Isaac and Ishmael
Isaac and Ishmael
Image by Adele Morris from Unsplash
The Birth of Isaac
Yahweh watched over Sarah just as he had said and did for Sarah what he had promised.
At the time God appointed, Sarah conceived and gave birth to a son for Abraham when he was old. Abraham named the son Sarah bore to him Isaac, and he circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old, just as God had commanded. Abraham was one hundred years old when his son Isaac was born.
Image by Adele Morris from Unsplash
Genesis 21:1 serves as a transition from the crisis in Gerar to the announcement of Isaac’s birth. Abimelech took Sarah into his harem less than a year before the birth of her promised son.1 But Yahweh watched over her and ensured she was returned to her husband, Abraham. Now the appointed time had come for the birth of Abraham’s long-awaited heir.
Isaac’s birth served as the initial fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham. Twenty-five years had passed since God first promised him a nation of descendants who would possess the land of Canaan.2 The promises of offspring and land had been reiterated and formalized.3 Yet Sarah remained childless until she was ninety and Abraham was a hundred.
On the eighth day of Isaac’s life, Abraham circumcised his son, officially initiating Isaac into the covenant community.4 God had fulfilled his covenant obligation, and Abraham fulfilled his. In doing so, Abraham expressed his faith that God would fulfill the rest of his promises too.
Laughter
Sarah said, “God has made me laugh! And all who hear will laugh with me. Who told Abraham Sarah would nurse children? Now he is old, but I have given him a son.”
When God promised Sarah a son a year before Isaac’s birth, she laughed incredulously, and God rebuked her for doubting his power.5 After the fulfillment, she laughed with joy and praised God for bringing laughter back into her life. Her faith had been fully restored, and she wanted everyone to know about it!
“Who told Abraham Sarah would nurse children?” This is not a rhetorical question but a reference to God’s impossible promise. Who but God could have predicted Sarah would have a child at ninety? And God was the one who gave her son the perfect name. Isaac means “he laughs.”6
As Sarah finally held her baby in her arms, the burden of decades of suffering and shame melted away. God transformed the tragic story of Sarah’s barrenness into a thrilling tale of redemption that would make everyone who heard it laugh with delight. There could be no question of who deserved credit for such an amazing feat.
Isaac’s Inheritance
The child grew and was weaned. So Abraham prepared a feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning. When Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian—the son she had given birth to for Abraham—celebrating, Sarah said to Abraham, “Drive this slave and her son away! This slave’s son will not share the inheritance with my son, Isaac!”
Image by Benoît DE HAAS from Pixabay
The tone of the narrative quickly sours as the focus shifts from the joy of Isaac’s birth to the third threat to God’s promise, a threat far greater than either Lot or Abimelech.7 Standing in the way of Isaac inheriting the covenant promises was his older half brother, Ishmael, who was still Abraham’s legal heir. As the firstborn, Ishmael would inherit two-thirds of Abraham’s wealth, while Isaac would receive only a third.8
When Isaac was weaned, around the age of three, Abraham threw a party. Seeing Ishmael celebrating at Isaac’s party sent Sarah into a jealous rage.9 She demanded Ishmael and Hagar be driven out of the camp. Though various explanations have been offered to explain this extreme demand, Sarah herself said she didn’t want the son of a slave to share the inheritance with her son. She wanted Isaac to inherit not only the promises but everything else as well.
In Galatians 4:21–31, Paul used the story of Abraham’s two sons as an allegory for the persecution of gentile Christians by Jewish believers who wanted to force them to follow the law.10 Though he seems to say Ishmael “persecuted” Isaac, that idea is not justifiable from Genesis. Paul may have been referring to an unrecorded incident or to the Ishmaelites later mistreatment of the Israelites.11 More likely, since he was speaking allegorically, Paul wasn’t talking about literal persecution at all.
Paul’s point was how the natural rivalry between the brothers corresponded to the persecution of gentile believers. Like Ishmael, the Jews should have been Abraham’s heirs according to natural birth. But like Isaac, the church (both Jews and gentiles) became Abraham’s true heirs according to the promise received through Jesus. Sarah was angry because Ishmael threatened Isaac’s inheritance. Likewise, Paul was angry because those who preached salvation through the law threatened the inheritance of those saved through faith.12
A Father’s Heart
This infuriated Abraham because of his son, but God said to him, “Don’t be angry about the boy and your slave. Obey everything Sarah tells you because your offspring will come through Isaac. But I will also make the slave’s son into a nation because he is your offspring.”
Image by Jochen van Wylick from Unsplash
Abraham reacted to Sarah’s demand as any loving father would. He was furious! The idea of sending his firstborn away was unthinkable. Even though God had chosen Isaac as the heir of the promises, that didn’t mean Ishmael had to be completely disinherited. Or so Abraham thought.
Once again, God intervened to bring peace back to Abraham’s broken family.13 He told Abraham to obey whatever Sarah said, but God’s motivation was very different from Sarah’s. She cared only about Isaac’s future, but God had a plan to bless not just both boys but the entire world. He prioritized maintaining the line of the promised offspring, who would come through Isaac. That the offspring referred to is the promised offspring of Eve is clear from the singular verb “come” (literally “he will be called”) as well as God’s own affirmation of Ishmael as Abraham’s legitimate offspring.14
God didn’t deny Ishmael was Abraham’s son. His descendants would be Abraham’s descendants, just as Isaac’s would. But the promise could be fulfilled only through the son of the promise.15 God also has a father’s heart, and it pains him to be separated from his children. He was determined to fulfill his promise to Eve to defeat the serpent and win us back. Sadly, this meant Ishmael had to leave. But he would leave under a blessing. His descendants would also grow into a nation, just as God had promised Hagar years earlier.16
Hagar’s Lament
The next morning, Abraham rose early, placed some food and a full waterskin on Hagar’s shoulders, gave her the child, and sent her off.
