What Does Genesis 16:10 Mean?

The angel also said to her: "I will increase your descendants so greatly that they will be too numerous to count." The promise given to Hagar is structurally identical to the promises given to Abram: offspring too numerous to count. The language echoes almost word for word the promise of Genesis 13:16 and 15:5. The God who promised descendants like dust and stars to the covenant patriarch grants the same kind of promise to the Egyptian servant carrying his child in the desert. The covenant promise and the promise to Hagar are parallel in their content, if not in their theological function.

The promise is given before the son is even born; Hagar is still pregnant. God speaks of the son's descendants as already determined and already numerous beyond counting. This is the same proleptic certainty of the divine speech that characterizes all of God's covenant promises in Genesis: they are spoken in the language of accomplished fact before the first step of their fulfillment has occurred. "I will increase your descendants" is future tense addressed to a woman whose only current asset in terms of the promise is a pregnancy, not yet a living child.

The promise to Hagar does not conflict with the Abrahamic covenant; it extends the scope of divine concern beyond the covenant's primary line. The descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac are both numerous beyond counting; the promise to each does not reduce the promise to the other. God is not limited in His capacity to fulfill concurrent promises to different people. The nations that trace their ancestry through Ishmael and those that trace through Isaac both exist in the family of human beings for whom God expressed care at a desert spring, which is the first indication that the covenant's God is the God of all humanity, as Jesus taught explicitly.