This is what happens when faith gets impatient. Ten years have passed. Sarai is still barren. So she engineers a solution: "Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." Culturally acceptable. Divinely disastrous. Abram listens without pushback. Hagar conceives and looks on Sarai with contempt. Sarai blames Abram for the consequences of her own plan. Abram abdicates: "Do to her as you please." Sarai oppresses Hagar with the same harshness Egypt will one day inflict on Israel. Hagar flees. Faith doesn't make you immune to bad decisions. The consequences of this chapter will echo for millennia.

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