It seems like last Sunday we heard the world about the child of promise, Isaac, the miracle baby born to be heir. Simple as it'd be to roll right along, there's another tale to tell, the story of the path not taken. What's the deal with big bro Ishmael? Does he matter to God? Should he matter to us? Is he biblical trash, or buried treasure?
We've heard enough by now where his saga begins: Sarah's barrenness prods her finally to use her maidservant, a new acquisition from Egypt, as a substitute wife and surrogate womb; Hagar conceives, but the situation gets sticky; Sarah lashes out; Hagar runs off through the desert toward home, hauling this unborn life with her; her travel is stopped at a spring by an intervening angel, who redirects Hagar back to her house of slavery. For “you are pregnant, and you shall bear a son,” says the messenger, and “you shall call his name Ishmael,” which means 'heard by God,' “because the LORD has heard your affliction” (Genesis 16:11). In this start to his existence, “Ishmael received his name from the Lord he was born,”1 one of a handful of people in the Bible who could say that. It's “a very beautiful name,” too, signifying that God hears the cries of the afflicted.2
So, adds the angel, this coming Ishmael “shall be a wild donkey of a man” (Genesis 16:12). The wild donkey, or Syrian onager, was “a tough and swift animal that roamed the desert freely,”3 “sturdy, fearless, and fleet-footed..., impossible to domesticate.”4 The “arid plain” is its God-given “home,” and it “hears not the shouts of his driver” but “searches after every green thing” (Job 39:5-8). It was to this creature that the Assyrians compared a “queen of the Arabs” who retreated back to the desert after a battle.5 Such a beast, such a person, is amazingly free – the opposite of Hagar's near-future! – but will, therefore, have to live in a condition of “incessant struggle,” constantly fighting to preserve that cherished freedom against “all who desire to subdue him”6 – hence, it'll be “his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him.” He's the prototype of those who “wander with no fixed abode and often invade all the nations who border on the desert, and they are attacked by all.”7 And “to the face of all his brothers shall he dwell” (Genesis 16:12), a deliberately ambiguous line which could suggest an in-your-face defiance of his kin or a constant presence local to his kin.8
With these promises in mind, Hagar obediently retreats from the desert to Abram's encampment, where “Hagar bore Abram a son,” and the boy's 86-year-old father legitimized him, naming him Ishmael in accordance with Hagar's desert encounter (Genesis 16:15-16). Now, if God didn't have plans for this boy, “why not just let Hagar flee with her unborn child” all the way to Egypt?9 He could've carried an Egyptian name, lived a nice Egyptian life, faded into the sands of time. But God wanted Ishmael tutored in the House of Abraham, because God had a purpose for Ishmael's life, regardless of the human purposes initially underlying his conception.
For thirteen years Ishmael was raised as the promised son, until there came a revelation and covenant renewal, wherein God told Abraham that it was another who'd been meant all along – that the promises would be brought through a son of Sarah who didn't yet exist (Genesis 17:1-16). Not only did Abraham collapse in hysterics at the thought (Genesis 17:17), but he petitioned God: “If only Ishmael might live before your face!” (Genesis 17:18). Implicitly he begs God to scrap the Isaac plan, because for all Ishmael's unruly quirks, Abraham has come to affectionately treasure this firstborn son, so he wants Ishmael to carry all promises, get all blessings, own all the land, bask in the light of God. Abraham “showed his love for Ishmael in what he said.”10
God denies Abraham's implicit request to keep Sarah out of destiny's loop; her son will be the chosen bearer of the covenant line (Genesis 17:19). But does that mean God rejects Abraham's plea entirely? Absolutely not: “I accept as well your prayer about Ishmael; you see, I have heeded your petition.”11 “As for Ishmael, I have heard you,” God says (Genesis 17:20). Just like Isaac's name was justified first by a father's laughter and then by a mother's (Genesis 17:17; 18:12), so Ishmael's name is originally based on his mom's affliction over him heard by God and now rooted more deeply by his dad's prayer for him being heard by God.12 “Behold, I have blessed him” – God's choice of Isaac “does not mean rejecting” Ishmael,13 who will live in “God's spiritual and material care”14 – “and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly,” like the sons of Noah (Genesis 9:7). “Ishmael inherits the Abrahamic promise but not the Abrahamic covenant.”15 “Twelve princes shall he beget, and I will give him as a great nation” (Genesis 17:20), a prototype for the later tribes of Israel.16 In response to promises like these, by the end of the day both Abraham and Ishmael are circumcised (Genesis 17:26), a sign of daring inclusion as if in partial protest of God's exclusion of Ishmael from covenant and land.17
By the time Ishmael's healed, three travelers are hosted in the camp; it only gradually becomes obvious that they are God and his angels. Sarah eavesdrops on them from the tent, and a later Jewish retelling adds that “Ishmael was standing behind her, listening.”18 Ishmael may mean 'heard by God,' but here he's a silent hearer of God, perhaps even catching an advance glimpse of the face of Christ. The next day, as Ishmael's dad mourns the apparent death of Lot, the cousin Ishmael never got to know, they flee briefly to the desert regions Ishmael once haunted in utero (Genesis 20:1), before retreating to Beersheba, where Ishmael likely has a hand in digging the well (Genesis 21:30); there, Sarah complicates Ishmael's life by birthing his half-brother Isaac (Genesis 21:2-5).
