Genesis 21

Isaac Is Born and Ishmael Is Sent Away

The LORD keeps His word to Sarah, and the son of promise is named “he laughs.” Hagar and Ishmael are sent into the wilderness, where God hears the boy, and Abraham secures a well at Beer-sheba by oath.

Genesis chaptersChapter 21 of 50

Abraham’s hundredth year and the years just after, while he sojourned in the south country near Gerar and Beer-sheba (20:1; 21:5, 34). The text gives no calendar year. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

For twenty-five years Abraham had lived on a promise. He left Haran at seventy-five with the word that he would become “a great nation” (Gen. 12:2–4).

For twenty-five years Abraham had lived on a promise. He left Haran at seventy-five with the word that he would become “a great nation” (Gen. 12:2–4). At ninety-nine he was told that Sarah would bear a son “at this set time in the next year” (Gen. 17:21), and when Sarah laughed, the LORD asked, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” (Gen. 18:14). Chapter 21 is the answer, and it opens the account of Isaac’s own life, which runs to the end of chapter 35.

The birth also brings to a head what began in chapter 16, when Sarah gave her Egyptian maid Hagar to Abraham and Ishmael was born (Gen. 16:1–16). Now Ishmael is sent away, and God cares for him in the wilderness. The chapter ends with Abraham at Beer-sheba, at peace by oath with Abimelech, the king of Gerar from chapter 20, and it is at Beer-sheba that he is living when God asks him for Isaac (Gen. 22:19).

The New Testament comes back to this chapter more than once. Paul says that the two sons “are an allegory” of two covenants (Gal. 4:21–31), and both Paul and Hebrews quote “in Isaac shall thy seed be called” (Rom. 9:7; Heb. 11:18).

The thread through the chapter

Genesis 21 turns on two names. Isaac means “he laughs,” and the chapter keeps returning to the word.

Genesis 21 turns on two names. Isaac means “he laughs,” and the chapter keeps returning to the word. Sarah says that God has made laughter for her and that all who hear will laugh (verse 6); then, at the feast for the weaned child, she sees Ishmael “mocking,” a form of the same verb (verse 9). The laughter that greets the son of promise becomes the occasion that divides the household. Ishmael means “God hears,” and when he lies dying of thirst in the wilderness, his name comes true: “God heard the voice of the lad” (verse 17).

So the chapter keeps two promises at once. To Abraham God says, “in Isaac shall thy seed be called” (verse 12), and the covenant line is fixed. To Abraham and then to Hagar He says that Ishmael too will be a nation (verses 13, 18), and He keeps that promise in the desert. The narrator says of the outcast boy, “God was with the lad” (verse 20), and in the next scene a foreign king says the same of his father: “God is with thee in all that thou doest” (verse 22). Abraham, still a sojourner in another king’s land, secures a well by oath and calls on “the everlasting God” (verse 33).

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–7

Isaac is born

In plain words

The Lord came to Sarah as He had said, and did for her what He had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the very time God had told him. Abraham named the son Sarah bore him Isaac, and he circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded. Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born.

Sarah said, “God has given me laughter. Everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she said, “Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

1 And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.

Language #

The LORD visited Sarah

When the LORD “visits” someone, He comes to keep His word. The Hebrew verb, paqad, means to pay attention to or “see to,” and with the LORD as its subject it can mean to “visit graciously.”

When the LORD “visits” someone, He comes to keep His word. The Hebrew verb, paqad, means to pay attention to or “see to,” and with the LORD as its subject it can mean to “visit graciously.” The lexicon lists this verse under that sense, together with Joseph’s dying words to his brothers, “God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land” (Gen. 50:24), and the Lord’s promise to the exiles in Babylon: “I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you” (Jer. 29:10). In each case the visit is a promise kept.

Verse 1 says it twice: the LORD visited Sarah “as he had said,” and did for her “as he had spoken.” Verse 2 adds that the son came “at the set time of which God had spoken,” the time named a year before (Gen. 17:21; Gen. 18:14). Hebrews gives Sarah her share in it: she “received strength to conceive seed… because she judged him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11).

2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.

3 And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac.

4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him.

5 And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.

6 And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

Language #

Laughter God made for Sarah

Sarah’s words play on her son’s name. Isaac, Yitschaq, means “he laughs,” and Genesis plays on the name each time the promise is told: Abraham “laughed” when he first heard it…

Sarah’s words play on her son’s name. Isaac, Yitschaq, means “he laughs,” and Genesis plays on the name each time the promise is told: Abraham “laughed” when he first heard it (Gen. 17:17), and Sarah “laughed within herself” at the tent door (Gen. 18:12). Now Sarah says, literally, “Laughter (tsechoq) God has made for me; everyone who hears will laugh (yitschaq) for me.” The verb is spelled with the same letters as the boy’s name.

