Genesis 16:1-16, 21:14-21
This is a difficult story to tell from any of the four points of view. Each of their butterflies recognizes the reasoning behind their person’s actions, but each of the people create pain for the others. Only Isaac and his butterfly, IcB, are bystanders.
Let me introduce each of the other four.
Abram speaks directly with God, not needing as much the connection with his AbB line of butterflies (not to be confused with Abel’s butterfly).
Sarai, Abram’s wife, is often at odds with her SB line, but for valid reasons. She is “past the ways of women” and has not had a child.
Hagar, Sarai’s slave, probably bought from Egypt and given the HB line, is often the victim of Sarah’s frustration.
Ishmael with his IlB butterflies is or is not, depending on the translation of one word, the innocent victim, the son of Hagar by Abram.
Isaac, the son finally born to Sarai/Sarah and Abram/Abraham, is accompanied by IsB.
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As long as Ishmael could remember, his two mothers fought over him. One was Hagar, his biological mother, and the other was Sarai, the one who claimed him. He heard the story many times in their arguments as he huddled in the corner with IlB trying to comfort him with the thought, “This is not your fault.”
How could it not be? He was the child born to their argument.
The other two butterflies, HB and SB—would gather in the same corner, apparently communicating with each other. IlB sent his encouraging thoughts to the boy from his shoulder, but the spoken words carried more force than his thoughts.
Hagar would complain, “You gave me to that old man like a cow to a bull. And you kept the calf, my son, as soon as you determined to wean him.” Sometimes HB would support her, but other times, she was careful not to think anything.
Sarai’s face would turn red. “ ‘That old man’ is your master. You will speak of him with respect!” SB understood Sarai’s viewpoint, but she wanted to tone down the argument.
“There was no respect for me, even when I carried the child you now claim! I could nurse the son I birthed and cleaned, but you took him away from me. I knew that would happen.”
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Sarai was too old to have a child, but God had promised her a son. When no birth occurred, Sarai sent Abram to Hagar. “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”*
SB shook her head, but held back her thoughts.
After weeks of feuding between the two women, Sarai went to her husband.
“You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”*
Abram wanted nothing to do with the two women fighting. “Your slave is in your hands. Do with her whatever you think best.”* ‘AB and SB conferred with each other. This will not be good.
What Sarai seemed to think best was to humiliate the young woman whose bearing the child she had demanded until Hagar ran away into the desert. HB led the runaway to a spring and waited on a blade of grass.
There an angel of the Lord found them. “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”*
She knew where she was coming from, but not where she was going. With an angel of the Lord before her, she knew to tell the truth. “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai.”*
Because he was an angel, he already knew that, but he only smiled. “Go back to your mistress and submit to her. I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”*
Hagar had heard about the promise of God to Abram and Sarai, about the descendants. This sounded the same.
But the promise held more details. “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”*
Trembling with both fear and awe, when the angel left, she gave a name to God, “You are the God who sees me,”* recognizing “I have now seen the One who sees me.”*
Hagar and HB returned to Abram’s camp, and Ishmael was born. As the years went by, HB frequently reminded Hagar that the angel had said to submit to Sarai. In public, the feud between the women went silent. Hagar loved the son Abram had forcefully given her, but she hated the woman who had treated her like a cow to be bred so her mistress could have the calf, her son.
For thirteen years, everyone believed Ishmael was the son of God’s promise. He was the darling of the camp, the favored one. Hagar considered him to be the son of God’s promise to her; the others claimed him as the son of the promise to Abram. The boy continued to be confused, as Hagar seethed in the background, resenting the man who took her, resenting the woman who claimed him.
Then two things turned his life upside down, one short-term, one long-term.
The short-term resulted from the vision of Abram, renamed Abraham at the age of 99, in which God required that every male person in the camp, slave or free, be circumcised. Everyone included 13-year-old Ishmael, who endured the same painful experience as the rest of the men. IlB tried to make him laugh, sometimes more successfully than others.
The other would destroy him. Sarai, now called Sarah, was with child! Now all the attention went to the about-to-be mother. When the second son was born, IlB worried what would happen to Ishmael. Would Sarah continue to love him or would she see him as simply the son of her slave?
