by Hal Lindsey
This I AM is the specific name that can never be applied to the church, even in a figurative sense. It is also a name that cannot be applied to the Muslims.
Why is this so important? We will see that the God of the Bible is not the God of Ishmael, Esau, Mohammad, and the Muslims. Indeed, we will see that this issue is not just some irrelevant old theological argument, but is the basis of one of the central issues that troubles our world today.
[ FOUR ]
ABRAHAM’S WILD CHILD: THE HATE BEGINS
“He will be a wild ass of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers and dwell to the east of them.”
— GOD’S PROPHESY ABOUT ISHMAEL52
SOME DECISIONS WE make in life carry consequences far beyond our comprehension. There are some things we would give anything to undo, but alas, they cannot be. What’s even worse is the generational impact of our sins—that is, some consequences of our wrong choices extend themselves to our relatives for generations.
Abraham had a lapse of faith concerning God’s promise to give him a son. The decision he made during this episode of unbelief resulted in such enormous consequences that they have continued through the centuries until this very hour. I am sure that if Abraham had even a small hint of the trouble that would follow, he would never have tried to help God give him a son.
This chapter details the account of how a temporary lapse of faith resulted in a catastrophe for Abraham’s future descendants who inherited the covenants. The consequences have affected more than a hundred generations over a period of four thousand years.
Some of the history in this chapter will overlap with that of the last. But since this history is so critical to understanding the modern Arab-Israeli conflict, it is necessary. This chapter will emphasize Ishmael’s role in this four-thousand-year-old family feud.
ABRAHAM’S LAPSE OF FAITH
Abraham turned eighty-five-years old. It had been ten years since he moved to Canaan and God made the covenants with him that necessitated his having a son. And Sarah, his wife, was still barren and becoming very impatient. Finally, she decided that since she was now seventy-five-years old and still barren, it was impossible for her to bear Abraham a son. So Sarah came up with a plan to help God:
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.53
Sarah decided that the LORD had prevented her from conceiving and decided He must have another plan for giving them an heir. So she assumed that the LORD needed some help. The custom for the world of that time, as I mentioned before, was for the wife to use her maid as a surrogate mother. So Abraham, whose own faith must have been wavering, agreed with Sarah’s plan.
However, the plan had one big problem. It was conceived out of a lack of faith in God’s ability to keep His promise. Sarah and Abraham looked at this problem from the human viewpoint (HVP). The human viewpoint sees a problem from the standpoint of human ability. On the other hand, the divine viewpoint (DVP) looks at a problem from the standpoint of God’s ability to keep His promises, no matter how impossible they may appear.
So Abraham, who should have known better, followed his wife’s suggestions and had relations with her Egyptian maid. And the moment she conceived, the problems began. Naturally, the maid’s attitude changed and a civil war broke out in Abraham’s tents.
This situation was predictable. The Book of Proverbs warns, “Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up: a servant who becomes king, a fool who is full of food, an unloved woman who is married, and a maidservant who displaces her mistress.”54
To make matters even worse, Sarah blamed Abraham for following her idea: “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”55 Ouch!
Abraham uncharacteristically ducks the problem and throws it back into Sarah’s lap. He told her, in effect: “She’s your maid, you deal with her. Do whatever you want with her.” And of course Sarah vented her frustration and anger on poor Hagar. She treated her so harshly that she ran away into the desert.
GOD’S PROPHECY TO HAGAR
No doubt Hagar would have died in the desert had not the Lord in His great mercy sought her out and encouraged her. The angel of the Lord56 also gave Hagar a great promise and a prophecy about the child she would bear:
The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the LORD also said to her:
“You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, [Ishmael means “God hears”] for the LORD has heard of your misery.
“He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”57
This was a marvelous manifestation of God’s mercy. Hagar apparently was trying to follow the road across the Sinai back to Egypt. But alone on foot with no provisions, she would have died in route. Hagar, the Egyptian maid, was subjected to an affair over which she had no choice. But the LORD demonstrates that He loved her too, as He does anyone who calls out to Him and throws herself upon God’s mercy. The very name that God gives her for the son she is carrying is a memorial that the LORD heard her prayer of distress. He commanded her to name him “Ishmael,” which means “God hears.”
A lone runaway female slave in that day was truly helpless and in danger. The LORD therefore tells her to return and be submissive to Sarah with the promise that He would bless her with descendants beyond numbering through her son. She is promised her own personal inheritance and blessing from the LORD through her son.
