Bible Verses About Afflictions and Adversities

The angel of ADONAI found her by a spring in the desert, the spring on the road to Shur,

and said, "Hagar! Sarai's slave-girl! Where have you come from, and where are you going?" She answered, "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai."

The angel of ADONAI said to her, "Go back to your mistress, and submit to her authority."

The angel of ADONAI said to her, "I will greatly increase your descendants; there will be so many that it will be impossible to count them."

The angel of ADONAI said to her, "Look, you are pregnant, and you will give birth to a son. You are to call him Yishma'el [God pays attention] because ADONAI has paid attention to your misery.

He will be a wild donkey of a man, with his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, living his life at odds with all his kinsmen."

So she named ADONAI who had spoken with her El Ro'i [God of seeing], because she said, "Have I really seen the One who sees me [and stayed alive]?"

But God said to Avraham, "Don't be distressed because of the boy and your slave-girl. Listen to everything Sarah says to you, because it is your descendants through Yitz'chak who will be counted.

But I will also make a nation from the son of the slave-girl, since he is descended from you."

Avraham got up early in the morning, took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child; then he sent her away. After leaving, she wandered in the desert around Be'er-Sheva.

When the water in the skin was gone, she left the child under a bush,

and went and sat down, looking the other way, about a bow-shot's distance from him; because she said, "I can't bear to watch my child die." So she sat there, looking the other way, crying out and weeping.

God heard the boy's voice, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What's wrong with you, Hagar? Don't be afraid, because God has heard the voice of the boy in his present situation.

Get up, lift the boy up, and hold him tightly in your hand, because I am going to make him a great nation."

Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went, filled the skin with water and gave the boy water to drink.

God was with the boy, and he grew. He lived in the desert and became an archer.

He lived in the Pa'ran Desert, and his mother chose a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

So Yitz'chak left, set up camp in Vadi G'rar and lived there.

Yitz'chak reopened the wells which had been dug during the lifetime of Avraham his father, the ones the P'lishtim had stopped up after Avraham died, and called them by the names his father had used for them.

Yitz'chak's servants dug in the vadi and uncovered a spring of running water.

But the herdsmen of G'rar quarreled with Yitz'chak's herdsmen, claiming, "That water is ours!" So he called the well 'Esek [quarrel], because they quarreled with him.

They dug another well and quarreled over that one too. So he called it Sitnah [enmity].

He went away from there and dug another well, and over that one they didn't quarrel. So he called it Rechovot [wide open spaces] and said, "Because now ADONAI has made room for us, and we will be productive in the land."

From there Yitz'chak went up to Be'er-Sheva.

ADONAI appeared to him that same night and said, "I am the God of Avraham your father. Don't be afraid, because I am with you; I will bless you and increase your descendants for the sake of my servant Avraham."