Inside a goat-hair tent in soft morning light, a newborn swaddled in linen sleeps in a shallow woven basket on a patterned rug.

The Book of

Genesis 21

Twenty-five years after the promise, a baby cries in Abraham’s tent. God has done exactly what He said.

34 verses≈ 5 min5 peopleBSB

Images are artistic interpretations.

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In this chapter

Where we are

1–11BeginningsCreation, fall, flood, Babel
12–24AbrahamThe call and the promiseChapter 21
25–36Isaac and JacobThe promise passed on
37–50JosephGod meant it for good

The Birth of Isaac

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So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised.

And Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore to him. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

Sarah

Sarah

Then Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me.” She added, “Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned.

Reflect

As He had said

Abraham was seventy-five when God first promised him offspring. He was a hundred when Isaac was born. In between came long years, doubts, a plan of their own with Hagar, and laughter that wasn’t yet joy. Then “the LORD did for Sarah what He had promised.” What promise of God are you still waiting on? Write down what it would mean to trust that He keeps His word on His timing.

Sarah Turns against Hagar

But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking her son, 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!”

Now this matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son Ishmael.

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. But I will also make a nation of the slave woman’s son, because he is your offspring.”

through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned

Genesis 21:12

At dawn in bare, stony desert, a woman with a water skin on her shoulder and a teenage boy walk away from the camera into the wilderness.

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. When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes. 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.

0:27

Narrated by Bob Souer · BSB audio, public domain

The angel of the LORD

And God was with the boy, and he grew up and settled in the wilderness and became a great archer. And while he was dwelling in the Wilderness of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

Pray

The God who hears

Hagar sat a bowshot away so she wouldn’t have to watch, and wept. The boy cried too. And “God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies.” Bring God the cry you think no one hears: for yourself, or for someone you love who is out of water and out of hope. Ask Him to open your eyes to the help He has already put near.

The Covenant at Beersheba

Abimelech

At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do. 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.”

Abraham

And Abraham replied, “I swear it.”

But when Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized,

Abimelech

Abimelech replied, “I do not know who has done this. You did not tell me, so I have not heard about it until today.”

So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. Abraham separated seven ewe lambs from the flock,

Abimelech

and Abimelech asked him, “Why have you set apart these seven ewe lambs?”

Abraham

He replied, “You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well.”

So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath. 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.

And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God. And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for a long time.

Stylised map · locations approximate

On the map

Beersheba and Paran

Beersheba lies on the dry northern edge of the Negev, where Abraham dug his well and planted the tamarisk. Gerar, Abimelech’s town, is a short way to the north-west (its site is probable, not certain). Far to the south stretches the Wilderness of Paran, where Ishmael grew up and “became a great archer.”

Question

Quick question

Abraham gave Abimelech a gift that would stand as a witness.

What did Abraham set apart as a witness that he had dug the well?

You’ve experienced

Genesis 21

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A verse to carry with you

Now the LORD attended to Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what He had promised.

Genesis 21:1

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