Ishmael's around sixteen or seventeen when his dad throws a party for little Isaac's weaning, where Ishmael's reaction sparks the severe judgment of Sarah that he and his mom need to go, to nullify their legal title to any inheritance in the house (Genesis 21:8-10). There we left off last Sunday, with Sarah's demand, and “this word was exceedingly bad in Abraham's eyes on account of his son,” from whom Abraham would hate to be parted (Genesis 21:11). In his judgment, Sarah's diktat is “harsh, repugnant, and oppressive,” and her snubbing of his flesh and blood in Ishmael is detestable.19 But God sides with Sarah's outcome, if not her reasons, because of his plans for both boys (Genesis 21:12). God reassures his friend that Ishmael won't come to harm because of this relinquishment, that “a great future awaits Ishmael” out there in the wider world.20 “I will make a nation of 'the son of the slave woman' also, because he is your seed” – out of love for obedient Abraham, God will build a whole nation out of Ishmael's legacy (Genesis 21:13).
Therefore “Abraham rose early in the morning” – “though he loved the child, he did what the Lord commanded,”21 by taking “bread and a skin of water, and he gave to Hagar, placing it on her shoulder” with his own two hands. Only after this goodbye did he bring “the child” and hand him over to walk by his mother's side; then “he sent her away” (Genesis 21:14). How could God endorse this expulsion, we want to ask, Abraham “cruelly casting out his own flesh”?22 But is it cruel? Hagar once fled with the unborn Ishmael into the desert, questing after her freedom, and we fussed over God sending her back into abusive slavery; should we fuss again while Hagar and Ishmael are being made free at last, free at last (thank God Almighty!)?
Still, isn't some bread and a single big pouch of water “hopelessly inadequate,” a recipe for doom?23 But by this inadequate human provision, Abraham “expressed his trust in the divine promises” that God would look after these two as his own people, would be forever true to his word of blessing for Ishmael.24 And where Sarah demanded Abraham 'drive out' the pair like when God 'drove out' Adam from the garden and Cain from the ground (Genesis 3:24; 4:14), Abraham “sent her away,” a word that can describe a divorce, or the release of a slave, but also sending forth an army (2 Samuel 18:2) – or sending out apostles!25 This is Hagar and Ishmael's exodus from their house of slavery (Exodus 11:1), “a dismissal with blessing,” even a commissioning.26
Hagar, taking the lead role to start their mission, “wandered in the desert of Beersheba,” which was near where they'd started from. This same woman who, when pregnant, made a confident beeline through the harsh desert, is now so distraught she gets mixed up in a more forgiving desert.27 The result was “hopeless and aimless travel.”28 As their finite quantity of portable potables reached its end, dehydration began to set in. So what's Hagar to do? “She threw the child under one of the bushes,” unceremoniously dumping Ishmael somewhere that at least offered shade,29 “and she went and sat down opposite him the distance of a bowshot away” (Genesis 21:14-16), martial language giving the sense of “a violent act of maternal rejection” of the weakened son.30 Broken-hearted, she couldn't bear to watch her son suffer, so she withdrew from him. But from Ishmael's point of view, he “considered her lost” while he was cast out and cast off, alone and “abandoned as dead.”31
In that dire crisis, “God heard.” But it wasn't Hagar's uplifted voice and tears God heard; “God heard the voice of the boy” as he moaned or prayed (Genesis 21:17). First, Ishmael was Ishmael because God heard Hagar's affliction; then, Ishmael was Ishmael because God heard Abraham's intercession; lastly, Ishmael becomes fully Ishmael when God hears his own voice of woe beneath a desert shrub! So “the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, 'What troubles you, Hagar?'” – a question about as sensitive as swinging by hospice and asking visitors, 'Why so glum?' – but the heavenly voice then adds: “Fear not! For God has heard the voice of the boy where he is,” where Hagar isn't but should've been (Genesis 21:17).32 As she'd earlier lifted her voice, now she needs to get up, “lift the boy, and hold him fast with your hand,” to reconnect with the throwaway son, to be abidingly present to strengthen and support and guide him in his new desert life, for out there “I will make him into a great nation” (Genesis 21:18). This is just what God had told Abraham about Ishmael's destiny (Genesis 17:20), no less true in the desert than at home.
In that moment, “God opened her eyes,” as if “enlightened with a new light of the Holy Spirit,”33 with with open eyes “she saw a well of water” (Genesis 21:19). Hagar earlier found heaven at a well where she praised the God of Seeing, who saw her and whom she saw in the angel; now God gives sight to her tear-dimmed eyes so she can see water in the desert, a timely provision for her son's needs. Where she feared to see her son die, there she sees the hope of life! No wonder the Greek version calls it a “well of living water.”34 So “she went and filled the skin with water,” back to its fullness, “and she gave the boy a drink” of salvation (Genesis 21:19). Then Hagar could, as directed, take Ishmael by the hand, hold him tight, lift him to his feet, and help him on.