The laughter has changed hands. At the tent door the LORD asked, “Wherefore did Sarah laugh?” (Gen. 18:13); now God Himself has given it. The last phrase can be heard two ways. With this preposition the verb can mean to laugh “at” or “concerning” someone, so the line may say that people will laugh over Sarah; the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, took it as joy shared: “whoever shall hear shall rejoice with me.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

7 And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have born him a son in his old age.

Verses 8–13

Sarah’s demand and God’s answer

In plain words

The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw the son that Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham mocking. She said to Abraham, “Send away this slave woman and her son. The son of this slave woman will not share the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

This troubled Abraham deeply, because Ishmael was his son. But God said to him, “Do not be troubled about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your descendants will be named. I will make the slave woman’s son into a nation too, because he is your child.”

8 And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.

9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking.

Language #

What was Ishmael doing?

The word translated “mocking” comes from the same root as Isaac’s name, so Sarah sees Ishmael doing, in effect, what Isaac’s name says.

The word translated “mocking” comes from the same root as Isaac’s name, so Sarah sees Ishmael doing, in effect, what Isaac’s name says. The form here, metsacheq, means to jest or to “sport, play,” and the Septuagint fills out the sentence: Sarah saw him “sporting with Isaac her son.” “Laughing” or “playing” may be the closer translation, but those words alone “would not explain Sarah’s violent reaction.”

What exactly Ishmael did “is unclear.” Readers have proposed everything from innocent play to abuse. Two things in the text limit the guesses. Ishmael was no small boy but a teenager (see the note on verse 14). And Sarah takes it as a threat; the “mocking” “appears to pose some sort of a threat to the family and their beliefs.” Paul reads it as hostility: “he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit” (Gal. 4:29).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.

Context #

Why Sarah asked Abraham to send them away

Sarah’s demand is about the inheritance: “the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son.”

Sarah’s demand is about the inheritance: “the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son.” Ishmael was Abraham’s firstborn, by Hagar, whom Sarah herself had given him as a wife (Gen. 16:1–3). Babylonian law gave such a son a share only on a condition. In the laws of Hammurabi, if a father had said to his maid-servant’s children, “My sons,” they would “divide the paternal property in common” with the wife’s sons; if he had not, they did not share, “but the freedom of the maid and her sons shall be granted.” Sending Ishmael away settled the question for Isaac, and the text “seems to imply that she left as a free woman,” perhaps on the same principle.

Latter-day Saint readers judge Sarah’s motive differently. In one reading, God’s answer, “in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice” (verse 12), shows that her request “was more than a vindictive response to perceived slights against her son but was, in fact, divine will,” and what prompted it may have been concern “that the birthright may go to the wrong child.” In another, we are not “to overlook this tragic moment by seeing it as God’s will”: Sarah “seems to have lived in fear that somehow Ishmael would hurt or displace Isaac.”

The text holds both the grief and the sanction. The demand was “very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son” (verse 11), and Abraham agreed “only because the Lord sanctions it and promises Abraham once again that he will make Ishmael a great nation.” Read that way, the episode is “heartfelt, not heartless, and reflects obedience rather than malice.”

Sources: L. W. King (trans.), The Code of Hammurabi, Read in the Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. Amy Easton, ““You Are the God Who Sees Me”: God’s Loving-Kindness to Hagar”, In Tender Mercies and Loving-Kindness: The Goodness of God in the Old Testament, ed. David Rolph Seely, Jo Ann H. Seely, Joshua M. Sears, Joshua M. Matson, and Beverly Yellowhorse (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2025), 19–36. Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son.

12 And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

Related Scriptures #

“In Isaac shall thy seed be called”

God’s answer moves the question from inheritance to covenant: Abraham’s line of promise will be named in Isaac: “from among the several sons of Abraham, the covenant was to be upon Isaac.”

The New Testament quotes the verse twice. Hebrews uses it to show what Abraham was giving up at Moriah: the son “of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called” (Heb. 11:18). Paul uses it to define who the seed is: “Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:7–8). In Galatians he quotes Sarah’s words from verse 10 as “the scripture” (Gal. 4:30) and reads the two sons as an allegory “to show the difference between the two covenants, the one a covenant of bondage and the other one of freedom.”

