I am pleased that Young's Literal Translation translates the word usually translated as "angel", with the word "messenger", because so much art and therefore people's understanding is that an angel is a being looking human but having wings. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that an angel has wings. The cherubim have wings which cover the ark of God in the tabernacle, and Isaiah sees in a vision seraphims above the throne of God who have six wings, but the angels sent by God to bring a message from God to a particular individual human being may have extraordinary brightness or beauty but they do not have wings. Hagar replies to the angel messenger as one would speak to another human being. She is not overcome by fear or awe or guilt in the messenger's presence. She listens and obeys.

The conversation between God and Abram is also marvellously natural and straightforward. Abram asks God as one would another person but one with power and authority, how he can be blessed when his heir will be a servant in his household, Demmesek Eliezer. God replies that this servant will not be his heir but one from his own body and takes him outside the tent where he must have been in the vision to count the stars and says "Thus is your seed."

"Abram believeth in Jehovah and He reckoneth it to him - righteousness."

The possibility of having one child would have been hard enough to believe, but Abram believes the even greater wonder, that his seed will be as numerous as the stars, too many to count! Believing that what God says is true is the meaning of the word "faith" and without it, it is impossible to please God, because we have to believe that he is in order to come to him. This is true and worthy to be received by us as true. When we believe God, we have turned to him and a relationship is born.