, the LXX adds a phrase not present in the Hebrew
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.