(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)
“Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, but Abraham gave gifts to the sons of Abraham’s concubines. While he still lived, he sent them away from Isaac his son, eastward, to the east country.”
(Genesis 25:5-6)
Abraham had been concerned about who would inherit all his possessions (Genesis 15:2-3). Now decades later, he had the son of God’s promise. He also had other children. But it was the child of the promise who would be the major inheritor. There would be no succession battles. No squabbles over his will. Abraham left everything to Isaac.
At the same time, Abraham did not forget his other children. He provided for them BEFORE his death. He made sure that they had the resources they needed to succeed. None of them would come looking for more claiming to have been wronged. And to ensure no fighting like he and Lot had endured (Genesis 13:7), he sent his other children away to establish their futures away from the land promised to Isaac. This was wisdom.
The sage Rashi writes: ‘AND ויתן אברהם וגו AND ABRAHAM GAVE etc. — R. Nehemiah said, he gave him the blessing as a legacy (literally, will, testament). The Holy One, blessed be He, had said to Abraham (12:2) “Be thou a blessing” which means “the blessing are entrusted to you that you may bless whomsoever you please”, and Abraham transferred them to Isaac (cf. Genesis Rabbah 61:6). הפילגשים THE CONCUBINES — The word is written deficient, (without י, but our texts have a י in both places) because he had only one concubine, Hagar, who is identical with Keturah. Wives are those whom a man marries with a marriage-contract (Ketubah): concubines have no marriage contract, as we explain in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 21a) in reference to David’s wives and concubines. נתן אברהם מתנות ABRAHAM GAVE GIFTS — Our Rabbis explained (Sanhedrin 91a) that he transmitted to them the names of impure things. Another explanation is: all that he had received as gifts because of Sarah — and other gifts that people had given him — all these he gave to them because he did not wish to derive any benefit from these.’
The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘That, in the lives of an Abraham and Isaac, we find only a few, chosen children were fit to receive not only מתנות, but also נחלה, the whole spiritual heritage, כל אשר לו, from the father, that, whereas in later times it is demanded and expected, that all children should follow the spiritual footsteps of their parents, that even an Abraham did not succeed in educating all of them in this, may not be surprising when we consider that Abraham and Isaac were in conflict with the whole of their contemporary world. Outside Abraham and Isaac’s tent there was not a single inch of the world for the spirit and morals of the covenant of Abraham so that the education of the home had to paralyse the weight and example of the whole of the contemporary world. How difficult even in the present day, are our parents finding it to bring up all their children in their own Jewish ways compared to a hundred years ago, and still our children can find other houses beyond their own four walls in which the atmosphere and spirit is equal to their own homes. And in any case this sending away of Ketura’s children was also in accordance with God’s stipulation כי ביצחק יקרא לך זרע. According to the way our sages take it the מתנות include spiritual gifts which they took out with them into the world from Abraham’s house, but which later on became misused and muddled and lost their original purity. קדמה. He sent them eastwards, to the land of the east. The land promised for the Abrahamitic future is the extreme western point of the land of the east, on the border line of the orient and the occident. To the west lie the European countries, on which they were first of all to plant that of which Isaac’s descendants were to be the bearers. Everything spiritual and moral, enlightening and ennobling which mankind has obtained has come from this border. שם and יפת, Judea and Greece the two lands from which the culture and religion of the nations have emanated lie here, close together “in the navel of the world”. From there the path of culture and enlightenment and civilisation went westwards. Ketura’s children were sent eastwards. Only later would they enter this spiritual moral future.’
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