When reading genesis and coming to the story of Hagar it starts off with Sarah giving her to Abraham. He makes her his wife and she begins to offended Sarah. So Abraham drives off Hagar after listening to Sarah ( Eve hyperlink ). While gone she comes to a well and an Angel sends her back to Abraham. She gives birth to his firstborn Ishmael. Then a handful of other things happen and we read of Ishmael being 13 and circumcised. Then some more things happen and finally Abraham once again sends of Hagar and Ishmael.
Then while gone they run out of water and Ishmael is no longer called by name but is called boy. Hagar leaves him a little bit away to rest. It talks about Ishmael as if he’s Child in my opinion. It almost seems like a seam in the narrative. Any thoughts?
This is what the Documentary Hypothesis upholding scholar Richard Elliott Friedman has to say:
“We find, for example, cases of epanalepsis—also known as resumptive repetition or Wiederaufnahme— that is, cases in which an editor inserts material into a text and then resumes the interrupted text by restating the last line before the interruption. This is a well-known phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible as well. (See, for example, Exod 6:12 and 30, in which the words, “And Moses spoke in front of YHWH, saying, ‘. . . how will Pharaoh listen to me? And I’m uncircumcised of lips!’” come both before and after a long text that has signs of having been added to the chapter.)”
I’ll have to check his Torah commentary. I read through it once 2 years ago or so but don’t recall anything about this in it. But I’ll look at it again and search more.
Strictly speaking Hagar remains Sarah’s slave though her child by Abraham was recognized as free and Abraham’s child. Her status was not the same as Sarah’s. There are some Jewish traditions that see Keturah (Abraham’s wife or concubine after Sarah’s death) as another name for Hagar.
Also the two expulsion stories may be variants of the same original story and the editor of Genesis used both. Genesis 16 is usually attributed to J and Genesis 21:8-21 to E.
