Then she went, and sat down over against him a good way off: according to the end of the verse, Hagar wanted to be far enough away from her child not to watch him die. The narrator has therefore emphasized the distance with went … over against [opposite] … a good way off. All of this may be more clearly translated as “went some distance away and sat down.”

About the distance of a bowshot: this expression will be quite graphic to people who are accustomed to using the bow and arrow, but will have little or no meaning for others. Some scholars interpret the word for bowshot as being a dual form, and so New English Bible has “about two bowshots away.” Note, however, that Revised English Bible has “about a bowshot distant.” Translators appear to have at least three choices in translating this expression: to keep the Hebrew expression, to substitute a known expression involving some other weapon, or to use a standard measurement of distance. Good News Translation does the last: “about a hundred yards [meters] away.”

For she said: as Hagar is not speaking to someone, she is, as it were, thinking aloud, or as Good News Translation and others translate, “she said to herself.” We may also render this “She thought to herself.”

Let me not look upon the death of the child: Let me not look is the command form of the verb “to see.” We may also express this in English as “Don’t let me see” or “I don’t want to see.” Revised English Bible translate as a rhetorical question: “How can I watch the child die?” This may also be rendered, for example, “I can’t bear to watch the child die.”

And as she sat over against him: this is similar to the expression earlier in the verse and means “while she was sitting there.”

The child lifted up his voice and wept: note that in Revised Standard Version it is the child who cries, but in Good News Translation “she began to cry.” The Revised Standard Version footnote shows that it follows the Septuagint; Good News Translation follows the Hebrew text. Why, we may ask, would Septuagint say “the child,” when the Hebrew text clearly says “she”? (In Hebrew the words “raised,” “voice,” and “wept” all have feminine singular affixes.) The answer probably is that the Septuagint translators, noticing that God hears the voice of the child twice in verse 17, modified verse 16 to agree with verse 17. This is not necessary; as Hebrew Old Testament Text Project remarks, “verse 16 describes Hagar’s despair; verse 17 introduces the initiative of God.” Accordingly the Handbook recommends translating the Hebrew text, as in Good News Translation.

Another way of translating the last part of the verse is to link Hagar’s crying with what she was thinking about the child; for example, in one translation “… she began to cry, because she didn’t want to see the child die.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .