2. The first recorded outbreak of Ishmael's rude and
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wayward spirit occurred at the weaning of Isaac. B.C. 20{j]. On that occasion Abraham made a great feast after the custom of the country. In the excitement of the moment, heightened probably by the painful con- sciousness of his own blighted hopes, Ishmael could not restrain his temper, but gave way to some insulting ex- pressions or gestures of mockery. Perhaps the very name of the child, Isaac (" haiz/hter"), and the exuber- ant joy of his aged mother, may have furnished sub- jects for his untimely satire. See Isaac. Be this as it may, Sarah's jealous eye and quick ear speedily detect- ed him ; and she said to Abraham, " Expel this slave and her son ; for the son of this slave shall not be heir with my son, with Isaac" (xxi, 10). Now Abraham loved the boy who first, lisping the name " father," open- ed in his heart the gushing fountain of paternal aftec- tion. The bare mention of such an unnatural act made him angry even with Sarah, and it was only when in- fluenced by a divine admonition that he yielded. The brief account of the departiu-e of Hagar, and her journey through the desert, is one of the most beautifid and touching pictures of patriarchal life which has come down to us : " And Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread, and a skin of water, and gave it to Ha- gar, putting it on her shoulder, and the lad C^'^i^), and sent her away; and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And when the v/ater was spent in the skin, she placed the lad under one of the shrubs. And she went and sat do^vn opposite, at the distance of a bowshot ; for she said, I will not see the death of the lad. And she sat opposite, and lifted up her voice and wept" (xxi, 14-lG).
Isaac was born when Abraham was a hundred years old (xxi, 5), and as the weaning, according to Eastern usage, probably took place when the child wa; about three years old, Ishmael himself must have been then about sixteen years old. The age of the latter at the period of his circumcision, and at that of his expulsion, has given occasion for some literary speculation. A care- ful consideration of the passages referring to it fails, how- ever, to show any discrepancj- between them. In Gen. xvii, 25, it is stated that he was thirteen years old when he was circumcised; and in xxi, 14 (probably two or three years later) "Abraham . . . took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave [it] imto Hagar, putting [it] on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away." Here it is at least unnecessary to assume that the child was put on her shoulder, the construction of the Hebrew (mistranslated bj' the Sept., with whom seems to rest the origin of the question) not requiring it ; and the sense of the passage renders it highly improbable : Hagar cer- tainly carried the bottle on her shoulder, and perhaps the Ijread: she could hardly have also thus carried a child. Again, these passages are quite irreconcilable with ver. 20 of the last quoted chapter, where Ishmael is termed ~l;:'il^, A. Y. " lad" (comp., for use of this word, Gen. xxxiv, 19; xxxvii, 2; xli, 12). It may seem strange to some that the hardy, active boy, inured to fatigue, should have been sooner overcome by thirst than his mother; but those adv-anced in life can bear abstinence longer than the young, and, besides, Ishmael had probably exhausted his strength in vain attempts to gain a supply of food by his bow. Again Hagar is saved by a miracle : " God heard the voice of the lad . . . and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar ? Fear not . . . And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water" (ver. 17, 19). And again the cheering prom- ise is renewed to her son, " I will make of him a great nation" (ver. 18).
3. The wilderness of Paran, lying along the western side of the Arabah, between Canaan and the mountains of Sinai, now became the home of Ishmael (see Baum- garten, Comm. I, i, 22) : " And God was with him, and he became a great archer" (ver. 20). Some of the border tribes with which the shepherds of Abraham were wont to meet and strive at the wells of Gerar, Beersheba, and
En-iVIishpat probably received and welcomed tlie out- cast to their tents. A youth of his warlike training and daring spirit would soon acquire a name and a high po- sition among nomads. (See I'rokesch, Spec. Hist. A rah, p. 4(5.) His relationship to Abraham also would add to his personal claims. It would seem to have been the original intention of his mother to return to Egypt, to which countrj' she belonged ; but this being prevented, she was content to obtain for her son wives from thence (Gen. xxi, 9-21 ; on which latter verse the Turgitm of Jonathan adds traditionally that he divorced Ids tirst wife Adisha, and then married an Egyptian Phatima). His mother, accordingly, as soon as she saw him settled, took for him an Egyptian wife — one of her own people, and thus completely separated him from his Shemitic connections. This wife of Ishmael is not elsewhere mentioned ; she was, we must infer, an Egyptian ; and this second infusion of Hamitic blood into the progeni- tors of the Arab nation, Ishmael's sons, is a fact that has generally been overlooked. No record is made of any other wife of Ishmael, and failing such record, the Egyp- tian was the mother of his twelve sons and daughter. This daughter, however, is called the " sister of Neba- joth" (Gen. xxviii, 9), and this limitation of the parent- age of the brother and sister certainly seems to point to a different mother for Ishmael's other sons. The Arabs, probably borrowing from the above Rabbinical tradition, assert that he twice married; the lirst wife being an Amalekite, by whom he had no issue ; and the second a Joktanite, of the tribe of Jurhum (Jfir-dt et-Ze7ndn,'MS., quoting a tradition of Mohammed Ibn-Is-hak). Though Ishmael joined the native tribes of Arabia, his posterity did not amalgamate with them. The Joktanites have left traces of their names and settlements chiefly in the southern and south-eastern parts of the peninsula, while the Ishmaelites kept closer to the borders of Canaan (see Forster's Gvography of Arabia, i, 77 sq.).