The fact that, when Hagar flees from Sarai before the birth of Ishmael, she is asked by the angel to return, and that after the birth of Isaac, God not only sanctions but commands the separation, shows distinctly that the motive for the separation was that expressed in the words, "In Isaac shall seed be called to thee", and that, meanwhile, Abram was to have his faith put to the test through his attachment to Ishmael, as later through his attachment to Isaac. It is also to be noted, here as elsewhere, that the patriarchs and their wives themselves had only a dim and often incorrect idea of God's purpose in his dealings with them. Thus Sarai, realizing that she is barren, at first reasons that God's promise to Abram was intended to apply to him alone and not to her and therefore necessitated his taking another wife. When Ishmael is born, Abram thinks that he is to be the child of destiny and it is one of the tests to which his faith is put when, after the birth of Ishmael, God tells him that not this son but another, who is to be born to Sarai, is to be his heir. The point of all this is that the history of the patriarchs is not merely personal biography but that its real significance is to be understood as showing the care that God exercised in selecting the material out of which the chosen people was to be moulded. Not all of Abram's descendants were to be deemed fit for this election, but he was to become the "father of a multitude of nations" of which only one was to be chosen. In teaching of the covenant that is recorded in Genesis 17, the ceremony of circumcision cannot for obvious reasons be dwelt on in class, but the change of Abram's and Sarai's names should be, and therefore its significance needs to be interpreted. To give a new name is a sign of ownership and interest. God shows his love for Abram and Sarai and his intention to enter into closer relations with them by giving them new names. It is to be noted that God also gives Isaac his name (Genesis 18.21) and changes that of Jacob to Israel after he shows himself worthy of the title. =Aim.= This lesson is one of a series of incidents which should impress on the child faith in the truth of God's words, which in the end are verified, though at first they often seem impossible of realization and more particularly, faith in God's election of Israel. =Suggestions to the teacher.= There are two main difficulties to overcome in teaching this chapter; first, that the moral is such an abstract one, the whole story as we have interpreted it being conceived as a glimpse into the workings of providence in the history of Israel and the world, and second, that the incidents hinge upon family relations of a sort that a child with his ignorance of the facts of sex cannot easily comprehend.