January 7

Click here for today's text.

2009,2011,2012

Genesis 16:1-18:19
(1) "After its own kind" is a recurring theme in Genesis. I would like to consult the Giants (e.g. Matthew Henry, R. C. Sproul, etc)to see if I'm reading too much into the opening action here where Sarai ("Abram's wife...had borne him no children" (16:1)) tells her husband:

"Go, sleep with my maidservant named Hagar".

Adam likewise listened to Eve and all humanity fell. Here again a husband forgets the explicit promise of children and the couple takes a shortcut to achieve the ends. The world is still ringing with the resulting fruit of this action.

Just makes me glad my life isn't "center-stage" in redemptive history! Or to put it another way, do my personal sins have such far-reaching consequences? I like to think not but perhaps my sins become magnified after each succeeding generation?

(2)(2012) First, I stand corrected: I had thought God's promise was through Sarai. Matthew Henry notes:

God had told him that his heir should be a son of his body, but had not yet told him that it should be a son by Sarai; therefore he thought, "Why not by Hagar, since Sarai herself proposed it?"

Henry also notes that what Abram moved away from was God's decree:

We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife. Herein, though some excuse may be made for him, 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 families for the speedier peopling of the world and the church. Certainly it must not be so now. Christ has reduced this matter to the first institution, and makes the marriage union to be between one man and one woman only.

Abram moves away from God's promise by taking a second wife; agreeing to sleep and conceive a progeny through Hagar.

Then when Hagar conceives, "she began to despise her mistress". Did Hagar believe she'd replace Sarai? Or would honor merely be given her?

Next, Sarai accuses Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”

Finally, Abram (like many men who want nothing of the responsibility but only the pleasure of siring) responds, "Your servant is in your hands . . . Do with her whatever you think best.”

So Sarai "mistreated" Hagar until Hagar was compelled to flee Sarai.

Matthew 6:1-24

Psalm 7:1-17
I sense some parallel with James:

(7:14-16) He who is pregnant with evil
and conceives trouble gives birth
to disillusionment.
He who digs a hole and scoops it out
falls into the pit he has made.
The trouble he causes recoils on himself;
his violence comes down on his own head.

James reads:

Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death."

Proverbs 2:1-5

Years Read
2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2025