Only on the other side of a brush with death could Ishmael begin the life he was meant for. Now we hear how “God was with the boy” as he grew up. Set aside all thoughts of Ishmael as cursed, unwanted, or exiled by God; he was “one whom [God] deemed worthy of his care” and company.35 “The providence of God watched over Ishmael” through his life, to bless him and nurture him and welcome him.36 “And he dwelt in the desert,” like a wild donkey should, “and he became a master of the bow” (Genesis 21:20), having learned from his trial to long to bridge the distance 'a bowshot away' could make. He becomes now, by necessity, “a skilled hunter and an aggressive fighter,” as one must be in the desert wild.37 But even as a master of the bow, Ishmael learned from his Divine Helper that surely “the grace of God is the greatest security.”38
Specifically, “he dwelt in the Desert of Paran” (Genesis 21:21), the place south of the Negev, “in the expanses of the Sinai Peninsula,” which Israel would later reach after leaving the mountain (Numbers 10:12; 13:26).39 Paran might've been an old name for the whole peninsula, but it was at least the south end and the east side of the central plateau.40 There, in that region of future significance to Moses, Ishmael made a home, “hereafter to reign over that country,”41 “and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt” (Genesis 21:21), binding him more closely to her side of his heritage, but without snuffing out his blessing as Abraham's wild son.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that's the close of Ishmael's story, but it's not at all. In chapters we haven't seen yet, Abraham will similarly arrange a marriage for Isaac from among his people; and where is Isaac when that happens? When he meets a bride-to-be, “Isaac had returned from Beer-lahai-roi and was dwelling in the Negev” (Genesis 24:62). If that first place sounds familiar, it should; it's where the angel first gave Hagar all those nice promises. Why would Isaac have been visiting there? There's one obvious answer. Isaac was just a kid when Ishmael was sent away, and no doubt his mom refused to let him indulge his curiosity about his older half-brother; now that she's gone, he feels free at last to venture out in search of Ishmael at an Ishmael place.42
Now fast-forward through the decades. Widowed Abraham took another wife, Keturah or 'Incense,' and now he claims six more sons, whom he finally “sent away... from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country” (Genesis 25:1-6). These sons represent the trade route which brought incense up from Arabia to Syria.43 After that is the last day of Abraham, who “breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people” when “Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him” (Genesis 25:8-9). We shouldn't take it for granted. When Abraham dies, these two original sons are brought back together to take care of his remains, to cooperate in honoring their half-shared legacy from him. Over just the past sixty years, the tomb of Abraham has been the site of assaults, desecrations, explosions, and mass shootings. If Abraham's death could bring Isaac and Ishmael closer then, oughtn't this ongoing violence move them to lay aside their fears and meet again now?
After this, we hear that “Isaac settled at Beer-lahai-roi” (Genesis 25:11). He isn't just poking around now, looking in on Ishmael's past; with Abraham gone, Isaac becomes voluntarily a neighbor to the brother he'd like to get to know anew. The move inspires a prospect for “positive ongoing relationships among those who call Abraham their father,”44 a vision that all who look to Abraham as their root might “live in peace and harmony with each other,” might get to know one another and dwell face-to-face as brethren.45
How do things wrap up for Ishmael? He had sons and daughters – more on that in a moment – and then, forty-eight years after the death of Abraham, Ishmael “breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 25:17). Some have accused Ishmael, in accepting Hagar's arrangement of his marriage to an Egyptian wife, of abandoning his legacy from Abraham, of becoming “lost to God's new way.”46 But that doesn't seem to be true. Likelier is Luther's judgment that “Ishmael was not cut off from salvation and eternal life,” but instead God was with him to the end, to make him (we hope) “a saint and a great patriarch.”47 Perhaps he'll wait in the realms below, in his father Abraham's bosom, for the crucified Christ to come and shine light on him.
Behind him here, Ishmael leaves children. As Jews said in hindset, Abraham “sired a wild donkey..., and the wild donkeys multiplied,”48 though Genesis in fact “is not disparaging of him or his descendants.”49 Abraham was promised Ishmael would father twelve princes (Genesis 17:20), and here they are “by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes” (Genesis 25:16), “the sons of Ishmael by their names according to their generations: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, Qedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, and Hadad, Tema, and Yetur, Naphish, Qedemah” (Genesis 25:13-15). We're also told that they “settled from Havilah to Shur (which is upon the face of Egypt), in the direction of Asshur” (Genesis 25:18).
