It is interesting here. I do not know if you picked up on it but twice, Moses, the writer of this book, clarifies that Hagar, Sarah's maid, is the Egyptian, the sojourner. Now, this situation is actually a bit reversed from a situation that happened a few years back. She is a sojourner in a foreign land. But I want to call attention here to the first instance of this underlying Hebrew word translated Egyptian four chapters earlier. Turn back there with me.
We know this story pretty well. After Abram, the sojourner in Egypt, lies about Sarai not being his wife, the Pharaoh takes her in to be part of his harem. But we read in verses 17 and 18 that the Lord plagued him with a great plague, his whole house was plagued, and so Pharaoh calls Abram immediately and says, "Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?" And he quickly sends them on their way with all their possessions.
Now we are going back to Genesis 16 and we see this time it is Abram taking Hagar, the Egyptian who is the sojourner in the land of Canaan. And I think it is basically God saying, "Abram, you knew better. You saw the same thing, you saw what happened when Pharaoh tried to do this to you, and here you are, you did it to Hagar! Don't you see how I punished him?" Now, it is clear that Sarah was a bit desperate here and she wanted to take matters into her own hands, but Abram could have refused. And I think it is part of becoming at-one with our spouses by the way, right? It is not just blindly listening, it is having a conversation. "What does God really want from this situation? What should we do?" And it is that level of reciprocity and relationship that allows us to be better together and to get to a better answer.
God Almighty had to lead through many forked roads our forefather Abraham, in many of which he took the wrong fork. In Genesis 12:11-20 (before the Pharaoh in Egypt) and also in Genesis 20:1-2 (before King Abimelech), events in Abraham's formative years (lessons placed there for our contemplation and admonition), Abraham compromised with God's law—at least that part dealing with bearing false witness. God Almighty allowed Abraham to take the wrong fork in both situations, and then in His mercy bailed him out of a bad situation, but not before Abram stewed in his predicament for awhile, learning some hard lessons about taking the expedient, faithless way out.
Now I'm going to throw one in here. This was the second time that it happened! Look back at Genesis 12:10-20 and the same thing happened between Abraham and Pharaoh fifteen or twenty years before. How long was God's forbearance now? Fifteen or twenty years.
But He had given Abraham time to repent of this sin, but he never did it. Eventually I'm sure that he did, but here we have a fifteen or twenty-year period of time where God tested him on the same problem in order to help him grow in character. I thought that was kind of interesting.
