Abraham's wife had a maid named Hagar, and she bore to Abraham a child named Ishmael; at the time Ishmael was born, Abraham was 86 years of age. Just before Ishmael's birth Hagar was so badly treated that she ran away. As she was only a slave, God persuaded Hagar to return, and humble herself to her mistress.
Thirteen years afterward God appeared to Abraham, and instituted the rite of circumcision--which rite had been practiced long before by other nations--and again renewed the promise. The rite of circumcision was not only practiced by nations long anterior to that of the Jews, but appears, in many cases, not even to have been pretended as a religious rite. (See Kalisch, Genesis, p. 386; Cahen, Genese, p. 43) After God had "left off talking with him, God went up from Abraham." As God is infinite, he did not, of course, go up; but still the bible says God went up, and it is the duty of the people to believe that he did so, especially as the infinite Deity then and now resides habitually in "heaven," wherever that may be. Again the Lord appeared to Abraham, either as three men or angels, or as one of the three; and Abraham, who seemed hospitably inclined, invited the three to wash their feet, and to rest under the tree, and gave butter and milk and dressed calf, tender and good, to them, and they did eat; and after the inquiry as to where Sarah then was, the promise of a son is repeated. Sarah--then by her own admission an old woman, stricken in years--laughed when she heard this, and the Lord said, "Wherefore did Sarah laugh?" and Sarah denied it, but the Lord said, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." The three then went toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them as a guide; and the Lord explained to Abraham that some sad reports had reached him about Sodom and Gomorrah, and that he was then going to find out whether the report was reliable. God is infinite, and was always therefore at Sodom and Gomorrah, but had apparently been temporarily absent; he is omniscient, and therefore knew everything which was happening at Sodom and Gomorrah, but he did not know whether or not the people were as wicked as they had been represented to him. God, Job tells us, "put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly." Between the rogues and the fools, therefore, the all-wise and all-powerful God seems to be as liable to be mistaken in the reports made to him as any monarch might be in reports made by his ministers. Two of the three men, or angels, went on to Sodom, and left the Lord with Abraham, who began to remonstrate with Deity on the wholesale destruction contemplated, and asked him to spare the city if fifty righteous should be found within it. God said, "If I find fifty righteous within the city, then will I spare the place for their sakes." God being all-wise, he knew there were not fifty in Sodom, and was deceiving Abraham. By dint of hard bargaining, in thorough Hebrew fashion, Abraham, whose faith seemed tempered by distrust, got the stipulated number reduced to ten, and then "the Lord went his way."