Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 21-23.

The accounts of events which include both Sarah and Hagar reflect poorly on both of them.  Previously, when Hagar discovered that she was pregnant, she held her pregnancy over Sarah (my reading of the wording suggests that Hagar thought that giving birth to  a son would give her ascendancy over Sarah).  Sarah, for her part, rather than admitting this was a circumstance of her own making, blamed Abraham and asked him to make it right.  In today’s passage, Ishmael mocked his half-brother for being less capable than himself, which reflects poorly on the way his mother, Hagar, had raised him.  Sarah, for her part, demanded that a fourteen year old be sent off without any support for showing poor judgement one time.  I do not want to make too much about what this events tell us about either woman (or Ishmael) because they do not include all of the details of what happened so that we do not know if the impression they give us of Hagar or Sarah accurately reflect how they behaved in these situations.  After all, the writer included the account in today’s passage in order to show us that God had a special place in His heart for Ishmael (and I believe Abraham’s other sons), even though Isaac was the one through God’s promises to Abraham would be fulfilled.

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