Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away
Sent into the desert with bread and a bottle of water, Hagar wept over her dying son, until God opened her eyes to a well.
At the great feast Abraham made on the day Isaac was weaned, Sarah saw Ishmael, the son of Hagar the Egyptian, mocking, and she demanded that Abraham cast out the bondwoman and her son. The thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight, but God told him to hearken to Sarah, for in Isaac his seed would be called, and promised that He would also make a nation of Ishmael. Early the next morning Abraham gave Hagar bread and a bottle of water and sent her away, and she wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba until the water was spent. Unable to watch her son die, she laid him under a shrub and wept, but 'God heard the voice of the lad,' opened her eyes to a well of water, and promised to make him a great nation. Ishmael grew up in the wilderness of Paran and became an archer.
Did You Know?
This was the second time Hagar met God in the wilderness; years earlier she had called Him 'Thou God seest me.'
God promised to make Ishmael a nation twice in this passage, once to Abraham and once to Hagar.
Ishmael's mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt, her own homeland.
Paul later uses Hagar and Sarah as an allegory of two covenants in Galatians 4.
Key Passage
Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away
Genesis 21:8-21
8nd the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned.
Meanwhile in the World
Egypt's Old Kingdom builds the pyramids (c. 2600-2100 BC). Mesopotamia is dominated by Akkad and then Ur III. The Indus Valley civilization flourishes. Stonehenge is being constructed in Britain. This is the era of the great ziggurats and the first law codes (Ur-Nammu).