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Monday, February 13 2012
Ishmael was the actual firstborn son of Abraham. His mother was Hagar, an Egyptian woman that Abraham's wife Sarah arranged to make into a concubine, and a surrogate mother. When Ishmael was conceived, the strife began - between Sarah and Hagar.
"16:1 Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. 16:2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.
Hagar left and headed home - toward Egypt. The LORD (see The Rock Of The Church; also A History Of Jerusalem: Melchizedek's Salem) however appeared to Hagar and commanded her to return to Abraham, for "Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction."
"16:7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. 16:8 And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?
With the confidence and assurance of the promise given to her by the LORD, Hagar returned (the appearance to Hagar was within part of the same area the Israelites would later live for forty years after the Exodus, and where Moses himself had lived for about forty years before that - see Moses Of Midian).
"16:13 And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? 16:14 Wherefore the well was called Beerlahairoi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.
"Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation"
Sarah had also been promised by the LORD that she would, in the time set by the LORD, have a child of her own (see Sarah's Promise).
"21:1 And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. 21:2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. 21:3 And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. 21:4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. 21:5 And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.
The tension that existed between Sarah and Hagar when Hagar had a child but Sarah did not, increased after Sarah's own child was born. It resulted in another driving away of Hagar. The LORD did not make Hagar stay or return then - the time was due for Hagar to do her part in the fulfillment of a prophecy. The Messianic line would be through Isaac, in the land that would later be known as Israel, but Abraham's other "seed" would not be forsaken by the LORD.
"21:8 And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. 21:9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. 21:10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.
Just as she did the first time, Hagar was headed home for Egypt. But, also like the first time, she didn't have the supplies that she needed to complete the journey. The LORD once again appeared to her, provided her with all that she needed, and blessed Ishmael with the promise "I will make him a great nation."
"21:15 And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. 21:16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.
Exactly as promised, Ishmael became the progenitor of a family of his own (with Hagar no doubt secure within as a treasured matriarch). He lived a long, prosperous life and then died in the land that the LORD had given to him.
"25:12 Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's handmaid, bare unto Abraham:
The descendants of Ishmael and Isaac were often in conflict over the centuries afterward, but one of the most well-known incidents of Bible History involving the Ishmaelites (the descendants of Ishmael; the KJV also renders them as "Ishmeelites") and the Israelites (the sons of Jacob, who the LORD renamed as Israel) was when the Israelites sold one of their own brothers, Joseph, to Ishmaelite traders who were passing by on their way to Egypt (see also Why Did They Go To Goshen?).
"37:23 And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him; 37:24 And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
Fact Finder: As one of the "seed" of Abraham, was Ishmael's territory near Egypt a part of the fulfillment of the promise that Abraham's seed would inhabit the lands "from the Nile to the Euphrates"?
This Day In History, February 13
1462: The Treaty of Westminster was completed between Edward IV of England and the Scottish Lord of the Isles.
1542: Catherine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VIII, was beheaded for alleged adultery.
1575: Henry III of France was crowned at Rheims.
1633: Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition. In 1992, the Vatican acknowledged that the excommunicated Italian astronomer had been right in saying that the earth orbits around the sun, not vice versa as the Church of Rome had earlier taught - a mistake that the leaders of the Church of Rome might not have made if they had based their beliefs on the Word of God e.g. see No 'Flat Earth' In The Bible.
1668: Spain recognized the independence of Portugal under the Treaty of Lisbon.
1689: William of Orange and his wife Mary, daughter of the deposed James II, were declared joint sovereigns of Great Britain and Ireland.
1689: The British Parliament adopted the Bill of Rights.
1759: At a session of the Nova Scotia legislature in Canada, the first vote by secret ballot in the British Empire was held.
1788: In Britain, the trial of Warren Hastings began. Governor-general of India, he was charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors" in a case which took 7 years to complete.
1793: Britain, Prussia, Austria, Holland, Spain and Sardinia formed an alliance against France.
1858: Sir Richard Burton and Captain John Speke became the first (known) Europeans to discover Lake Tanganyika in East Africa.
1895: The Lumiere brothers were granted a patent in France for their machine "to film and view chronophotographic proofs" - one of the earliest projectors.
1909: The "Young Turk" revolution gathered added momentum when the Grand Vizier (see A History Of Jerusalem: The British Mandate and listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire) was overthrown in Constantinople.
1927: Brooks Adams died at age 79. The U.S. historian (and grandson of President John Quincy Adams) developed the theory that "by its nature and substance, U.S. democracy was foreordained to degradation and decay."
1945: The Royal Air Force Bomber Command devastated the German city of Dresden with night missions by 873 heavy British and Canadian bombers. The attacks were followed by 521 American heavy bombers flying daylight missions.
1955: Israel took possession of 4 of the Dead Sea scrolls (listen to our Sermon The Dead Sea Scrolls).
1960: France became the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.
1961: A supposed 500,000-year-old rock, discovered near Olancha, California, was found to have a modern-day spark plug encased within it. It became known as the Coso Artifact.
1974: Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, was deported from the Soviet Union and deprived of Soviet citizenship.
1984: Konstantin Chernenko succeeded Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the then-declining Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the Soviet Union itself was by then soon to cease to exist).
1990: An agreement was reached to reunite Germany (see Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Euro!).