Genesis 21:8-21 (The God Of Ishmael)

Sarah of course comes across as about as endearing as the wicked queen in Snow White when she orders the expulsion of the child, even if her own place of authority in the family was at being placed at risk.

I suppose Isaac had reason to be pleased, though I suspect that he mourned the loss of his brother. I’m sure Abraham shed some tears. Perhaps Sarah laughed again as she saw her enemies leave camp. Perhaps she felt pangs of guilt. We don’t know.

It all has the makings of a good soap opera – one man, two women, multiple children, jealousy, greed and murder. If only we had got the whole crew on Jerry Springer before it reached its tragic climax, with Hagar leaving Ishmael to die under a tree.

Ishmael should have been a strapping young lad by that stage of course, full of energy and young muscularity, and yet he apparently faded even faster than did his mother. Perhaps the emotional shock of it all was more than he could take. At any rate, we’re told that she couldn’t stand to watch him die, so she goes off a distance to die alone. But God ‘hears the cry’ of the boy and He comes to save both mother and son from death.

This is the surely most beautiful verse in the story:

“God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is”. (Genesis 21:17)

It reminds me very much of another word from God that appears a little further down the track of the Biblical narrative, where the descendents of Isaac ‘cried out to God because of their slavery’ in Egypt. And we’re told,

“God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” (Exodus 2:24)

God, it seems, tends to have his ears open to the cries of the vulnerable. As it happened in Exodus, so it happens here! God hears the cry of the boy and He remembers His promise, not to Israel this time, but to Ishmael!

God had plans for Ishmael! God had made promises to Ishmael. God was going to build out of Ishmael a mighty nation! The interesting thing of course is that this man and these promises and this mighty nation do NOT form any central part of the ongoing Biblical narrative as we have it. This all becomes a part of another story. Dare we say it - it becomes part of the story of Islam!

I think this is why I have never seen a stained-glass window depicting the life of Ishmael.

In our Bibles, the story of Ishmael more or less finishes here. In the Koran though we read of Ishmael going on to Mecca and building a Mosque there. He becomes the physical father of the Arab peoples, and spiritual father to the Islamic community!

Now it’s not my job to tell you whether the account you read of in the Koran is true or false. And it’s certainly not my job to tell you whether you should like or admire Ishmael. What I must tell you though, from Genesis chapter 21, is that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, - the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ - is clearly also the God of Ishmael!