6. Laughter has God made me. The ambiguity of both the noun tseḥoq (“laughter”) and the accompanying preposition li (“to” or “for” or “with” or “at” me) is wonderfully suited to the complexity of the moment. It may be laughter, triumphant joy, that Sarah experiences and that is the name of the child Isaac (“he-who-laughs”). But in her very exultation, she could well feel the absurdity (as Kafka noted in one of his parables) of a nonagenarian becoming a mother. Tseḥoq also means “mockery,” and perhaps God is doing something to her as well as for her. (In poetry, the verb tsaḥaq is often linked in parallelism with laʿag, to scorn or mock, and it should be noted that laʿag is invariably followed by the preposition l^e, as tsaḥaq is here.) All who hear of it may laugh, rejoice, with Sarah, but the hint that they might also laugh at her is evident in her language.

7. uttered. The Hebrew milel is a term that occurs only in poetic texts and is presumably high diction, perhaps archaic.

For I have born a son in his old age. In a symmetrical reversal of God’s report in chapter 18 of Sarah’s interior monologue, where Abraham’s advanced age was suppressed, Sarah’s postpartum poem, like the narrator’s report that precedes it, mentions only his old age. Hers is implied by her marveling reference to herself as an old woman suckling infants, a pointed reversal of her own allusion in chapter 18 to her shriveled body.

9. laughing. Hebrew metsaḥeq. The same verb that meant “mocking” or “joking” in Lot’s encounter with his sons-in-law and that elsewhere in the Patriarchal narratives refers to sexual dalliance. It also means “to play.” (Although the conjugation here is piʿel and Sarah’s use of the same root in verse 6 is in the qal conjugation, attempts to establish a firm semantic differentiation between the deployment of the root in the two different conjugations do not stand up under analysis.) Some medieval Hebrew exegetes, trying to find a justification for Sarah’s harsh response, construe the verb as a reference to homosexual advances, though that seems far-fetched. Mocking laughter would surely suffice to trigger her outrage. Given the fact, moreover, that she is concerned lest Ishmael encroach on her son’s inheritance, and given the inscription of her son’s name in this crucial verb, we may also be invited to construe it as “Isaac-ing-it”—that is, Sarah sees Ishmael presuming to play the role of Isaac, child of laughter, presuming to be the legitimate heir.

10. Drive out this slavegirl. In language that nicely catches the indignation of the legitimate wife, Sarah refers to neither Hagar nor Ishmael by name, but instead insists on the designation of low social status.

12. listen to her voice. The Hebrew idiom has the obvious meaning “to obey,” but the literal presence of hearing a voice is important because it resonates with the occurrence of the same verb and object at the heart of the wilderness scene that immediately follows.

acclaimed. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “called.”

14. rose early in the morning. This is precisely echoed in the story of the binding of Isaac (22:3), as part of an intricate network of correspondences between the two stories.

and he gave her the child. The Hebrew has only “the child,” with an accusative prefix. This has led many commentators to imagine that Abraham is putting Ishmael on Hagar’s shoulders together with the bread and water—a most unlikely act, since the boy would be about sixteen. But biblical syntax permits the use of a transitive verb (“gave [them] to Hagar”) interrupted by a participial clause (“placing [them] on her shoulder”), which then controls a second object (“the child”). The only way to convey this in English is by repeating the verb.

16. a bowshot away. This particular indication of distance is carefully chosen, for it adumbrates the boy’s vocation as bowman spelled out at the end of the story.

when the child dies. Like the narrator in verses 14 and 15, Hagar refers to her son as yeled, “child” (the etymology—“the one who is born”—is the same as enfant in French). This is the same term that is used for Isaac at the beginning of verse 8. From the moment the angel speaks in verse 17, Ishmael is consistently referred to as naʿar, “lad”—a more realistic indication of his adolescent status and also a term of tenderness, as in the story of the binding of Isaac in the next chapter.

17. And God heard the voice of the lad. The narrator had reported only Hagar’s weeping. Now we learn that the boy has been weeping or crying out, and it is his anguish that elicits God’s saving response. In the earlier version of the banishment of Hagar (chapter 16), the naming of her future son Ishmael stands at the center of the story. Here, as though the writer were ironically conspiring with Sarah’s refusal to name the boy, Ishmael’s name is suppressed to the very end. But the ghost of its etymology—“God will hear”—hovers at the center of the story.

20. a seasoned bowman. There is an odd doubling of the professional designation in the Hebrew (literally “archer-bowman”), which I construe as an indication of his confirmed dedication to this hunter’s calling, or his skill in performing it.

22. This episode is clearly a continuation of the Abimelech story in chapter 20, interrupted by the linked episodes of the birth of Isaac and the expulsion of Ishmael. Abimelech had offered Abraham the right of settlement in his territories (“Look, my land is before you”). Now, as Abraham manifestly prospers (“God is with you in whatever you do”), Abimelech proposes a treaty which will ensure that the Hebrew sojourner does not unduly encroach on him or his land.

25. concerning the well. The particular instance of the clash between Abimelech’s retainers and Abraham links this story with the immediately preceding one, in which Ishmael is rescued by the discovery of a well in the wilderness.

31. the name of that place Beersheba. The Hebrew makes a transparent etymological pun. Beʾer means “well.” Shebaʿ can be construed as “oath” but it is also the number seven, ritually embodied here in the seven ewes Abraham sets apart. A second etymology may be intimated, not for the place-name Beersheba but for the term shevʿuah, “oath,” which seems to be derived by the writer from the sacred number seven, made part of the oath-taking.

32. the land of the Philistines. This is an often-noted anachronism, the incursion of the Philistines from Crete to the coastal area of Canaan postdating the Patriarchal period by more than four centuries. The writer may mean merely to refer casually to this region in geographical terms familiar to his audience; it is not clear that Abimelech with his Semitic name is meant to be thought of as a “Philistine” king.

33. at Beersheba. The cultic tree is planted “at” rather than “in” Beersheba because it is evident that the site of the oath is a well in the wilderness, not a built-up town.