Hagar left and wandered lost in the wilderness of Beersheba until the waterskin was empty. Then she dragged the child under a shrub and went to sit by herself about a bowshot away. “I can’t bear to watch the child die!” she wept.
Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
Abraham promptly obeyed God’s command. He rose early the next morning, gathered a very basic supply of food and water, and sent Hagar and “the child” off on their own.17 Ishmael is never called by his name in Genesis 21. Instead, he is referred to as “the child,” “the boy,” or even just “the slave’s son.” Despite being a teenager, he seems to fade into the background while the adults around him decide his future.
Hagar took charge and tried once again to return to Egypt.18 But this time she got lost and ended up wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. Unable to find the wells along the road, they soon exhausted their supply of water, and Ishmael apparently collapsed.
Hardened by life as a slave, Hagar was better suited to endure the harsh conditions than her son, who had lived his whole life as the eldest son of a wealthy and powerful man. When Ishmael’s strength gave out, his mother, though parched and exhausted herself, had to drag (literally “throw”) him into the scant shade of a desert shrub, the only protection the wilderness provided.
Then Hagar went and sat where she could not see her son or hear his weak cries.19 She knew he would die without water and couldn’t bear to watch. She began to weep in despair, yet her simple lament contains a glimmer of hope. The verb raʾah (“to see, watch”) recalls her previous encounter with the God Who Sees.20 Ishmael was no longer a threat to God’s promises for Isaac, but now God’s promises for Ishmael were threatened.
Hope
When God heard the boy’s voice, God’s messenger called out to Hagar from heaven. “What’s the matter, Hagar? Don’t be afraid! God has heard the boy’s voice from over there. Go help him up and support him because I will make a great nation from him.” Then God revealed to her a well, and she went to fill the waterskin and give the boy a drink.
Image by Michael McFatridge from Creation Swap
Although Hagar was too far away to hear Ishmael, God heard him. “God heard” (yishmaʿ ʾelohim) is a wordplay on Ishmael’s name, yishmaʿeʾl (“God hears”), and recalls the blessing pronounced before he was born. At that time, God heard about Hagar’s suffering and sent his messenger to comfort her.21 This time it was the sound of Ishmael suffering that God heard, and he once again sent his messenger. This is only the second appearance of God’s messenger (usually called Yahweh’s messenger).18 Both times, he spoke to Hagar.
The messenger encouraged Hagar, gently allaying her fears and reminding her of God’s promises for Ishmael’s future. With her support, he would survive and thrive. But as reassuring as these promises were, they did not address Hagar and Ishmael’s immediate need. They needed water. So God showed Hagar a nearby well, where she could refill the waterskin and restore their strength.
There was nothing miraculous about the well Hagar saw. God merely helped her see what had been there the whole time. But Hagar was blinded by her tears. As so often happens, despair prevented her from seeing the salvation right in front of her. God had to point it out. Her hope restored, Hagar quickly acted to get her son a drink and help him back on his feet.
Ishmael’s Fate
God was with the boy as he grew, and he lived in the wilderness as an archer. While he was living in the wilderness of Paran, his mother found an Egyptian wife for him.
Having access to a reliable water source gave Hagar and Ishmael a new lease on life. Ishmael grew to adulthood under God’s care and learned how to hunt for food. Hagar, no longer a slave, returned to Egypt to find a wife for her son from her own people, as was customary. But they lived in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, between Canaan and Egypt.
There is a stark contrast between Ishmael’s fate and that of Lot. Only Isaac, the son of the promise, could be Abraham’s true heir. But that does not mean God rejected Ishmael and Lot. Lot’s downfall was caused by his own greed. He willingly disassociated himself from Abraham, preferring Sodom’s lavish lifestyle.22 Hagar and Ishmael, on the other hand, were forced out by circumstances beyond their control. Because of this, they retained the blessing given to those associated with Abraham and prospered even after leaving his household.
- See Vindicated.
- Genesis 12:1–7.
- Genesis 15; see The Promise of Offspring; The Promise of Land.
- See Circumcision. Counting the day Isaac was born, the eighth day was one week later.
- See Sarah’s Laughter.
- See Isaac.
- See Threats to the Promise; Sister.
- The firstborn son received a “double portion” of the inheritance, meaning twice as much as each of his brothers. See Deuteronomy 21:15–17.
- The Hebrew word metsaḥeq is sometimes translated as “mocking” in an attempt to justify Sarah’s anger. But the verb can have this meaning only when there is an object being mocked. Without an object, this form of the verb usually means “to celebrate, rejoice,” which fits perfectly in the context of a feast.
- See Allegory.
- See Genesis 37:28; Psalm 83:1–6.
- See Galatians 5:2–4.
- See Hagar’s Blessing.
- See The Snake’s Punishment; Why Israel?
- See Ishmael.
- Genesis 16:10.
- Some translations have Abraham placing Ishmael on Hagar’s shoulder (or back) along
with the food and water, portraying him as a toddler. Not only does
that violate the timeline of Genesis, it also requires unnecessarily
rewording the Hebrew text. - See Yahweh’s Messenger.
- A bowshot, the distance an arrow travels when shot out of a bow, is not a precise measurement but was probably between fifty and seventy-five yards at the time. Sizes, “Bowshot, Arrow-shot,” last modified September 5, 2019, https://www.sizes.com/units/bowshot.htm.
- See The God Who Sees.
- Genesis 16:11–12; see A Wild Donkey.
- See The Jordan Valley.