Because Ishmael is also a son of Abraham, God promises to bless him and make him into a great multitude of people and nations. God loves Ishmael and his descendants, even though he foreknew his wild nature that would be multiplied in his descendants. The Lord made an amazing prophecy about the kind of temperament and nature that would be in Ishmael’s genes and passed on to his descendants. It is fascinating to analyze each to see how accurately it has been fulfilled in the descendants of Ishmael—the Arabs.
1. “He will be a wild ass of a man.” [Note: this refers to Gen. 16:12.]
Hebrew scholars Keil and Delitzsch comment on how accurately this metaphor describes the Arab people. “The figure of a wild ass,’ they write, “that wild and untamable animal, roaming at its will in the desert … depicts most aptly the Bedouin’s boundless love of freedom as he rides about in the desert, spear in hand, upon his camel or his horse, hardy, frugal, reveling in the varied beauty of nature, and despising town life in every form.”58
God poetically describes the nature of the “wild ass” in His challenge to Job:
Who set the wild ass free?
Who loosed the bonds of the swift ass?
Whose home I have made the wilderness,
And the barren land his dwelling?
He scorns the tumult of the city;
He does not heed the shouts of the driver.
The range of the mountains is his pasture,
And he searches after every green thing.59
Th
is perfectly describes the genetic characteristics and nature of Ishmael and his descendents, the Arabs. Like the wild donkeys of the wilderness, they fiercely love their freedom and independence. They have always had a warrior’s temperament.
2. “Whose home I have made the wilderness, And the barren land his dwelling.” [Note: this refers to Job.] This description from Job accurately describes how the wild ass illustrates the Arab characteristics. God predicted that the Ishmaelites would live to the east of all their brethren. God gave them the Arabian Peninsula, which is to the east of all the rest of Abraham’s descendants. Philip Hitti writes about the Arab home:
Despite its size—it is the largest peninsula in the world—its total population is estimated at only seven to eight millions. It is one of the driest and hottest countries in the whole world. True, the area is sandwiched between seas on the east and west, but these bodies of water are too narrow to break the climatic continuity of the Africo-Asian rainless continental masses. The ocean on the south does bring rains, to be sure, but the monsoons (an Arabic word, incidentally), which seasonably lash the land, leave very little moisture for the interior. It is easy to understand why the bracing and delightful east wind has always provided a favorite theme for Arabian poets.60
The migrant Arab is called a “Bedouin.” He loves the desert and the freedom to move about the vast desert regions from oasis to oasis with the seasons—always searching after every green thing.
The Arabs call their peninsula an “island,” because it is surrounded on three sides by sea and ocean—and to the north where it connects to land, the great Nafud Desert isolates it even more than an ocean.
The richest part of Arabia in ancient history was the southern coast, which thrusts out into the Indian Ocean. This area received seasonal rains and produced some of the most exotic in-demand plants of the ancient world. The much sought after fragrance called myrrh came from there. It also accumulated great wealth because its seaports were along the main trade route from Asia.
3. “His hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand will be against him.” 61
This characteristic has been dominant throughout the history of the Arabs. Hitti summarizes accurately the Arab Bedouin nature:
The Bedouin still lives, as his forebears did, in tents of goats’ or camels’ hair (“houses of hair”), and grazes his sheep and goats on the same ancient pastures. Sheep-and-camel-raising, and to a lesser degree horse-breeding, hunting and raiding, are his regular occupations, and are to his mind the only occupations worthy of a man.62
Blood feuds have been fought between the many Arab tribes of the peninsula for centuries. Their lists of grudges against each other can go back for centuries. If an Arab is forced out of the protection of his tribe, he usually doesn’t last very long.
The wild donkey reflects this very characteristic, for he groups together in small herds and is hostile with even other herds of his own kind. Similarly Arab society from its earliest history divided up into many clans. Again Hitti describes the predominant Arab social structure:
The spirit of the clan demands boundless and unconditional loyalty to fellow clansmen, a passionate chauvinism. His allegiance, which is individualism of the member magnified, assumes that his tribe is a unit by itself, self-sufficient and absolute, and regards every other tribe as its legitimate victim and object of plunder and murder.63
There have been only a few things that have been able to unite the Arabs in all their history. The most important unifier was Mohammad and the initial impact of the Muslim religion. And over time, even the common religion could not hold the different Arab tribes together.
Then there was the common threat to their “Holy Places” posed by the Catholic crusaders. Muslim armies united to fight off the successive waves of European knights sent by the pope to liberate Jerusalem and the ancient Holy Land.
