Genesis 16:1-16
The Birth of Ishmael
16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not given birth to any children, but she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar.
16:2 So Sarai said to Abram, “Since the Lord has prevented me from having children, have sexual relations with my servant. Perhaps I can have a family by her.” Abram did what Sarai told him.
16:3 So after Abram had lived in Canaan for ten years, Sarai, Abram’s wife, gave Hagar, her Egyptian servant, to her husband to be his wife.
16:4 He had sexual relations with Hagar, and she became pregnant. Once Hagar realized she was pregnant, she despised Sarai.
16:5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You have brought this wrong on me! I allowed my servant to have sexual relations with you, but when she realized that she was pregnant, she despised me. May the Lord judge between you and me!”
16:6 Abram said to Sarai, “Since your servant is under your authority, do to her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai treated Hagar harshly, so she ran away from Sarai.
16:7 The Lord’s angel found Hagar near a spring of water in the desert – the spring that is along the road to Shur.
16:8 He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She replied, “I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.”
16:9 Then the Lord’s angel said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.
16:10 I will greatly multiply your descendants,” the Lord’s angel added, “so that they will be too numerous to count.”
16:11 Then the Lord’s angel said to her,
“You are now pregnant
and are about to give birth to a son.
You are to name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard your painful groans.
16:12 He will be a wild donkey of a man.
He will be hostile to everyone,
and everyone will be hostile to him.
He will live away from his brothers.”
16:13 So Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “Here I have seen one who sees me!”
16:14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi. (It is located between Kadesh and Bered.)
16:15 So Hagar gave birth to Abram’s son, whom Abram named Ishmael.
16:16 (Now Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.)
Genesis 14:13
14:13 A fugitive came and told Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and Aner. (All these were allied by treaty with Abram.)
Leviticus 26:26
26:26 When I break off your supply of bread,
ten women will bake your bread in one oven; they will ration your bread by weight,
and you will eat and not be satisfied.
Deuteronomy 28:51-68
28:51 They
will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds,
or lambs of your flocks
until they have destroyed you.
28:52 They will besiege all of your villages
until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the
Lord your God has given you.
28:53 You will then eat your own offspring,
the flesh of the sons and daughters the
Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege
by which your enemies will constrict you.
28:54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children.
28:55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict
you in your villages.
28:56 Likewise, the most
tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness,
will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters,
28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth
and her newborn children
(since she has nothing else),
because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.
The Curse of Covenant Termination
28:58 “If you refuse to obey all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God,
28:59 then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants – great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses.
28:60 He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you.
28:61 Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, until you have perished.
28:62 There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the Lord your God.
28:63 This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.
28:64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone.
28:65 Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair.
28:66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next.
28:67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see.
28:68 Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
Isaiah 3:1
A Coming Leadership Crisis
3:1 Look, the sovereign Lord who commands armies
is about to remove from Jerusalem and Judah
every source of security, including
all the food and water,