Abram’s silence
Genesis16：1-6 Sister Xiang 8/23/2026
Introduction
When we see the name Abram, we may wonder, “Who is this?” If we have read Genesis 17, we certainly know that this was Abraham’s name before God changed it.
In the eyes of the world, what Abram did was, without a doubt, the behavior of a complete scoundrel. He had not a word of comfort for his barren wife. He went along with the idea of having a child through his maidservant, seemingly half-heartedly. And when the maidservant looked down on his wife, he did not even have the courage to speak a single word of justice.
As a result, his wife treated the maidservant harshly, and the pregnant maidservant eventually fled from the household.
But God’s ways are higher than our ways. God’s intention is not for us to judge him morally from the perspective of the world. Rather, through the course of his life, God is shaping His children, so that we may have life—and have it more abundantly.
The Silence After the Covenant
If we begin reading from Genesis 16:1, we might think that the whole episode began with the despair of Abram and Sarai over being childless. But we cannot overlook an important background found in Genesis 15:4–5. God had already said, “One who comes from your own body shall be your heir,” and that Abram’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars.
Furthermore, in verse 18, God made a covenant with Abram, promising that his descendants would surely inherit the land.
So, this was actually not a situation of hopelessness over having no descendants. Yet Abram and his wife Sarai interpreted their situation as though it were hopeless and proceeded to act it out that way.
1.The Despair of a Barren Wife
In Genesis 11:30, even before they left Ur, the Bible introduces Sarai by saying that she was barren. Although she was an exceedingly beautiful woman, the text does not mention her beauty here. Instead, it makes her childlessness her defining characteristic.
In the Middle East at that time, women were married at a very young age. If Sarai had married at the customary age, she would have been about 76 years old by this point and may have been married to her husband for nearly 60 years. Throughout those long years, there had been countless attempts and countless hopes, yet not a single result.
For Sarai, no matter how beautiful a woman might be, being unable to bear children was a source of tremendous shame—and tremendous despair.
She was already 76 years old. She lived to be 127, so at 76 she was nearly 60 percent through her lifetime. If we use an average lifespan of 80 years today as a comparison, that would be roughly equivalent to being 48 years old. At that stage of life, a woman would be approaching menopause and the loss of her fertility, or may already have lost it.
Would this particular season of life have brought even greater despair and anxiety? Judging from Sarai’s actions, the answer seems clear: the despair of her circumstances consumed her faith in God’s promise.
2.The Temptation of the Foreign Maidservant
Regarding the major issue of being without an heir, the surrounding cultures had already developed various customary laws and social practices to address the problem. In later generations, these customs were codified into written laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia and the Nuzi tablets from Canaan. If a wife could not bear children, she could give her maidservant to her husband as a secondary wife, and any child born through the maidservant would be regarded as belonging to the wife.
In a wealthy household like Abraham’s, there would have been many young and beautiful maidservants, and Hagar was only one of them. Her ability to bear children may have been what made her attractive, but what is even more significant is her background. Immediately after giving her name, the Bible identifies her as an Egyptian.
Egypt was the very place where, generations later, the Israelites would be enslaved for more than 400 years.
This was the temptation of a foreign culture—and ultimately, it was like quenching one’s thirst with poison.
3.Abram’s Silence
Regarding his wife’s inability to bear children, Abram remained silent before God. In Genesis 25:21, we see a striking contrast in the account of his son Isaac. Because his wife was barren, Isaac prayed to the Lord for her for twenty years, and the Lord answered his prayer and allowed his wife to conceive. What a remarkable contrast!
In Genesis 15, when God promised Abram that his descendants would inherit the land, Abram directly asked God, “How may I know that I shall possess it?” Yet he did not ask, “Must the heir come from my wife and me?” Nor did he ask, “Could a child born to me through someone else be considered my heir?” Or, more directly, “My wife is so old—can she still have a child?”
On these questions, Abram remained silent. By contrast, the question he did ask was about how he could know that he would possess the land.
He did not tell his wife about God’s promise, nor did he invite her to pray together. In Genesis 20:17, we see him praying for the women in Abimelech’s household who were unable to bear children, and God answered his prayer. Once again, this stands in striking contrast to his silence regarding his own wife’s barrenness.
Listening to His Wife’s Words
When Abram remained silent before God, he was equally silent when faced with his wife’s suggestion. He did not question it, instruct her, or wait on God. Without any resistance, he accepted the temptation to sin.
1.Sarai’s Scheme
Faced with two seemingly irreconcilable realities—on the one hand, God’s promise that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and on the other hand, the long-standing reality of infertility, now compounded by their advanced age—Sarai chose to trust reason and circumstances. She believed that the reality of infertility was irreversible, rather than trusting that, through God’s faithfulness and power, what was as good as dead could be brought back to life.
When I first came to faith, I was much like Sarai. I chose reason and what seemed to be reality. No matter what, I could not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I thought it was nothing more than a deceptive fairy tale. I thank the Lord for giving me faith and allowing me to see the limitations of human reason and what we perceive as reality, and that we cannot use them to place limits on God’s power. This transformation was a problem I could never have solved on my own. It was entirely the work of the Holy Spirit’s power, and to this day, I remain deeply grateful.
