"Look," she told her husband. "God has prevented me from having any children. Please go in to my maid, Hagar. Perhaps she will conceive and I can raise her child as my own."

Abram listened to Sarai's voice, and took Hagar as a second wife. But as soon as Hagar became pregnant she began to look down on her mistress, Sarai.

"My wrong be upon you," Sarai told her husband. "I gave my maid to you to produce a child for us, and now that she has become pregnant, she looks down on me. God judge which of us has made the greater mistake!"

"She's your maid. Do what you like to her," Abram advised.

When Sarai began to treat Hagar unkindly, Hagar ran away, but God found her hiding by a spring in the wilderness and asked her, "Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from and where are you going?"

"I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai," the woman told Him.

"Return to your mistress, and submit to her," God instructed. "I will protect you and your child. Your descendants will eventually become so numerous that they will be impossible to count, so great will be their number." Then He went on to tell her, "The Lord has heard your affliction. You're with child, and you'll bear a son, whom you'll call Ishmael. He'll be a wild man, his hand raised against every man, and every man's hand raised against him. He'll dwell in the presence of all his brethren."

Hagar, who knew that she had spoken with the God who sees and knows all, did as she was told and returned to Sarai.

Later she gave birth to a son whom Abram named Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born, and still Sarai and he had no children of their own.

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