Restoration scripture uses the same language for those who receive the gospel. The Lord told Abraham that “as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed” (Abr. 2:10).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Genesis”, Bible Dictionary. “Hagar”, Bible Dictionary.

13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.

Related Scriptures #

A nation from Ishmael

Ishmael is blessed for Abraham’s sake: “because he is thy seed.” God had already promised it when Abraham pleaded, “O that Ishmael might live before thee!”: “twelve princes shall…

Ishmael is blessed for Abraham’s sake: “because he is thy seed.” God had already promised it when Abraham pleaded, “O that Ishmael might live before thee!”: “twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation” (Gen. 17:18–20). Genesis later records the fulfillment, the sons of Ishmael, “twelve princes according to their nations” (Gen. 25:16). So Ishmael “also played a role in the fulfillment of Abraham’s promised blessings,” and Hagar’s descendants are “part and parcel with the promises of what we call the Abrahamic covenant.”

Latter-day revelation says the same of Hagar: “from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises” (D&C 132:34). The covenant line runs through Isaac (verse 12), but Ishmael stays under God’s care (verses 17–20), and at the end the brothers stand together: “his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah” (Gen. 25:9).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Genesis 18–23, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.

Verses 14–21

Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness

In plain words

Early the next morning Abraham took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, setting them on her shoulder, and sent her away with the boy. She wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy down under one of the bushes, went and sat down about a bowshot away, and said, “Let me not watch the boy die.” She sat there and wept aloud.

God heard the boy’s voice, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven: “What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy’s voice where he lies. Get up, lift the boy, and hold him by the hand, for I will make him a great nation.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She filled the skin and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an archer. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother found him a wife from Egypt.

14 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.

Context #

How old was Ishmael?

Ishmael was a teenager, not a baby. He was born when Abraham was eighty-six (Gen. 16:16) and circumcised at thirteen (Gen. 17:25), and Isaac was born when Abraham was a hundred (verse 5).

Ishmael was a teenager, not a baby. He was born when Abraham was eighty-six (Gen. 16:16) and circumcised at thirteen (Gen. 17:25), and Isaac was born when Abraham was a hundred (verse 5). So Ishmael “was not a helpless, unaccountable child, but a teenager”: about fourteen at Isaac’s birth, and, if Isaac was weaned at three or four, “close to seventeen years old” when he was sent away. Estimates “range from fifteen to seventeen.”

The KJV’s word order makes it sound as if Abraham set the child on Hagar’s shoulder, and the Septuagint read it that way: “he put the child on her shoulder.” In the Hebrew, though, “putting” is a participle, and one reading sets it off as a parenthesis, so that “the child” goes with the main verb, “took”: Abraham took bread and water, and the boy, set the provisions on her shoulder, and sent them away. On that reading the words translated “child” and “lad” (yeled, na‘ar) do “not mean an infant, but a boy, and also a young man,” and when Hagar “cast the child under one of the shrubs” (verse 15), she “suddenly left hold of the boy, when he fell exhausted from thirst.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.

15 And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.

16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.

17 And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.

Language #

God heard

This scene is Ishmael’s name coming true. Yishma‘el means “God hears.”

This scene is Ishmael’s name coming true. Yishma‘el means “God hears.” The angel gave Hagar the name before he was born, “because the LORD hath heard thy affliction” (Gen. 16:11). Now the verb comes twice in one verse: “God heard (vayyishma‘) the voice of the lad,” and “God hath heard (shama‘) the voice of the lad where he is.” In the Hebrew text it is Hagar who weeps aloud in verse 16 (the Septuagint has the boy cry aloud instead), yet it is the boy’s voice that God hears, as his name had promised.

The angel calls Hagar by name, and the promise God made to Abraham in verse 13 is now made to her in verse 18. She, an Egyptian slave woman sent out of Abraham’s household, is “worthy enough to receive divine revelation herself.” Her story shows that God “loves all of his children… bond and free,” in the words Nephi uses of the Lord, who “denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Ne. 26:33).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.

18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.

19 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.

Literary Structure #

Two sons, two rescues

Hagar’s rescue is told in the same pattern as Isaac’s in the next chapter, and the likeness shows God saving both of Abraham’s sons.

