GENESIS – Lesson 17

The Adventures of Abraham (Part 3): – Abraham & Sons – Ishmael

Preparing for Lesson 17

I omitted something from Lesson 16 because I didn’t want to take away from Lot’s story, but this is the perfect place to include it. It is the story about the meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek, the details of which are given in Genesis 14:17-24.

After Abraham and his allies were victorious over the Four Kings of the East, they were traveling through the Valley of Shaveh (probably modern day Kidron Valley) when Bera, king of Sodom, came out to meet Abraham (Genesis 14:17). Apparently before the king had the opportunity to discuss any business with Abraham, Melchizedek, the king of Salem and a priest of God, appeared on the scene with wine and bread. 

He appeared on the scene, blessed Abraham and then disappeared into history. The next mention of Melchizedek in the Old Testament is in Psalm 110, written about 1,000 years after his meeting with Abraham. 

Who was this guy?

The book of Hebrews says of Melchizedek,“Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he abides a priest perpetually.” (Hebrews 7:3)

The question here is: Did the writer of Hebrews mean for us to understand his words figuratively or literally? Is he describing a pre-incarnate appearance of the Second Person of the Trinity? That seems logical since 

no human being is without father, without mother and without genealogy. If the verses in Genesis 14 actually describe a theophany, then God the Son came to give Abraham His blessing. He appeared as the King of Righteousness (Revelation 19:11, 16), Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) and the mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5).

If the verse is meant to be understood figuratively, then Melchizedek represents a type of Christ and a picture of Christ’s ministry. The details about his having no genealogy simply serve to accentuate the mysterious nature of this person who was spiritually superior even to Abraham.

By this time in his life, Abraham had accomplished much. He had accumulated great wealth, achieved military victory and met face-to-face with the mysterious king of Salem. But something was still missing in Abraham’s life. He wanted a son. Let’s continue on now with our lesson, which could bear the sub-title, “Be Careful What You Wish For”. 

LESSON 17: The Adventures of Abraham (Part 3): Abraham & Sons – Ishmael

Genesis 16, 21:9-21

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

One of the many promises God gave to Abraham was he would have a son who would come forth from his own body, and that son would be his heir (Genesis 15:4). Immediately afterwards, God ratified the covenant He had made with Abraham regarding His promises of land and descendants. 

Surely this bolstered Abraham’s faith even more. He would never again distrust God and his faith would never waiver. At least, that was the plan.

In the times of Abraham and Sarah, there was an acceptable practice that allowed a man whose wife was barren to produce a child through the use of a surrogate. The law had some specific stipulations. First, the surrogate had to be the slave woman of the barren wife. Second, the child would be the legal (and biological) child of the father. Third, the child would be legally adopted by the wife and not considered a child of the slave woman. Additionally, the wife was responsible for the upbringing of the child. Fourth, neither the slave woman nor the child could be expelled from the household. Although this arrangement seems strange to us, it is actually quite similar to the modern practice of in vitro fertilization, using a surrogate to carry and give birth to the child. Actually, there are a couple of major differences: (1) The ancient method was, umm, more natural, and (2) it was a lot less expensive.

God had always spoken to Abraham, not to Sarah, and the Bible does not say whether God had specified that Sarah would be the mother of Abraham’s heir. As the years continued to pass, Sarah began to doubt that she was meant to be a part of God’s plan for Abraham. She even blamed God for her situation (Genesis 16:2). So instead of waiting on God’s timing, Sarah took matters into her own hands by employing the “surrogacy law”. She instructed Abraham to take her Egyptian maid, Hagar, as his wife for the purpose of producing a child. (The fiasco that happened in Egypt was the gift that just kept on giving; surely that was how Hagar came to be added to Abraham’s household. See Genesis 12:16.) And Abraham, being a man says, “Okay, let’s go.”  But Abraham, as a man of God who had received God’s promises and experienced His faithfulness, should have refused Sarah’s suggestion and waited for God’s perfect timing.

And then, nothing good happened. When Hagar conceived, she became proud and despised her mistress. Sarah was angry and jealous, and rightly blamed Abraham. According to R. Kent Hughes, that blame was well placed. He said Abraham was “pathetic, passive, impotent and uncaring of either woman.” Although Hagar temporarily ran away, she returned to Sarah, who continued to treat her harshly, and eventually bore a son who was named Ishmael, which means “God hears”. And although he was not the biological son of Sarah, he was the true and biological son of Abraham. And God blessed Ishmael, saying that he would be the father of twelve princes and that his descendants would become a great nation (Genesis 17:20).

Hagar and Ishmael remained in Abraham’s household, and Sarah, at the age of 90, bore a son to Abraham. Ishmael was fourteen years old when Isaac was born. One wonders if Sarah had fulfilled her duties as required in the “surrogacy law” by taking responsibility for Ishmael’s upbringing. In any case, by the time Isaac was weaned (probably around age two), the strain between Sarah and Hagar was at a breaking point. Sarah demanded that Abraham “drive out this slave woman and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.” By demanding the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah violated yet another stipulation of the law. 

Abraham must have been broken hearted; he loved Ishmael and had come to believe that God’s promises would be fulfilled through him. But God spoke to Abraham and told him to do as Sarah had demanded; that the promises He had made to Abraham would be realized through Isaac, not through Ishmael (Genesis 17:19). So with a heavy heart, Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert. Ishmael would have been about sixteen years old at the time (Genesis 21:9-14).