What's all that mean? The region from Havilah to Shur stretches from Kuwait in the east across the north Arabian desert into the Sinai Peninsula to the borders of Egypt; later Jews summarized this as “the whole country extending from the Euphrates to the Red Sea.”50 Adding on the reference to Assyria invites us to add what's north of that, the Syrian Desert. That's where to find the offspring of Ishmael. Two of the sons' names are north Arabian oasis-cities: Dumah, “the fortress of the Arabs,” and Tayma in northwest Arabia.51 Most of the other sons are known tribal groups, especially Nebayot and Qedar; and the last of the sons, Qedemah, just means 'of the east.'52 A later Syrian writer remarked that “the desert is full of this race from the borders of Egypt to Babylon.”.53 There “on the face of all his brothers he fell” (Genesis 25:18), a curious phrase that could mean lying in wait to strike (cf. Judges 7:12) or to enthusiastically embrace his brethren (cf. Genesis 50:1).
In the days of the judges, Israel occasionally fought with Ishmaelites, as when Gideon killed two Ishmaelite chiefs and took their gold earrings and the crescent necklaces from their camels (Judges 8:21-26), or when the eastern tribes took thousands of captives from Yetur, Naphish, and the Hagarites (1 Chronicles 5:18-22). But it wasn't all bad: two of the south Ishmaelite peoples, Mibsam and Mishma, were absorbed into Israel's tribe of Simeon (1 Chronicles 4:25).54 By David's time, he had an Ishmaelite brother-in-law whose son Amasa was briefly the military chief of Israel (2 Samuel 17:25; 20:9-12), and David's chief camel steward was “Obil the Ishmaelite” (1 Chronicles 27:30). Israel's later king Ahab made common cause with “Gindibu the Arab,” king of Qedar.55 Later, when Assyrians “struck down... faraway Arabs who live in the desert,”56 Isaiah's “oracle concerning Arabia” urged the “inhabitants of the land of Tayma” to bring bread and water to the refugees, for soon “all the glory of Qedar will come to an end, and the remainder of the archers of the mighty men of the sons of Qedar will be few” (Isaiah 21:13-17). On the Babylonians invasion of northern Arabia, Jeremiah calls it the wrath of God shared with “all the kings of Arabia” (Jeremiah 25:24), a judgment on “Qedar and the realms of encampments that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon struck down” (Jeremiah 49:28).57
Babylon's final king Nabonidus (father of Daniel's Belshazzar) spent a whole decade away at Tayma and campaigned as far south as Yathrib (the future Medina) to subdue Arab tribes,58 and once Israel's exiles came home, one of Governor Nehemiah's fiercest opponents was “Geshem the Arab” (Nehemiah 2:19). By this time, if not sooner, the pagan Arabs worshipped (among others) a warrior god, the morning star, born to a mother goddess to watch over his cult initiates, figures who seem a bit like Ishmael and Hagar (whose name suggests, in Arabic, a sanctuary);59 and, in fact, the name 'Ishmael' crops up often in Ancient North Arabian inscriptions.60 So, totally understandably, Jews and Christians came to tighten their mental connections between Ishmael and the Arabs even more, calling them “Arabs or Ishmaelites,”61 crediting Ishmael as “the founder of [the Arabs'] race,”62 from whom came the biblical “twelve Arab tribes,”63 including in the newer Nabataean “Arabian nation,”64 whose core may have been the descendants of Qedar.65
Some Jews boasted over them, emphasizing how “the LORD did not draw Ishmael and his sons... near to himself, and he did not elect them.”66 When Christ was born, he was feared and loathed immediately by Herod, himself half-Arab due to his mother's status as a Nabataean princess.67 But when Christ was crucified, resurrected, ascended, and poured down his Spirit at Pentecost, in the crowd were Arabian Jews (or Jewish Arabs?), ready to be converted and catch the holy fire (Acts 2:11). A few years later, when Paul first became an apostle, he says he “went away into Arabia” for a bit, likely preaching the gospel to them before others.68
After the Nabataean collapse, the Romans began collectively calling the north Arabian tribes 'Saracens,' people “whom,” in one pagan Roman's words, “we never found desirable either as friends or as enemies..., whose original abode extends from the Assyrians to the cataracts of the Nile..., all alike warriors of equal rank, half-nude..., ranging widely with the help of swift horses and slender camels..., without fixed abodes or laws.”69 To Christians of the time, these 'Saracens' were just a new name for “the tribes of the Hagarenes or Ishmaelites,”70 for “the desert is inhabited by those who boast of Ishmael as their ancestor.”71
Archaeologists notice that all over fourth-century Arabia, “traditional temple worship largely disappeared,” to be replaced by something new.72 At that very time, we start hearing reports about “the churches of Christ... in the wildernesses of the Saracens..., since these people were transformed from darkness to the... light of the nations.”73 In the Syrian Desert there lived a holy man “grown from Ishmaelite stock” who “grasped the very kingdom of heaven,”74 while we meet an Arab chief who, after a desert monk healed his paralytic son, converted and became a bishop, while his people came en masse to be baptized, becoming “heirs of the promise..., the rational flock of Christ,” learning “to worship the One who is God over all.”75 Soon “the inhabitants of north Arabia... were won over to Christianity in large numbers in this period,”76 and “most northern Arabian tribes... converted to Christianity” – the gospel was for Ishmael!77
“The gospel of Christ... did reach them, and they accepted God's message,” said one early medieval Christian, but despite this, “they were wickedly seduced by certain pseudo-prophets.”78 From the sixth century on, as wars and plagues and Christian divisions roiled the world with turmoil, a smattering of supposed prophets began to crop up in Arabia.79 One of them was a man named Muhammad from the west Arabian town of Mecca, where his tribe, the Quraysh, oversaw the Ka'ba, a cubic shrine built in the same style as many Arabian churches and synagogues at the time.80 You've likely heard of him; his message of submission (islam) to God is quite famous.