In our present era, the most powerful unifying factor of all has arisen. Nothing can unite the warring Muslim factions like their historic hatred for Jews, which has been reignited by their reestablishment of the state of Israel. To the Muslims, Israel’s existence in the midst of what they consider their sacred sphere of the earth is the ultimate sacrilege. It is an insult to Allah that must be avenged and destroyed. To the Muslim, the fact that Israel has beaten them in five wars even threatens the veracity of the Koran, which promises them victory over the infidels, especially when their fight is a “Jihad to liberate their third holiest site— Jerusalem.” The Jewish occupation of Jerusalem is a “humiliation” that must be avenged for the sake of the honor of Allah and the truth of the Koran. The combination of all these issues elevates religious passion to an intensity that cannot be fathomed by the Western mind.
Much more will be said on this subject later in the book.
4. “And he will live in hostility toward all of his brothers, [and he will dwell to the east of them.]”64
This part of the prophecy concerning Ishmael and his descendents is particularly important. Many English translations simply translate this clause as, “and he will dwell to east of all his brothers.” But the Hebrew words and grammatical construction are much more complex than that translation would imply.
Hebrew scholars Keil and Delitzsch observe that the expression often translated as, “He will dwell before the face of all his brethren” (from the Hebrew , transliterated as [“before the face of”], and which denotes in this context it is true, to the east of … , but the geographical notice of the dwelling-place of the Ishmaelites hardly exhausts the force of the expression, which also indicated that Ishmael would maintain an independent standing before (in the presence of) all the descendants of Abraham. History has confirmed this promise. The Ishmaelites have continued to this day in free and undiminished possession of the extensive peninsula between the Euphrates, the Straits of Suez, and the Red Sea, from which they have overspread both Northern Africa and Southern Asia.”65
According to Hebrew scholars, the expression “in the face of” can also mean, “to stand in defiant hostility toward.” The New International Version, I believe, correctly expresses the sense of this phrase by translating it, “and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” The New Revised Standard Version is an improvement as well: “and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” However, I believe that the NIV translation better catches the intended sense, a rendering confirmed by history to be the truest expression of the intended meaning.
ENMITY FLASHES IN EMBRYONIC FORM
The seeds of enmity are expressed in embryonic form on the occasion of Isaac’s weaning. Abraham and Sarah threw a great feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning. By this time, Ishmael was at least sixteen years old and accustomed to having most of his father’s attention. So when Isaac was born and so much attention was showered upon him, a great deal of resentment and jealousy must have sprung up in both Ishmael and his mother. All the ingredients for an envy-driven hatred were there.
During the celebration, the Bible reports, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing [at her son Isaac].”66
The Hebrew term translated “scoffing” is from the root word “to laugh” (, transliterated as [give transliteration], means “to mock”). But in the participial form in this context it means, “making fun of, ridiculing, discounting someone’s worth.”
To understand the full implications of this situation, we have to put it up against the background of the promise God gave to Abraham when He announced Isaac’s birth. This is what God had promised Abraham:
Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.” Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh, tha
t Ishmael might live before You!” Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.”67
This God-given revelation must have certainly been made known to Abraham’s entire household, including Hagar and Ishmael. And its divine authenticity was confirmed with the miraculous conception and birth of Isaac to the elderly parents.
So when Ishmael scoffed at and made fun of Isaac, he did so with the knowledge that according to divine revelation, Isaac was the chosen one. And that this was not merely a human choice based on carnal favoritism. This is why in the eyes of God Ishmael was not just mocking Isaac, but he was rejecting and ridiculing His sovereign choice. The German scholar Hengstenberg expressed the following insight, “Unbelief, envy, pride of carnal superiority, were the causes of Ishmael’s conduct.”68
This is surely the stuff of which Ishmael’s “enmity” was born. Remember, enmity is hatred that has been nourished over a long period of time. It was just beginning to take root here. An “everlasting hatred” is the very essence of the meaning of “enmity.”
GOD’S PROMISES TO ISHMAEL
The Bible makes it clear that despite the birth of Isaac, there was no lack of love for Ishmael on the part of Abraham or God. Abraham even petitioned the Lord that Ishmael could be part of the divine choice, when he said, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!”
And as a result, God made it clear that Ishmael would be given a great inheritance because he was also Abraham’s son. God promised, “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.”69 In point of fact, the Ishmaelites were given more land and ultimately more wealth than the Israelites. This was true in their past history, not to mention the vast oil wealth of modern times. And spiritual salvation has always been open to the Ishmaelites.