Hagar’s rescue is told in the same pattern as Isaac’s in the next chapter, and the likeness shows God saving both of Abraham’s sons. In both stories Abraham “rose up early in the morning” (verse 14; Gen. 22:3) and laid something on the one going out: bread and water on Hagar’s shoulder, the wood on Isaac (Gen. 22:6). Both journeys begin from Beer-sheba. In both, at the last moment, an angel calls “out of heaven” (verse 17; Gen. 22:11). And in both the rescue comes through sight: “God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water,” and “Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram” (Gen. 22:13). An angel “saves both sons from death at the last moment by keeping Abraham from killing Isaac and providing water to Ishmael.”

Both stories also name a place for seeing. At her first flight Hagar had named the LORD “Thou God seest me,” and the well was called for it (Gen. 16:13–14); Abraham gives the mountain a name about seeing, Jehovah-jireh (see the note on Gen. 22:14). Here “God has enabled her to see what she cannot see on her own.” Read together, the two stories remind readers “of God’s abundant love and full support for all people, regardless of their background.”

Sources: Scripture Central, “Why Might Similarities Between the Expulsion of Hagar and Abraham’s Near-Sacrifice of Isaac Be Meaningful and Significant?”, KnoWhy #839, Feb. 17, 2026. Amy Easton, ““You Are the God Who Sees Me”: God’s Loving-Kindness to Hagar”, In Tender Mercies and Loving-Kindness: The Goodness of God in the Old Testament, ed. David Rolph Seely, Jo Ann H. Seely, Joshua M. Sears, Joshua M. Matson, and Beverly Yellowhorse (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2025), 19–36. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

20 And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.

21 And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.

Verses 22–34

The oath at Beer-sheba

In plain words

At that time Abimelech, with Phichol the commander of his army, said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything you do. So swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me, my son, or my grandson. Show me and the land where you have lived the same kindness I have shown you.” Abraham said, “I swear it.”

Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized. Abimelech said, “I do not know who did this. You never told me, and I did not hear of it until today.” Abraham gave Abimelech sheep and cattle, and the two made a covenant. Abraham set seven ewe lambs apart, and when Abimelech asked what they meant, he said, “Take these seven lambs from me as a witness that I dug this well.” So the place was called Beer-sheba, because the two of them swore an oath there. After they made the covenant, Abimelech and Phichol went back to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beer-sheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. And Abraham lived in the land of the Philistines for a long time.

22 And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest:

Context #

Abimelech asks for an oath

Abimelech is the king of Gerar from the previous chapter, who took Sarah, was warned in a dream, and gave her back (Gen. 20:1–18).

Abimelech is the king of Gerar from the previous chapter, who took Sarah, was warned in a dream, and gave her back (Gen. 20:1–18). He had then told Abraham, “my land is before thee: dwell where it pleaseth thee” (Gen. 20:15); that is the “kindness that I have done unto thee” of verse 23. Gerar was no village. Its Middle Bronze Age fortifications “enclose an area of forty acres, making the site one of the largest in southern Canaan,” and Beer-sheba was “a place under the control of Gerar.” Yet the king comes to the herdsman for an oath, because of what he has seen: “God is with thee in all that thou doest.”

The scene comes back in Isaac’s day. Abimelech and “Phichol the chief captain of his army” come to Isaac and say, “We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee” (Gen. 26:26–31). Whether this is the same king is not certain: Abraham and Isaac met “a ruler, or successive rulers, in the area named Abimelech,” and the two accounts may be “an early tradition having been preserved in two different forms.” The “land of the Philistines” to which Abimelech returns (verse 32) is the lowland on the Mediterranean coast, which the Philistines occupied “before the days of Abraham.”

Sources: “Abimelech”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92. “Philistines”, Bible Dictionary.

23 Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son’s son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned.

24 And Abraham said, I will swear.

25 And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech’s servants had violently taken away.

26 And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing: neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but to day.

27 And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant.

28 And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.

29 And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves?

30 And he said, For these seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well.

31 Wherefore he called that place Beer-sheba; because there they sware both of them.

Language #

Well of seven, well of the oath

Beer-sheba means both “well of seven” and “well of the oath,” and the story uses both.

Beer-sheba means both “well of seven” and “well of the oath,” and the story uses both. Be’er is “well,” and sheva‘ is “seven”; the verb “swear,” nishba‘, comes from the same root, probably from binding oneself “by seven things.” So Abraham sets apart seven ewe lambs (verses 28–30), and the place is named “because there they sware both of them” (nishbe‘u). The Septuagint translates the name outright: “The Well of the Oath.”

The lambs were a witness, not a price. Abraham had dug the well, and Abimelech’s servants had seized it (verse 25); by taking the lambs, Abimelech accepted them as a witness “that I have digged this well” (verse 30). In one reading, the gift was “not to redeem the well, but to secure the well as his property against any fresh claims.” Abraham, a sojourner, now held a well by oath.

