The story of Abram begins near the end of Genesis 11 and takes center stage at the start of chapter 12. He figures prominently in every narrative, from the migration to Canaan to the flight into Egypt to his separation from Lot. Even when the subject is a war between allied kings of Mesopotamia and Canaan, Abram becomes the focus by rescuing his nephew and meeting with the kings of Salem and Sodom upon his return. Then in chapter 15, the Lord himself enters into covenant with the man, Abram, an act of extreme condescension on the Almighty’s part. So it is quite surprising when we turn to chapter 16 and discover Abram’s wife, Sarai, taking control of the action. It is true that “God intervenes with His overruling providence, wisdom, and grace,” as Griffith-Thomas says, yet the whole chapter is driven by Sarai’s ideas, words, and actions.
Just look at how prominently Sarai appears in verses 1 and 2, where she is identified seven times either by name or pronoun:
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the LORD has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.
Genesis 16:1-2
From the opening line, she is described as though failing to perform the one duty she owed to her husband: bearing him children. And it seems that this wifely responsibility weighed heavily on her, and ever more so in the ten years that had passed since God first promised that Abram would have numerous offspring (cf. 16:3,16). And while Sarai rightly recognized that it is God who opens and closes the womb, and therefore God who had so far prevented her from bearing children, she spoke as though God had been negligent in fulfilling his promises.
Instead of conceiving a child, Sarai conceived a plan to build a family for herself by offering her Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, to Abram as a secondary wife. This was not unusual or scandalous by the standards of the day, but it clearly violates the design of marriage which God established in the very beginning (Gen. 2:23-24), and it would prove to be disastrous by any kind of reckoning.
The final line of v.2 reveals Abram acting in a passive role, giving way to the desire and planning of his wife: “And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with a man listening to the voice of his wife. In fact, God made the first woman to be a helper compatible to the man, and so he has intended wives to be to their own husbands ever since. If a man so devalues his wife that he refuses to listen to her, he is a fool and fails to acknowledge God’s wisdom and goodness in creating the sexes. But what is striking in Genesis 16 isn’t that the woman has an opinion or idea, but that she dominates the narrative. The text continues:
Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.
Genesis 16:3
And Abram dutifully followed his wife’s scheme, having sexual relations with Hagar, impregnating her. This led, unsurprisingly, to conflict between the two women, with the fruitful Hagar looking down on her barren mistress. It is Sarai, not Abram, whose voice we hear in v.5, boldly accusing her husband of having wronged her, claiming to want God to judge between them. “My wrong be upon you!” she said, “I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The LORD judge between you and me.”
What does the man Abram do when confronted with such an in-your-face accusation? Remember that this man took 318 household servants and marched through the night to overtake and ambush the kings of Mesopotamia, yet he once again becomes compliant in the face of his wife’s scolding. In v.6 we hear Abram’s only words in this chapter: “Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please.”
Whatever else we may say about this chapter (and I will have other points to address in my upcoming sermon), it shows the dysfunction that occurs when a wife takes command over her husband to bring about what she considers to be the right course of action. Sarai could argue that she was only trying to preserve God’s promise and see it fulfilled, but even if her motives were entirely pure (and I am not convinced they were), the results strongly suggest that her plan was misguided and immoral. But what about her husband? Does he escape responsibility? Of course not! Instead of doing what was right and leading her to trust God to provide an heir in his time as promised, Abram offered no resistance. He became a follower instead of a leader, and exposed his wife to ridicule instead of being her loving protector.
This seems to be the very sort of thing that happened in the garden of Eden, where after deciding for herself that the fruit was good and God’s prohibition unnecessary, the woman “also gave to her husband with her, and he ate” (Gen. 3:6). And it has been repeated down through the centuries millions of times over, and the consequences are usually not much better than what we find in Genesis 16 and following.
God’s design for marriage is good. By it he calls each of us to die to self and live by faith. When he seems to delay, we must learn patience. When faced with the temptation to compromise, we must stand firm, believing that God’s way is perfect. The disastrous results of ignoring God’s plan may be unintended, but they should not be unexpected. Trying to fulfill God’s plan using the world’s methods will fail and bring about much pain in the process.