Think About This: God rejected Ishmael because he was born as the result of an adulterous affair between Abraham and Hagar. Their union was instigated by Sarah herself and such practice was legal in the land in which they lived. But God is not impressed by man-made laws, especially when they violate His perfect righteousness.

They wandered in the desert and nearly died of thirst. As Hagar wept, the angel of the Lord called to her from heaven, reminding her that God would make her son into a great nation. “Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water, and gave the lad a drink” (Genesis 21:19). They settled in the wilderness near Paran located in the northeastern section of the Sinai peninsula, in the area called Arabia. Ishmael continued to grow and became an archer. He eventually married an Egyptian woman Hagar had found for him and who bore to him twelve sons. He was also the father of one daughter, though sources are not certain whether Ishmael’s Egyptian wife was her mother. Genesis 28:8-9 tells us that Esau married Ishmael’s daughter, primarily because his marriage to a Canaanite woman would displease his parents.

Ishmael’s Legacy

Ishmael’s twelve sons were the ancestors of twelve tribes that “settled from Havilah to Shur which is east of Egypt as one goes toward Assyria; he settled in defiance of all his relatives” (Genesis 25:18) And in fulfillment of God’s prophecy to Abraham in Genesis 17:20, Ishmael’s sons were twelve princes according to their tribes.

In his article titled Ishmael is Not the Father of the Arabs, author Mark Durie says that for centuries, many Muslims, Christians and Jews have taken it for granted that the Arabs descended from Abraham through Ishmael. This view is supported neither by the Bible nor other historical evidence. As a result of this belief, many have attempted to trace the root of the conflict between Arabs and Jews to the rejection of Hagar and her son Ishmael. One possible source for this misunderstanding could have been Josephus. In his book The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus stated that Ishmael was the founder of the Arabian nation. (Jewish Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 12, Item 4).

According to Britannica Encyclopedia, an Arab is one whose native language is Arabic. Originally, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. This is the land mass between the Red Sea to the west and the Persian Gulf to the east. If we look back at Lesson 13 in which we discussed the Table of Nations, we see that this geographical area was inhabited by the descendants of Noah’s son Shem, whose name means Semite. Shem was the father of five sons, all of whom were, of course, Semites. Abraham’s ancestor was Shem’s son Arpachshad and it was through this line that the Jews descended. The Arabs were descended through the lines of Shem’s other four sons. So you see, the centuries long conflict is a family feud: they’re cousins!

The prominent religious system for all of the early Semites appears to have been polytheism based on belief in deities and other supernatural beings. Even Abraham was raised as a pagan and idol worshipper until God chose him and changed his life. The remaining Semites in the land apparently continued in their polytheistic beliefs until the founding of Islam in the early 7th century A.D., and as Islam spread, so too did the Arabic language. Within a century, Islam had spread throughout most of the present day Arabic-speaking world. Over a period of a few hundred years, Islam spread from its place of origin in the Arabian Peninsula all the way to modern Spain in the west and to northern India in the east. It spread through military conquest, trade, pilgrimage and missionaries.

This is meant to show that not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs. Today the animosity between the Arabs and the Jews is largely political, going back to the period after World War II when the United Nations gave a portion of land to the Jewish people. Prior to this, that land was primarily inhabited by Arabs although about one-third of the land at that time was inhabited by Jews. Ever since 1948, there has been great hostility between the Arabs and Jews, and according to biblical prophecy, that won’t end any time soon. 

This has been an interesting study, and if we could resolve the Arab/Jewish Conflict, wouldn’t that be wonderful? If you want to look up any of this information yourself, Google these topics: United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine; Mandatory Palestine; and United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. This light reading will keep you busy for as long as you want to stay busy. It is very complicated and all I can say for certain is: Don’t blame Ishmael!

In our next study, we will take a look at Abraham and Isaac. 

Think About It, Talk About It

What motivated Sarah to employ the culturally acceptable practice of using a surrogate to produce an heir for Abraham? How did God view this “legal” arrangement?

During the years from Ishmael’s birth to the birth of Isaac, how do you think Sarah interacted with Ishmael? The “surrogacy law” stipulated that the barren woman, not the slave woman (the birth mother), was to raise the child. Why might she have behaved the way she did?

Why was Abraham ultimately responsible for the animosity that existed between Sarah and Hagar? What should he have done differently?

Sources

Bard, Mitchell: Pre-State Israel: Jewish Claim to the Land of Israel (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

Culture and Religion in Pre-Islamic Arabia (www.lumenlearning.com)

Durie, Mark: Ishmael is Not the Father of the Arabs (www.meforum.org)

Hughes, R. Kent: Preaching the Word-Genesis (Crossway Books, 2004)

Kranz, Jeffrey: Ten Intriguing Facts About Melchizedek from the Bible (www.overviewbible.com)

MacArthur, John: The MacArthur Bible Commentary (Thomas Nelson, Inc.)

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee-Genesis (Thomas Nelson Publishers)

Singer, Isidore, et al: Ishmael (www.jewishencyclopedia.com)

The Rise of Islamic Empires and States, (www.khanacademy.org)

Whiston, William and Maier, Paul: The New Complete Works of Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 12, Item 4 (Kregel Publications, 1999)