Language:
English
Year of publication:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Angaben zur Quelle:
44,4 (2020) 517-531
Keywords:
Hagar
;
Ishmael
;
Bible. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
;
Prayer in the Bible
;
Mother and child in the Bible
Abstract:
This article advances the thesis that Hagar’s statement in Gen. 21.16, ‘Let me not look upon the death of the child’, is not so much a despairing whimper of resignation as it is a cohortative prayer for divine intervention. Accordingly, the ‘casting’ of her son under a bush is not an act of exposure, but a signal of the child’s availability for adoption. Attending to the vocabulary and syntax of Hagar’s ordeal, then, we understand the scene to represent the enactment of Ishmael’s name, ‘God hears’.
DOI:
10.1177/0309089219862822
URL:
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