Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 16-18.

The Old Testament allows for polygamy.  Yet, in every instance where polygamy is addressed in the Old Testament, things go badly.  Here, Abram takes Hagar as his second wife at Sarai’s suggestion, but as soon as Hagar becomes pregnant things go wrong.  If we look at the story closely we can see the aspects of human nature which came into play to make things go badly.  One could argue that people could choose to behave differently, but that is not the point.  We learn from every story in the Bible where a man’s relationship with multiple wives are an important part of the story that humans are designed to be monogamous.  There is also a lesson in this account about the importance of waiting for God’s timing.  Abram and Sarai knew that God had promised Abram descendants who would inherit the Land of Canaan.  Since Sarai had been unable to bear children, they thought that they needed to take this action to make God’s promise come to fruition.  There may be times when God desires us to take some action in order to bring His promises to us to fruition.  This was not one of them.  Yet, despite the fact that Abram and Sarai acted outside of God’s plan, God promised to bless Ishmael.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.