The Boy Under the Bush

Isaac's arrival did not bring peace to Abraham's household. At the feast for his weaning, Sarah saw Ishmael mocking, and she demanded that Abraham send the slave woman and her son away. Abraham was greatly distressed, because Ishmael was his son too. God told him to listen to Sarah, because the covenant line would run through Isaac, but he also promised that Ishmael would become a nation, since he was Abraham's offspring.

So Abraham rose early, gave Hagar bread and a skin of water, and sent her off with the boy. She wandered in the desert of Beersheba until the water ran out. Then she put Ishmael under a bush, walked a bowshot away, and sat down, because she could not watch him die. She wept. And the text says that God heard the boy crying. The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, told her not to be afraid, opened her eyes to a well, and repeated the promise. God was with the boy as he grew up.

The one idea here is that God's particular choice of Isaac did not mean his rejection of Ishmael. This is hard for us, because we tend to think in terms of winners and losers. If Isaac is the child of promise, Ishmael must be the child of nothing. Genesis refuses that logic. God chose one line for the purpose of blessing all the families of the earth, and he did not stop caring for the people outside that line. He heard the boy. He opened the mother's eyes. He stayed with the child in the wilderness.

You may be someone who feels outside the main story, the Ishmael in a family of Isaacs, the one who did not get the blessing. Hear this: God hears you where you are. The name Ishmael means God hears, and it was given before the boy was born, so that when he lay crying under a bush, the name would already be true.

Or you may be Sarah, protecting what is yours at someone else's expense. God did not undo her decision, but he did not share her indifference either. Ask him to open your eyes to the well you cannot see, and to the people you have sent away.