Comentario sobre Génesis 16:8

אי מזה באת WHENCE CAMEST THOU? — He knew it, but he asked this in order to give her a starting-point so that he might converse with her. The expression אי מזה is to be explained thus: Where is (אי) that place of which thou canst say, “From this (מזה) have I come”.

?אי מזה באת ואנה תלכי, the angel wanted Hagar to realise what kind of an unprofitable exchange she was about to make if she left the house of a man such as Avram and traded that holy environment in the land of Canaan, preferring the spiritually contaminated regions outside the Holy Land and the evil people residing there.

ויאמר, the vowel patach (instead of segol) under the letter מ is used as if there were a colon after the word. This is not unusual, seeing that words with the tone-sign revia occasionally signal that the word is meant to end with a colon or similar, meant to be followed by an explanation. Seeing that here the subject matter itself introduces an interruption, seeing that what follows is not connected to the word ויאמר, we need to understand the word as referring to what preceded it. This is so whenever the word ויאמר appears with the vowel patach.