What Does Genesis 16:6 Mean?
But Abram said to Sarai, Behold, your handmaid is in your hand. Do to her what is good in your eyes. And when Sarai bent her low, she fled from her face.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.THE KEY
The verse leaves no distance between delegated authority and its consequence: Sarai’s affliction drives Hagar into flight.
THE MEANING
Power can pass from one person to another while the suffering lands on someone with less power. The verse names Sarai’s treatment as affliction and Hagar’s flight as its consequence; her escape shows what the hand upon her does.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that another person’s permission makes your treatment of someone harmless dissolves here: Abram gives Sarai authority, but Hagar still suffers under how Sarai uses it.
THE ROOT
וַתְּעַנֶּהָ
watteʿannēhā
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿ-n-h
to afflict, press down, or bring low
“bent her low” in this verse is watteʿannēhā. The Hebrew verb names more than harshness as a manner: its root carries the sense of pressing someone down. That same root appears in words for the afflicted person and for affliction itself, joining Hagar’s particular treatment to a wider condition of suffering.
ALSO GROWS
ʿānî: afflicted, poor, or brought low
עָנִי
This branch names the person who bears the downward pressure of the verb used for Sarai’s treatment of Hagar.
ʿŏnî: affliction or misery
עֳנִי
This noun turns the action into a condition, the same root-shape used for the affliction God sees in Exodus 3:7.
THE PATTERN
Authority does not erase the suffering it permits; scripture names the harm and makes the afflicted person visible.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.For this is favor, if one bears up under grief with God in view, suffering what is out of alignment.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.Sarai’s verb and Exodus’s “affliction” share the Hebrew root ענה (ʿ-n-h, to afflict or bring low). The shared root lets Hagar’s individual injury and the people’s wider oppression sit within one word-family.
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