Against Jews and Christians who dismissed Ishmael as an outcast or a menace, Muhammad insisted Ishmael was “among the excellent.”81 Ishmael's whole life was proof that “my Lord is the Hearer of supplications,” a great biblical relief for Arabian pagans who thought the gods inevitably “lost interest and abandoned” them to merciless Fate, “leaving their prayers unanswered.”82 Ishmael, he insisted, “was true to the promise, and he was a messenger, a prophet” who “was pleasing unto his Lord” as Father Abraham had been.83 Under Muhammad's leadership, the peoples of Arabia newly “fashioned a religious pedigree for themselves” out of Ishmael's story.84 As he retold it, Abraham didn't sent Hagar and Ishmael out solo, but he led them to a divinely designated place, not the Sinai Peninsula but Mecca itself; there, Abraham gave them dates and a water-skin and entrusted them to God's care. As the Abraham of the Qur'an says, “I have settled some of my progeny in a valley without cultivation.”85 In this version, when water ran out, Hagar ran back and forth between two hills, Safa and Marwa, to spy out water or help; only after her seventh journey did an angel come to Ishmael and, with foot or wing, strike the earth and cause a spring called Zamzam to flow. Then, as in Jewish lore Hagar met shepherds who helped sustain her in the desert, so in Muslim tradition this water source attracted an Arab tribe, the Jurhum, who stayed with them, taught Ishmael Arabic, and provided him an Arab wife, not an Egyptian one as in the Bible.86
With them, Ishmael became “a great archer,”87 but also “a prophet” who “used to bid his people to prayer and almsgiving.”88 In the Muslim version, Abraham used to get Sarah's permission to visit Ishmael in the Arabian desert, and on the third such visit, God “made a covenant with Abraham and Ishmael: 'Purify My House'” at Mecca for divine worship there, “a place of visitation for mankind and a sanctuary.”89 To this day, every Muslim visits the Ka'ba complex in Mecca, where they orbit it as Abraham's sanctuary, run between Safa and Marwa to commemorate Hagar's search for water, and then drink water from the Zamzam, Ishmael's well.90 As Abraham and Ishmael built their desert temple, Muhammad claimed, they prayed for God to accept its goodness and to raise up from the descendants of Ishmael “a community submitting” to God in prayer and worship, and also “to raise up in their midst a messenger from among them, who will recite thy signs to them and will teach them the Book and Wisdom.”91 Muhammad presented himself as that messenger descended from Ishmael, sent in long-awaited fulfillment of Abraham's and Ishmael's prayers; his followers have ever since claimed to be “the real and legitimate heirs of the legacy of Abraham and Ishmael.”92
As they advanced out from their desert home, reception was mixed, to say the least. Christians were perplexed by a people “come forth from the desert, the offspring of Hagar..., who hold fast to the covenant of Abraham,”93 having “turned to the living God who had appeared to their father Abraham,”94 yet whose beliefs constitute “the superstition of the Ishmaelites”95 and who “mock us and increase their blasphemies against Christ and the Church, and... boast of conquering the entire world.”96 In such hostility they saw Ishmael's hand raised against everyone, “an enemy to generations of men.”97 While some hoped that with repentance and faith they could yet “blunt the Ishmaelite sword,”98 others feared this meant “the arrival of the Antichrist.”99 But all conceded that, for reasons of his mysterious providence, “the triumph of the sons of Ishmael, who subdued and subjugated these two mighty kingdoms, was from God.”100
For their part, the Muslims who came afterward insisted it confirmed the favor shown to Hagar's “pure offspring Ishmael and Muhammad,”101 declaring that with them God had at last brought about “Ishmael's blessing, glory, and high standing over the rest of the children of Abraham,”102 now that “the prophethood passed to Ishmael's offspring, and kings bowed to him, nations submitted to him,”103 so that God's promises to Abraham were being fulfilled as “the People of Ishmael... rose as high above [other nations] as” the stars over the earth, with “an everlasting empire which God said would not come to an end.”104
And here we are, living in a very different world, but Ishmael's legacy is still a challenge for us to grapple with. We know that the Islamic story of Ishmael requires a distortion of the prior biblical witness of Abraham's life, that Isaac was alone chosen to continue the covenantal pledge of a future Seed who would be Christ the Lord, that even Ishmael's sons ultimately “needed all that God would do through Israel” and Israel's Messiah,105 and that the Qur'anic message can't be true in all the places it “effectively sidelines Jesus and the Bible.”106 Bluntly, not only is the Qur'an one-dimensional compared to the Bible's fullness, but the Qur'an erroneously rejects the status of Jesus Christ as God and as Son of God,107 caricatures the basic Christian doctrine of the Trinity,108 and is commonly understood to deny even the historicity of Christ's crucifixion (and, thus, his resurrection).109 To justify any of this, Islam is founded on a wildly implausible conspiracy theory, holding that the Bible as we've always known it was fabricated to obscure the original Scriptures revealed to Moses, David, and Jesus.110
None of this is good; much of this is spiritually dangerous. And yet there are in the world now over a billion Muslims who claim Ishmael as, in some way, a spiritual forefather, even if not a fleshly one. Is it possible that, in some way, these all “are who they are because God has kept promises” about Ishmael's bright future?111 When we're troubled by what we hear and see, can we train our thoughts on the faithfulness of God and trust in “God's purposeful design in the history of Ishmael”?112 Is there a mystery of providence at work that we just don't yet understand, but which we'll see and appreciate and rejoice over when faith at last becomes sight? Can there be some way that God means a great goodness to come through and out of Ishmael's legacy as we see it?