At first, Sarah did, of course, spend more time with the new born, but she still seemed to consider Ishmael a member of her family, not the son of Hagar. Only Hagar resented the celebrations of Isaac’s first crawling, first steps, first words. HB reminded her to not display her jealousy. Those stages of Ishmael’s life had been celebrated too. And Hagar was still nursing the second child.
When Sarah mentioned the time was coming to wean her son, SB noticed a change. Weaning was a celebration that the child was old enough, healthy enough to probably survive on normal food. The older the child was at weaning, the better his chances of survival. Isaac was approaching that age.
Ishmael had been Sarah’s security, her back up. If Isaac did not live to be weaned, she still had a son to inherit from Abraham. But what would happen to Isaac when their father died? Ishmael, the son of the slave, would be the older son, the one who would inherit the birthright, not her precious son, the one she had borne.
SB did not share this information with HB, but she worried about it.
HB did notice a subtle change in Sarah’s attitude toward Ishmael, but she considered it to be the joy of watching her own son grow.
IlB was busy tending to the teen’s activities, warning him against doing anything foolish.
At the child’s weaning party, Ishmael played1,2 with his half-brother. Sarah, who had claimed the older child as her own, who had rocked him to sleep, who had held him tight, went into a rage. “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”*
Ishmael was stunned. Now the hatred Sarah held for his mother included him. He had not cried during the circumcision, and he would not cry now, but the pain was much deeper, filling his whole body.
Would Abraham defend him? Abraham, his father, had told him dozens of times how God promised him a son. Surely, he could count on his father.
Ishmael did not know that, distressed, Abraham took the matter to the Lord. God encouraged him to do as his wife wished. “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”*
All Ishmael knew was that, early the next morning, Abraham called Hagar and Ishmael to his tent. Giving them food and a skin of water, he sent them away. SB thought she had seen this coming. HB was surprised until she thought about it. IlB was stunned. How could this have happened without him expecting it?
Because his mother hated Abraham as much as she hated Sarah, Ishmael dared not ask his mother why they had to leave. Why had his father turned him out with so little? What had he done wrong? How would they survive with so little water?
As the slave woman and her son left, SB shared with the other two butterflies, “I’m sorry. I should have warned you both.”
HB responded, “I should have seen it coming.”
IlB shook his head, still not understanding.
They wandered in the desert of Beersheba until the water gave out.
Hagar put the boy3 under a bush, thinking, “I cannot watch the boy die.”*
She sat down at a distance and wept.
IlB folded his wings into the bush by Ishmael. Now he understood what Sarah had done and why. HB rested on Hagar’s shoulder, trying to encourage her. Help was coming.
Hagar jumped as the angel returned. “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”*
She watched her butterfly flutter over to the cover of a well of water, half buried in sand. She cleared it, refilled the skin, and the two castaways drank.
God continued to care for Ishmael and his mother. They lived in the desert, and he became an archer. While living in the Desert of Paran, Hagar went to Egypt and brought back a wife for him. Tradition says the Arabs are Ishmael’s descendants.4
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God changed the circumstances. Their life would be different, but they would have a life, a future, because they had a promise.
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1The New Revised Standard Version, the Contemporary English Version, and others translate the word in Genesis 21:9 as “play.” The NIV, the Darby Translation, and others use the word “mock.” The Amplified Bible adds “Isaac” as the object of “mock.” (https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis%2021:9, referenced 2/21/26)
2 The Common English Bible and the English Standard Version say that Sarah saw Hagar’s son “laughing,” perhaps a reference to his name. (footnote d, Genesis 17:19, NIV, referenced 2/21/2026)
3 At this point, Ishmael is at least thirteen (Genesis 17:35) plus the number of years Sarah would have nursed Isaac, in those days, probably three or four, but the scripture refers to the teenager as “the boy.”
4 The Quran states that several prior writings constitute holy books given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, in the same way the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. These include the Tawrat [Torah], believed by Muslims to have been given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, the Zabur (used in reference to the Psalms) revealed to David (Dawud); and the Injil revealed to Jesus (Isa).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_the_Bible, referenced 2/21/2026.