Sarah and Abraham acted against the promise and will of God and took things into their own hands and created a situation that resulted in circumstances that we are still suffering from to this day.
We all have moral lapses, and Abraham and Sarah were no different. They acted in willful disobedience to God, and we are all having to deal with the results of that act of disobedience 4000 years after it was carried out.
Amen, and THANK-YOU for your posting.
Well, I completely disagree. Gen 16:1-3, 1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. (NIV)
God would not have made the covenant he did with Abraham were he guilty of so great a transgression as illcit “sex”. Ishmael’s birth was not illegitimate, Hagaar was his wife. It was, at the that time, an acceptable custom for Sarah to offer her maid, in her stead, to allow Abraham to produce an heir. The son from such an arrangement would be treated as though he had been born to Sarah herself, becoming an heir to Abraham’s birthright. Sarah offering her maid in her stead was an act of love and a recognition of the importance of a birthright heir.
It wasn’t until later that God revealed to Abraham that he would still have an heir through Sarah. As I read the scriputres I find no condemnation from God to Abraham for the birth of Ishmael. The birth of Ishmael was a necessary event, for whatever reason God intended.