All that Abraham begged God to give Ishmael could never be complete without “a life from God in the highest sense,”113 and whether the sons and daughters of Ishmael know it or not, Christ as Son of God is the true Well of Living Water from which dying Ishmael's thirst can be quenched, “and so, drinking, they will live through him!”114 What we're seeing now in the house of Ishmael can't yet be God's final word. Genesis has outlined “promises for the final victory of the kingdom of God” among all who lay claim to Ishmael's legacy.115 Isaiah foretold a future where the glory of the LORD would dawn through Christ: “A multitude of camels shall cover you...; all those from Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD. All the flocks of Qedar shall be gathered to you, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my beautiful house” (Isaiah 60:5-7). In their rightful biblical context, such a prophecy isn't a prediction of Islam and its Ka'ba; no, it urges us on beyond Islam's lifespan, to hope for a future “voluntary response to the salvific light” of Jesus Christ.116 So “let the desert and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Qedar inhabits” (Isaiah 42:11)!
Christ had bade his apostles, and through them his whole Church, to “disciple all nations” (Matthew 28:18), “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5) – and could that possibly exclude the “great nation” of Ishmael (Genesis 17:20)? We've heard how once great advances were made; we trust they must be again. But how could we ever disciple those we disdain to be near? Look to Isaac at Beer-lahai-roi, choosing to be a neighbor, choosing to take the initiative in hopes of getting to know the half-brother he half-remembered. If the Church doesn't move to make the People of Ishmael her neighbor, if the Church doesn't step out to say hello, if the Church doesn't set foot at Beer-lahai-roi, then we are not being the children of promise, the laughter-spreaders; we are not being Isaacs, and we are not heeding Christ. To love the People of Ishmael as a neighbor calls us to “participate in joyful moments with them,” to be human with them as people, not as bogeymen from a stereotype.117 These days, it means also to “weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15), something so many have ever more cause to do.
But for those of us who can't move and who have a hard time seeking out a neighbor, what we can do at least, what we must do, is to renew Abraham's prayer: “Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!” (Genesis 17:20). We can pray that God does abundant good to the children of Ishmael, that he blesses richly all who adhere in some way to Ishmael's legacy – that he would grant them life in the presence of God, life in Christ, by opening the eyes of their minds and hearts to the gospel. Or have we no hope any longer in the Lord who's a hearer of our supplications, the Savior who snatches Ishmael from the brink of death, the God who opens Hagar's eyes to the refreshment that's been waiting for her all along?
That's my charge to you this week. Reflect on Ishmael's story. Consider where it's led. Marvel at the mystery of the faithfulness of God, working out purposes we don't yet understand. Remember that “the Son of God, Jesus Christ..., was not Yes and No, but... all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:19-20). Pray for a deeper love for the bearers of Ishmael's legacy. Pray for a mightier faith in God's work among them. Pray for a profounder hope in the peace that's in store when Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael are one new man in the peace of Christ, worshipping in one beautiful House of God, the Church. Then each and all will say that “you, O God, have heard my vows; you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name” (Psalm 61:5). Then “blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise” (Psalm 84:4). “So will I ever sing praises to your name, as I perform my vows day after day” on the pilgrimage to Paradise (Psalm 61:8) – the Way to which is Christ, and the Destination of which is Christ, who is the Hope of every outcast, the Hearer of every supplication, the Abundance in every desert, and the Love that never lets us go. Amen.
1 Bede, On Genesis 16:11, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:279.
2 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 16:11, in Luther's Works 3:65.
3 Daniel Hillel, The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (Columbia University Press, 2006), 62.
4 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 121.
5 Tiglath-pileser III, inscription 48, lines 24'-26', in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 1:127.
6 Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 72-73.
7 Jerome of Stridon, Hebrew Questions on Genesis 16:12, in C.T.R. Hayward, St. Jerome's Hebrew Questions on Genesis (Clarendon Press, 2005), 49.
