Genesis 16:11-16
Named before birth
The messenger tells Hagar what to call him and what he will be like, and Abram is eighty-six. For thirteen years he is simply the son.
People of the Bible
Ishmael
Abraham’s first son, blessed and provided for, and not the one the covenant ran through.
Ishmael is named before he is born, and the name means God hears. He grows up as Abraham’s only son for thirteen years, is circumcised with the whole household on the day the covenant sign is given, and then a second boy arrives and the ground moves under him. He is sent into the wilderness with his mother, nearly dies of thirst, and grows up in Paran with a bow. Twelve sons come from him, exactly as promised. At the end he stands beside Isaac at their father’s grave.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Ishmael
- 01
- 02
Genesis 17:18-27
Let Ishmael live before you
Abraham asks for this boy and is answered twice over: a blessing and twelve princes for Ishmael, and the covenant for a son not yet born.
- 03
Genesis 21:8-21
The laughing and the leaving
At the feast for Isaac he is seen laughing, and it costs him the household. He and his mother are put out, and God hears him where he lies.
- 04
Genesis 25:9-18
At the grave, and after
He and Isaac bury Abraham together at Machpelah. Then his own twelve sons are listed by name, a nation counted as carefully as the other one.
Why it matters
Ishmael is the test case for what a blessing is worth when it is not the blessing. God says plainly that he will be made a great nation and that he is heard, and also that the covenant continues through Isaac. Genesis refuses to collapse those two into one another, and refuses to write him out. He gets his own genealogy and his own promise kept.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
