Kejadian 21:15-17

21:15 When the water in the skin was gone, she shoved ¹  the child under one of the shrubs. 21:16 Then she went and sat down by herself across from him at quite a distance, about a bowshot ²  away; for she thought, ³  “I refuse to watch the child die.” ⁴  So she sat across from him and wept uncontrollably. ⁵ 

21:17 But God heard the boy’s voice. ⁶  The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and asked her, “What is the matter, ⁷  Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard ⁸  the boy’s voice right where he is crying.

[21:15]  ¹ tn Heb “threw,” but the child, who was now thirteen years old, would not have been carried, let alone thrown under a bush. The exaggerated language suggests Ishmael is limp from dehydration and is being abandoned to die. See G. J. Wenham, Genesis (WBC), 2:85.

[21:16]  ² sn A bowshot would be a distance of about a hundred yards (ninety meters).

[21:16]  ³ tn Heb “said.”

[21:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “I will not look on the death of the child.” The cohortative verbal form (note the negative particle אַל,’al) here expresses her resolve to avoid the stated action.

[21:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “and she lifted up her voice and wept” (that is, she wept uncontrollably). The LXX reads “he” (referring to Ishmael) rather than “she” (referring to Hagar), but this is probably an attempt to harmonize this verse with the following one, which refers to the boy’s cries.

[21:17]  ⁶ sn God heard the boy’s voice. The text has not to this point indicated that Ishmael was crying out, either in pain or in prayer. But the text here makes it clear that God heard him. Ishmael is clearly central to the story. Both the mother and the Lord are focused on the child’s imminent death.

[21:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “What to you?”

[21:17]  ⁸ sn Here the verb heard picks up the main motif of the name Ishmael (“God hears”), introduced back in chap. 16.