8 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 87.
9 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 280.
10 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 14.2.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:157.
11 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 40.7, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:393.
12 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 134.
13 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 283.
14 Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 83.
15 Jon D. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2012), 51.
16 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 262.
17 Eitan Mayer, “No News is Bad News: Behind the Surface of Genesis 18,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 53/4 (Fall 2021): 110.
18 Targum Neofiti Genesis 18:10, in Aramaic Bible 1A:104.
19 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 46.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:5.
20 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 147.
21 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 73, in Library of Early Christianity 1:149.
22 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21:15-16, in Luther's Works 4:41.
23 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 115.
24 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 73, in Library of Early Christianity 1:149.
25 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 279-281.
26 Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 93.
27 Ed Noort, “Created in the Image of the Son: Ishmael and Hagar,” in Martin Goodman, et al., eds., Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Perspectives on Kinship with Abraham (Brill, 2010), 42-43.
28 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 139.
29 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 334.
30 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 283.
31 Augustine of Hippo, Questions on the Heptateuch 1.54, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/14:35; Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 7.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:134.
32 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 228.
33 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21:17, in Luther's Works 4:58.
34 Genesis 21:19 LXX, in Susan C. Brayford, Genesis (Brill, 2007), 89.
35 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 73, in Library of Early Christianity 1:149.
36 Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (Fleming H. Revell, 1900), 402.
37 Daniel Hillel, The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (Columbia University Press, 2006), 62.
38 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 46.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:8.
39 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 197.
40 James K. Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2005), 37, 44.
41 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.190, in Loeb Classical Library 242:93.
42 Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 114; Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 182; Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 438-439.
43 Jan Retsรถ, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (Routledge, 2003), 128-129.
44 Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 102.
45 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 183.
46 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 291.
47 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 17:3-6 and 25:17, in Luther's Works 3:111 and 4:331.
48 1 Enoch 89:11, in Daniel C. Olson, A New Reading of the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch: 'All Nations Shall be Blessed' (Brill, 2013), 163.
49 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 196.
50 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.221, in Loeb Classical Library 242:109.
51 Esarhaddon, inscription 1, line iv.1, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4:19; Jan Retsรถ, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (Routledge, 2003), 135; Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 154.
52 Jan Retsรถ, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (Routledge, 2003), 163, 221.
53 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 73, in Library of Early Christianity 1:149.
54 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 122.
55 Shalmaneser III, inscription A.0.102.2, line ii.94, in Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyria 3:23.
56 Sargon II, inscription 1, lines 120-123, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 2:63.
57 Leslie C. Allen, Jeremiah: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 491.
58 Nabonidus, inscription 47, lines i.22b-27a, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire 2:189.
59 Jan Retsรถ, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (Routledge, 2003), 607.
60 Aziz Al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Oxford University Press, 2014), 125 n. 151.
61 Jubilees 20:13, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:94.
62 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.214, in Loeb Classical Library 242:107.
63 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 14.3.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:157.
64 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.221, in Loeb Classical Library 242:109.
65 Jan Retsรถ, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (Routledge, 2003), 625.
66 Jubilees 15:30, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:87.
67 Martin Goodman, Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World (Yale University Press, 2024), 22-24.
68 E. P. Sanders, Paul: The Apostle's Life, Letters, and Thought (Fortress Press, 2015), 91-92; Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 186, 191.
69 Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History 14.4.1-3, in Loeb Classical Library 300:27.
70 Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 4.1.7, in Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis (Brill, 2009), 1:20.
71 Theodoret of Cyrus, History of the Monks of Syria 6.4, in Cistercian Studies Series 38:64.
72 Barbara Finster, “Arabia in Late Antiquity: An Outline of the Cultural Situation in the Peninsula at the Time of Muhammad,” in Angelika Neuwirth, et al., eds., The Qur'an in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur'anic Milieu (Brill, 2010), 68.
73 Eusebius of Caesarea, Commentary on Isaiah 42:11, in Jonathan J. Armstrong, Eusebius of Caesarea: Commentary on Isaiah (IVP Academic, 2013), 213.
74 Theodoret of Cyrus, History of the Monks of Syria 4.12, in Cistercian Studies Series 38:55.
75 Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of St. Euthymius 10, 15, in Cistercian Studies Series 114:14-20.
76 Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (Routledge, 2001), 147.
77 Ilkka Lindstedt, Muhammad and His Followers in Context: The Religious Map of Late Antique Arabia (Brill, 2024), 102.
78 Paschasius Radbertus, Commentary on Matthew IX, in David Thomas, ed., The Bloomsbury Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations, 600-1500 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 230.
79 Aziz Al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Oxford University Press, 2014), 253; Mark Robert Anderson, The Qur'an in Context: A Christian Exploration (IVP Academic, 2016), 34.
80 Barbara Finster, “Arabia in Late Antiquity: An Outline of the Cultural Situation in the Peninsula at the Time of Muhammad,” in Angelika Neuwirth, et al., eds., The Qur'an in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur'anic Milieu (Brill, 2010), 83; Ilkka Lindstedt, Muhammad and His Followers in Context: The Religious Map of Late Antique Arabia (Brill, 2024), 117.