We also see that when people are unable to look to God, they begin trying to solve the despair they see through human customs and laws. Sarai gave her maidservant to her husband, and the cycle of despair continued to unfold. It continued until Sarai was despised by her maidservant, the family was torn apart, and the consequences would reverberate for generations.
2.The Spread of Sin
So Abram listened to his wife. According to the customs and standards of the world, it seemed perfectly reasonable. There was also the temptation of a beautiful woman and the promise of finally having a child. This scene may feel strangely familiar to us.
When we read Genesis 3:6, we see that Eve took the fruit and ate it, and then gave some to her husband, and he ate it. Is Adam’s silence essentially the same as Abram’s silence? Is this the same pattern of sin that humanity has continued to repeat throughout history?
When we place these two passages side by side, the parallel is deeply sobering, isn’t it? Sadly, this pattern continues to appear in our own lives today. We must remain watchful.
3.Abram’s Silence—Again
Abram remained silent in response to his wife’s suggestion. He could not bring himself to say, “God will surely give you a child.” He did not pray with his wife. Perhaps, rationally speaking, he was convinced that his wife would never be able to bear a child again. Like his wife, he believed that human reasoning was greater than God’s promise.
So, in Genesis 17, when Abram was 100 years old, God continued to teach him this lesson: he would have to experience and believe in God’s power to bring their dead reproductive capacity back to life.
Nor could Abram say, “It doesn’t matter if we never have a child. As long as I have you, I am content.” The child had become a necessity for him; to some extent, the child had become an idol.
When conflict arose between his wife and his maidservant, he remained silent. Paul teaches, “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute is one with her?” For he says, “The two will become one flesh” (1 Corinthians 6:16). Abram was supposed to be one with his wife, yet he had also become one with Hagar. He did not know whom to support, so perhaps his silence is not surprising.
After Hagar was mistreated and fled, he remained silent again. There was neither justice nor mercy.
Most importantly, after he had fathered a child with Hagar, he did not recognize his own wrongdoing. He continued to remain silent before God.
The Cost of Silence
The cost of Abram’s silence was that, although he suffered many painful consequences, its impact on his family and on history went far beyond anything he could have imagined.
1.The Breakdown of the Family
Although Abram and Sarai did not divorce, the family order established by God was disrupted. What had originally been a healthy relationship between husband and wife now had a third person in it. Hagar, the maidservant, looked down on her mistress, while Sarai mistreated Hagar. The two women were constantly at odds, leaving Abram caught in the middle and exhausted from trying to manage the conflict.
He was supposed to be one flesh with the wife God had given him, yet he had also become one flesh with a foreign maidservant. This created a rupture in both his physical and spiritual life.
Sarai had hoped to claim the child as her own, yet even before the child was born, she was already being provoked and looked down upon by her maidservant. Hagar, who had hoped that bearing a child would elevate her status, was instead mistreated and eventually fled.
In the end, none of the three truly benefited. None experienced the blessing God intended for the family.
2.The Son’s Crisis
The couple had originally expected Hagar to become pregnant, safely give birth to a son, and for the child to be regarded as Sarai’s own. Instead, after being mistreated, Hagar fled.
A pregnant woman wandering in the wilderness could have miscarried, lost her life, or returned to Egypt. Any of these outcomes could have left Abram with nothing to show for his efforts. This was surely not the outcome he had anticipated at the beginning.
If the angel of the Lord had not intervened and urged Hagar to return, the consequences could have been devastating.
3.Historical Conflict
Abram could never have imagined that these negative consequences would extend far beyond his family. They would contribute to more than 1,400 years of conflict and bloodshed in the Middle East, as well as sharp religious opposition.
This opposition includes the denial of the Trinity, the Incarnation, Christ’s divinity, and salvation through the cross—teachings that Christians understand as antichrist doctrines, leaving countless people under this curse.
If Abram had known all of this, would he have been filled with deep regret? Would he have wished he had never made that decision?
Conclusion
Abram’s silence was, before his name was changed to Abraham, a painful chapter in his life—one he would probably rather not look back on.
His silence reflected his choice to rely on his own limited faith rather than trust God’s promise. He compromised with the customs and culture of the world, struggled to resist the temptation of beauty, and became almost idolatrously attached to the idea of having an heir.
Yet we should also remember that, before this, Abram had reached a spiritual high point in the way he handled wealth. He committed himself to giving a tenth and understood that it was the Lord who had made him prosperous.
Now God was teaching him another lesson: to experience and believe in God’s power to bring life out of what was dead—a faith that would later prepare him for the offering of Isaac.
Abram stumbled this time. But God did not abandon him. Instead, God taught him this lesson again, enabled him to rise once more, and ultimately shaped him into the father of faith.
This is also a path that each of us must walk. The revelation of the growth of the father of faith is a profound expression of God’s grace. It enables us to break free from the limitations of human reason and circumstances, to believe all things and hope all things, and to preserve us on our journey of faith.
Dear friends who are still exploring the gospel, are you still clinging to human reason and what you perceive as reality? Before God, these things are so limited and unworthy, and they have been corrupted by sin.
Let us lay them down, turn to God, and fix our eyes upon Him.
Genesis 16:1-6
1Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.
2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children[a] by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.
4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.[b]
5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!”
6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.
