Abraham and Sarai, frustrated by the delay in receiving the promised heir, devised a plan in which Sarai gave her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abram as a wife after ten years in Canaan. Abram heeded Sarai's voice, and Hagar conceived. Once pregnant, Hagar despised her mistress, prompting Sarai to deal harshly with her. Hagar fled into the wilderness toward Shur. There the Angel of the Lord, identified as Yahweh, instructed her to return and submit to Sarai, promised her innumerable descendants, and foretold that she would bear a son named Ishmael, who would live as a wild man, free yet in conflict with others, dwelling near his brethren. Hagar recognized that she had seen God and named the well Beer Lahai Roi. She returned, bore Abram a son whom he named Ishmael, and Abram was eighty-six years old at the birth. This episode illustrates that human initiative to fulfill divine promises through works of the flesh produces grief, contempt, and bondage rather than the intended blessing. Paul later employs the account as an allegory contrasting two covenants: Hagar represents the covenant from Mount Sinai that brings bondage, corresponding to earthly Jerusalem, while Sarah represents the covenant of promise that brings freedom, corresponding to the Jerusalem above. Ishmael, born according to the flesh, stands for those who seek righteousness through law-keeping and remain in bondage; Isaac, born through promise, stands for those begotten by the Spirit through grace. The allegory demonstrates that only the children of the freewoman inherit the promise, that righteousness is a gift received by faith, and that reliance on works places one in an endless cycle of condemnation from which only grace through faith delivers.

The account of Abraham and Hagar in Genesis 16 stands as the backdrop against which chapter 17 must be understood, illustrating the futility of human effort apart from God's will to produce what God has promised. Abraham and Sarah's arrangement to produce an heir through Hagar, since Sarah was barren, represented an attempt to fulfill God's promise through self-will and human striving rather than through divine grace. This experiment demonstrated that faith and fruitfulness come only through God's grace, achieved not through self-will but through self-renunciation, recalling Paul's words, "When I am weak, then I am strong." Notably, God did not immediately correct this error with the right way of doing things, as one might expect a converted mind to be ready for such correction. Instead, thirteen years passed before God appeared again to Abraham in chapter 17, waiting until Abraham himself was no longer capable of producing a child by natural means, just as Sarah had already been barren. This delay underscores that the promised seed, Isaac, would come only through God's power, not through human capability at all. Abraham's posture when God appeared, falling on his face, demonstrated complete submission and readiness to learn, in contrast to the earlier reliance on Hagar. God's repeated declarations of "I will" throughout the covenant renewal, seven times in total, emphasized that the fulfillment of the promise depended entirely on Him as God Almighty, not on any human scheme like the one involving Hagar. Abraham's role was to walk before God and be blameless, showing that the path to receiving the blessing would not be through self-will, "not by Hagar, not by blood," but because God Himself would bring it to pass. This lesson connects to the broader truth that a life centered on God provides inner strength and stability, keeping one's life from flying apart, something Abraham possessed even as a stranger and pilgrim without the settled security others had. The Hagar episode reveals what happens when this centering on God is temporarily abandoned in favor of human solutions, while chapter 17 reveals the restoration of proper faith and the reaffirmation of God's covenant. Even when Abraham, thinking of Ishmael, pleaded "Oh, that Ishmael may live before You!", God reaffirmed that Ishmael was not the promised seed, and that the covenant promise would be fulfilled only through Isaac, someone God alone was able to provide. This reinforced that when God makes a promise, men cannot fulfill it; only God can, and human beings must live by faith until He does, exactly the lesson the Hagar experiment had failed to teach through obedience the first time.