81 Qur'an 38:48, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 1112.
82 Ahmad Al-Jallad, The Religion and Rituals of Pre-Islamic Arabia: A Reconstruction Based on the Safaitic Inscriptions (Brill, 2022), 91.
83 Qur'an 19:54-55, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 778-779.
84 Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (Routledge, 2001), 244.
85 Qur'an 14:37, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 637.
86 Sahih al-Bukhari 3364, at https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3364.
87 Sahih al-Bukhari 3373, at https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3373.
88 Qur'an 19:54-55, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 779.
89 Qur'an 2:125, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 57.
90 John Kaltner and Younus Y. Mirza, The Bible and the Qur'an: Biblical Figures in the Islamic Tradition (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), 71.
91 Qur'an 2:127-129, in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015), 59; see discussion in John Kaltner and Younus Y. Mirza, The Bible and the Qur'an: Biblical Figures in the Islamic Tradition (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), 69-70.
92 Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur'an (Islamic Foundation, 1999), 1:160.
93 Pseudo-Ephrem, Homily on the End Times 3, in Stephen J. Shoemaker, A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes: A Sourcebook (University of California Press, 2021), 85.
94 Pseudo-Sebeos, Armenian History 42, in Translated Texts for Historians 31:96.
95 John of Damascus, On Heresies 101, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 37:153.
96 Sophronius of Jerusalem, Homily on the Epiphany 10, in Stephen J. Shoemaker, A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes: A Sourcebook (University of California Press, 2021), 50-51.
97 Anglo-Saxon Genesis, line 2290, in Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 7:161.
98 Sophronius of Jerusalem, Homily on the Nativity 14, in Stephen J. Shoemaker, A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes: A Sourcebook (University of California Press, 2021), 49.
99 Maximus the Confessor, Letter 14, in Stephen J. Shoemaker, A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes: A Sourcebook (University of California Press, 2021), 58. See also, later on, John of Damascus, On Heresies 101, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 37:153, who calls Islamic rule and belief “a forerunner of Antichrist.”
100 Khuzistan Chronicle, in Stephen J. Shoemaker, A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes: A Sourcebook (University of California Press, 2021), 132.
101 Abu Muhammad ibn Qutaybah, The Excellence of the Arabs 1.6.3, in James E. Montgomery and Peter Webb, eds., Ibn Qutaybah: The Excellence of the Arabs (New York University Press, 2017), 21.
102 Najm al-Din al-Tufi, Commentary on the Christian Scriptures §495, in Lejla Demiri, Muslim Exegesis of the Bible in Medieval Cairo: Najm al-Din al-Tufi's Commentary on the Christian Scriptures (Brill, 2013), 459.
103 Ibn Hazm, al-Usul wa-l-furu' 1, in Camilla Adang, “Some Hitherto Neglected Biblical Material in the Work of Ibn Hazm,” in Camilla Adang and Sabine Schmidtke, eds., Muslim Perceptions and Receptions of the Bible: Texts and Studies (Lockwood Press, 2019), 77.
104 Ali al-Tabari, Book of Religion and Empire 9-10, in Rifaat Ebied and David Thomas, eds., The Polemical Works of 'Ali al-Tabari (Brill, 2016), 335, 421.
105 Ida Glaser, Thinking Biblically About Islam: Genesis, Transfiguration, Transformation (Langham Global Library, 2016), 218.
106 Mark Robert Anderson, The Qur'an in Context: A Christian Exploration (IVP Academic, 2016), 318.
107 Qur'an 4:171; 5:17, 72, 75; 9:31.
108 Qur'an 5:73, 116-119. See discussion in Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary (Yale University Press, 2018), 218.
109 Qur'an 4:157-158. But see Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (Oneworld Publications, 2009), and Suleiman A. Mourad, “Does the Qur'an Deny or Assert Jesus's Crucifixion and Death?”, in Gabriel Said Reynolds, ed., New Perspectives on the Qur'an: The Qur'an in Its Historical Context 2 (Routledge, 2011), 349-357.
110 See Gordon Nickel, Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qur'an (Brill, 2011), for a discussion of how this 'tampering' polemic got started, and Mun'im Sirry, Scriptural Polemics: The Qur'an and Other Religions (Oxford University Press, 2014), chapter 4, for a study of it; see also Nickel's own rebuttal of the charge of scriptural distortion in his The Gentle Answer to the Muslim Accusation of Biblical Falsification (Bruton Gate, 2015).
111 Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 108.
112 Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 109.
113 Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (Fleming H. Revell, 1900), 401.
114 Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 3.1.10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:152.
115 Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (Fleming H. Revell, 1900), 398.
116 Tony Maalouf, Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line (Kregel, 2003), 186.
117 Evelyne A. Reisacher, Joyful Witness in the Muslim World: Sharing the Gospel in Everyday Encounters (Baker Academic, 2016), 30.
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