“So now, please let your servant remain as my lord’s slave instead of the boy. As for the boy, let him go back with his brothers.

So he said to his servants, “You two stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go up there. We will worship and then return to you.”

Get up! Help the boy up and hold him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

God was with the boy as he grew. He lived in the wilderness and became an archer.

“So now, when I return to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us – his very life is bound up in his son’s life.

But God heard the boy’s voice. The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and asked her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard the boy’s voice right where he is crying.

I will take nothing except compensation for what the young men have eaten. As for the share of the men who went with me – Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre – let them take their share.”

Then Abraham ran to the herd and chose a fine, tender calf, and gave it to a servant, who quickly prepared it.

Before they could lie down to sleep, all the men – both young and old, from every part of the city of Sodom – surrounded the house.

Then God enabled Hagar to see a well of water. She went over and filled the skin with water, and then gave the boy a drink.

Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer Sheba where Abraham stayed.

When the boys grew up, Esau became a skilled hunter, a man of the open fields, but Jacob was an even-tempered man, living in tents.

The young man did not delay in doing what they asked because he wanted Jacob’s daughter Dinah badly. (Now he was more important than anyone in his father’s household.)

Now a young man, a Hebrew, a servant of the captain of the guards, was with us there. We told him our dreams, and he interpreted the meaning of each of our respective dreams for us.

We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father. If he leaves his father, his father will die.’

When he sees the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father in sorrow to the grave.

Indeed, your servant pledged security for the boy with my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I will bear the blame before my father all my life.’

For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I couldn’t bear to see my father’s pain.”

But God said to Abraham, “Do not be upset about the boy or your slave wife. Do all that Sarah is telling you because through Isaac your descendants will be counted.

Early in the morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants with him, along with his son Isaac. When he had cut the wood for the burnt offering, he started out for the place God had spoken to him about.