Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“God was with the boy, and he grew. He lived in the wilderness, and as he grew up, he became an archer. He lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother got a wife for him out of the land of Egypt.”
(Genesis 21:20-21)

God keeps His promises. Period. The boy lived as the Lord had said. The boy grew up fierce in the wilderness as the Lord had said. The boy got a wife and was able to have descendants – which became a nation (Genesis 25:12-18). God keeps His promises.

Hagar did not look toward Abraham’s house for a wife for her son. She looked back to where she came from and took a wife from there. They were aware of the Lord, but kept looking elsewhere and taking up alliances elsewhere. They ended up falling away and the descendants of Ishmael are not known for their worship of Yahweh God Almighty.

The area that they settled in was about a hundred and sixty kilometres south of the Dead Sea. It was the area that Israel camped in when the twelve spies were sent into the Land to spy it out (Numbers 13:26).

The sage Chizkuni writes: ‘וישב במדבר, “he settled in the desert.” This is why he had been described as פרא אדם, (Genesis 16,12, where the angel predicted his birth) He was a loner, shunning civilized society. ויהי רבה קשת, “he became a professional hunter with bow and arrow.” ותקח לו אמו אשה מארץ מצרים, “His mother took an Egyptian woman to become his wife.” the place where she grew up and where her family still live. Ishmael first married a Moabite woman but she was not a proper wife for him. He divorced her after his father Abraham sent a message to who had been his wife (Hagar) that this woman was bereft of all virtues. Then his mother took a woman from Egypt for his wife, According to Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 30, Yishmael first married a Moabite woman, and when that marriage did not work out, his mother intervened and chose a second wife for him. This is why the Torah had to report that his mother took a wife for him. His Moabite wife had lacked the Abrahamitic virtue of offering hospitality (even to his father).’

The sage Haamek Davar writes: ‘And he became an archer, a bowman (kashat): The vocalization of kashat teaches us that it is not the name of a tool that he shoots (keshet, being a bow). Rather it is a verbal noun. It is a craftsman, like a gamal [and] a chamar, the meaning of which is a driver of camels (gamalim) [and] a driver of donkeys (chamorim). As Yishmael was a craftsmen with this like someone accustomed and trained, even though he did not have anyone who taught him. Rather it was with the help of the Heavens.’

The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 20. רבה קשת. We have already explained on פרו ורבו (Ch. 1,28) that in רבה lies the idea of spiritual education as parents can only reproduce themselves in their children if they make them spiritual replicas of themselves. Hence רבה meaning actual educating and תרבות discipline education, and רבי, not master, literally one who ranks above, but one who reproduces himself in his pupils. רֹבֶה קשת, a trainer of archers, and not רֹבֵה a master of archers, who could have some other occupation also, whose principle occupation may have been something else but, רֹבֶה, one whose constant occupation was this. V. 21. Already above at the end of Ch. XVI we pointed out, how, and how strongly, the imprint of participation in the spirit of Abraham — although it is true, one sided only — is stamped on the Arab descendants of Ishmael. Now if we consider how, already at seventeen years of age Ishmael was withdrawn from Abraham’s influence, and the maternal Hamitic influence must thenceforth have been strengthened through his wife, the ancestress of Arab people, these Abrahamite traces so strongly marked in the Arab nation must transport us with wonder at the enduring, indestructable force which is innate in a true Abrahamic education.’