Genesis gives the name a second origin in Isaac’s day, when Isaac’s servants found water and he called the well “Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba unto this day” (Gen. 26:33). The place became the home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and later “the southern limit of Israel,” as in the phrase “from Dan even to Beer-sheba” (Judg. 20:1). Abraham had been at both ends of that line (he pursued Lot’s captors “unto Dan,” Gen. 14:14), and his presence at both “allowed Israel to know that both sites fell within the land promised to them.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Beersheba”, Bible Dictionary. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.

32 Thus they made a covenant at Beer-sheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines.

33 And Abraham planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.

Language #

A tamarisk, not a grove

What was planted at Beer-sheba was a tamarisk. The Hebrew word, eshel, means “tamarisk-tree,” and the lexicon adds that it “was perhaps a sacred tree, marking shrine.”

What was planted at Beer-sheba was a tamarisk. The Hebrew word, eshel, means “tamarisk-tree,” and the lexicon adds that it “was perhaps a sacred tree, marking shrine.” The KJV’s “grove” is the word it uses for something quite different: the asherah, “either a living tree or a tree-like pole, set up as an object of worship,” which the law forbade beside the LORD’s altar (Deut. 16:21). A reader who knows those groves may stop here; the Hebrew does not describe one.

The Joseph Smith Translation tells the end of the chapter differently. In it Abimelech and Phicol “planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord” before going home, and “Abraham worshiped the everlasting God, and sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days” (JST Gen. 21:31–32). The revision does not explain itself; what it adds is a Philistine king and his captain calling on the LORD’s name.

Language #

El Olam, the everlasting God

“The everlasting God” is El ‘olam. ‘Olam means “long duration,” reaching back into antiquity or forward without end.

“The everlasting God” is El ‘olam. ‘Olam means “long duration,” reaching back into antiquity or forward without end. Used of God, it describes His own existence, as in Isaiah’s “the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isa. 40:28). It is also the word in the “everlasting covenant” God had promised Abraham (Gen. 17:7).

In one reading the name was chosen with that covenant in mind: the LORD is called “the everlasting God, as the eternally true, with respect to the eternal covenant, which He established with Abraham.” The name joins the LORD (YHWH, Jehovah) to El ‘olam: “the LORD, the everlasting God.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

34 And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines’ land many days.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 21

Isaac is the son God promised, named before he was conceived (Gen. 17:19) and born “at the set time of which God had spoken” (verse 2). In this he is “a type of the Son of God…. Like Jesus, he was the product of a miraculous birth,” though “Isaac’s birth certainly was not as miraculous as the birth of Jesus through Mary.”

Paul carries the line from Isaac to those who come to Christ: “we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise” (Gal. 4:28), and “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29).

Worth exploring next

Hagar’s first flight. Gen. 16:1–16, where she names the God who sees her and the well where He found her.
Paul’s allegory. Gal. 4:21–31, with Isa. 54:1, which Paul quotes in the middle of it.
The second oath at Beer-sheba. Gen. 26:17–33: Isaac’s wells, and Abimelech and Phichol again.
Ishmael’s line. Gen. 25:9–18; D&C 132:34.
Hagar’s whole story. “‘You Are the God Who Sees Me’: God’s Loving-Kindness to Hagar” (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2025) follows her through both chapters.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
“Genesis”, Bible Dictionary.
“Hagar”, Bible Dictionary.
“Abimelech”, Bible Dictionary.
“Philistines”, Bible Dictionary.
“Beersheba”, Bible Dictionary.
“Grove”, Bible Dictionary.
Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 21, Joseph Smith Translation Appendix, Gospel Library.
Genesis 18–23, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
Genesis 18–23: Abraham—A Model of Faith and Righteousness, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).
Scripture Central, “Why Might Similarities Between the Expulsion of Hagar and Abraham’s Near-Sacrifice of Isaac Be Meaningful and Significant?”, KnoWhy #839, Feb. 17, 2026.
Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.
Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84.
Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425.
Amy Easton, ““You Are the God Who Sees Me”: God’s Loving-Kindness to Hagar”, In Tender Mercies and Loving-Kindness: The Goodness of God in the Old Testament, ed. David Rolph Seely, Jo Ann H. Seely, Joshua M. Sears, Joshua M. Matson, and Beverly Yellowhorse (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2025), 19–36.
L. W. King (trans.), The Code of Hammurabi, Read in the Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.

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