Passage

Genesis 16

Verses 1–6 WEB Voices

Ten years in Canaan after the promise, Sarai is still barren. She gives Hagar, her Egyptian servant, to Abram as a wife to obtain children by her. Conception brings contempt, blame, and harshness; Hagar flees.

Genesis 16:1

1Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

Arminian

The narrator names both the ache and the person: Sarai barren, Hagar an Egyptian servant with a name. Classical Arminians refuse to treat Hagar as a prop. God will soon address her as a woman He sees.

Reformed

Childlessness sits beside the promises of chapters 12 and 15. Reformed readers hear delay under providence, not a cancelled oath. Hagar’s naming already marks her as a person inside the Lord’s story, not an accident.

Genesis 16:2

2Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the LORD has restrained me from bearing. Please go in to my servant. It may be that I will obtain children by her.” Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

Arminian

Sarai tells the truth about the LORD’s hand, then proposes a workaround. Arminians detect a responsible choice: the promise was given, yet they try to fulfill it by household custom. Abram “listened to the voice of Sarai”—faith can yield to a plan God did not command.

Reformed

She attributes barrenness to the LORD, then reaches for a surrogate anyway. Waiting on the promise is itself obedience. Abram’s listening recalls earlier failures to wait; the scheme cannot rewrite what God has sworn.

Key contrast Both treat this as unbelief dressed as piety. Arminians typically stress a resistible, responsible detour from a sincere promise; Reformed readers typically stress that God’s timing cannot be forced, and this plan sits outside the oath of chapter 15.

Genesis 16:3

3Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband to be his wife.

Arminian

Ten years in the land, then Sarai takes and gives. The verbs make the cost plain: Hagar is handed over. Arminian pastoral reading names the injustice without sneering. Custom does not erase the wound of using a servant to “build” a house.

Reformed

The clock is theological: a decade after entering Canaan. Reformed readers see the wait as the Lord’s, and this marriage as human impatience. Giving Hagar “to be his wife” does not make the detour into the promised seed.

Genesis 16:4

4He went in to Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

Arminian

Conception happens; contempt follows. Hagar’s look is sin, not mere psychology. Arminians hold both women responsible: Sarai’s scheme and Hagar’s scorn each wound the other. Grace will still find the one who flees.

Reformed

The plan “works” biologically and immediately sours. Fruitfulness without the Lord’s appointed way breeds rivalry. Providence permits the pregnancy; it does not baptize the household’s contempt.

Genesis 16:5

5Sarai said to Abram, “This wrong is your fault. I gave my servant into your bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, she despised me. May the LORD judge between me and you.”

Arminian

Sarai blames Abram for the wrong she initiated and calls the LORD to judge. Invoking God is distinct from repenting. Moral agency means she can name the wound and still refuse her own part in it.

Reformed

She appeals to the LORD as judge while remaining inside her own plan. Reformed readers hear the irony: the God she summons will soon speak—not first to her, but to Hagar in the wilderness.

Genesis 16:6

6But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your maid is in your hand. Do to her whatever is good in your eyes.” Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her face.

Arminian

Abram abdicates; Sarai deals harshly; Hagar flees. Arminian interpreters do not excuse any of the three. Power used to crush is sin, and flight is the cry of a mistreated woman. The next scene will show that running from Sarai is not running beyond the LORD.

Reformed

Passivity is not innocence. Abram hands Hagar back into harm; Sarai’s harshness drives her out. Reformed comfort is not in the household’s virtue but in the God who will find the fugitive. The promise still stands; this cruelty is not its method.

Historic quotes

Voices from both camps

What older interpreters in each camp said about Hagar given, conception, and contempt in Sarai’s house.

Arminian Notable voices

“We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife. Herein, though he may be excused, he cannot be justified; for from the beginning it was not so: and when it was so, it seems to have proceeded from an irregular desire to build up their families, for the speedier peopling of the world. Christ has reduced this matter to the first institution, and makes the marriage union to be between one man and one woman only.”

John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (on Gen 16:1)

Reformed Notable voices

“She saw that she was barren, and had passed the age of bearing. Moses expressly relates, that the design of marrying a second wife did not originate with Abram himself, but with Sarai, to teach us that the holy man was not impelled by lust to these nuptials; but that when he was thinking of no such thing, he was induced to engage in them, by the exhortation of his wife.”

John Calvin · Commentary on Genesis (on Gen 16:1)

Quotations lightly abridged for length; wording follows standard English translations of the sources named.

Keep reading

Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, Matthew, John, Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John are live

Browse verse-by-verse notes—Arminian and Reformed, side by side—kept fair and close to the text.

Browse the Bible