Having established that Abraham was bothered by his childlessness to the point of speaking out about it, the Torah reports that Sarah too was upset about it, and proceeded to do what was in her power to relieve the problem.

8-9) She did this by offering Hagar as a wife to Abraham also. Although both Abraham and Sarah knew a great deal about the power of God, they were still under the impression that it was not within His domain to change the physical nature of barrenness. Therefore, they did not pray, since they had no reason to believe that prayer would be a key to success. Their knowledge of God was restricted to their conceiving of Him as the ultimate Cause, but not as the constant guardian of individual fates. Ultimately, this lack of understanding prompted the angel in Genesis 18,14 to say, "Is anything too wonderful for God (to accomplish)?⁠"

The taunts Sarah suffered at the hands of Hagar prompted her to proclaim eventually, "May God judge between me and you,⁠" thus invoking God to become part of their quarrel, something almost amounting to prayer, which is what God had been waiting for. Once this level of prayer had been reached, prayers for the household of Avimelech, the good people in the city of Sodom etc. were merely a natural development. It was God’s intention, to demonstrate the difference between a son of Abraham who had been conceived after he had undergone circumcision, and the caliber of a son that was conceived before Abraham had attained that spiritual level.

Bereshit Rabbah 46 states that the line in Kohelet 3,1 "Everything has its time, there is a season for all things,⁠" refers to the day Abraham was circumcised. It says in the Torah, "The very day Abraham was circumcised" (Genesis 17,26). Abraham could just as easily have been circumcised at the age of 48, when he first recognized His Creator. Or, he could have been circumcised at the age of 70, when God made the covenant with him. Again, he could have been circumcised at the age of 85, before Ishmael was conceived. However, in order to show that Isaac had been conceived in purity and was therefore a different person, God waited with the commandment until Abraham was 99 years old.

9) When the angel found Hagar the first time, though she was not lost but at a well of water on a well marked route leading to Shur (Genesis 16,7), his question seemed to suggest that she was lost. In fact, he meant to ask her, "Are you aware that you are in danger of going from a good place to a bad place, that instead of improving your lot you will worsen it?⁠" Hagar replied, "I cannot help myself; I am forced to flee my mistress, even though I know that I may be heading towards spiritual disaster.⁠" A fugitive concerned with what he escapes from, does not pay too much attention to where he may be headed. The angel said to Hagar, "Instead of contemplating what you are running away from, think of what you may be getting into.⁠" Therefore, subject yourself to your mistress, since I assure you that the future of the son you carry within you will make it all worthwhile.⁠" The Torah relates the entire conversation in order to show that any character weakness of Ishmael was not due to the mother's lack of character, but that Hagar had absorbed enough spiritual values in the home of Abraham to qualify to become the mother of his children. In fact, the emphasis of four times "the angel said to her,⁠" is to draw our attention to the fact that Hagar had received as many communications from God at this point as had Abraham himself. Surely this is to teach us that she was a suitable vehicle for bearing his child. The contents of the four conversations between the angel and Hagar roughly paralleled those between God and Abraham up to that date, i.e. the order to remain apart from her homeland and family, the promise of issue and its development into a nation, the difficulties that would be faced by her descendants at some time. All this resulted in Hagar gaining a deeper understanding of the Providence of God, realizing that He was a Personal God who was talking to her. When she said, "I had to reach this stage to become aware of someone who sees me,⁠" she meant that she had had to go through previous stages of cognition of the existence of God, only to have His power and interest demonstrated to her in such personalised fashion. Rabbi Samuel bar Nachman in Bereshit Rabbah 45 comments that the episode can be compared to a king who ordered a lady to walk in front of him. The lady hid her face out of fear of the king, but leaned on a maidservant. In this manner the maidservant beheld the face of the king, though her mistress did not. Hagar's experience was analogous. She now realized that she herself had become worthy to behold the face of the king in her own right, though up to that point her vision of him had only been through her association with her mistress. After all these visions which Hagar experienced, it is obvious that any fault in her son's character did not originate in her, but only in the fact that his father had not yet been circumcised when he sired him.