Ishmael Was Blessed and Cast Out by the Same God

The angel did not appear after the crisis. The angel appeared before it. Hagar had not yet been cast out. That was still years away. When a messenger from heaven intercepted her in the wilderness and told her the name of the child she was carrying. Bereshit Rabbah 45:8, a fifth-century Palestinian compilation of Genesis interpretation, pauses on this detail with unusual care. To be named by God before birth, it observes, is to have your destiny set before you arrive. The name was not a gift from parents. It was a decree from heaven.

Rabbi Yitzchak, in that same passage, counts three people in all of history who received their names from God before they were born. Isaac, whose name means laughter, was announced to Abraham before Sarah had conceived. Solomon, whose name and calling were declared to David before Solomon entered the world. And Ishmael, the firstborn son of the patriarch, the child of the Egyptian woman who had once been Sarah's slave. Three names spoken before birth. The Midrash wanted readers to notice who was in that company. Ishmael was not a footnote to the patriarchal story. He was named in the same breath as the two people whose names defined the covenant's future.

The name was Ishmael: God has heard. The angel told Hagar she would bear a son, a wild creature of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him (Genesis 16:12). This is the blessing. Not despite those words. Those words are the blessing. Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, the great synthesis of rabbinic tradition compiled in the early twentieth century, describes how carefully Abraham and Sarah had weighed their situation. Ten years in the land of Canaan, still childless. Sarah watching her husband grow old. Then her own initiative: take Hagar, who had been a gift from Pharaoh and whom Sarah had raised in righteousness, let her conceive, give the child as a kind of surrogate fulfillment. Abraham, guided by the Ruach HaKodesh (holy spirit), agreed. It was an act of sacrifice dressed as a solution.

Things shifted the moment Hagar became pregnant. She began to carry herself differently around Sarah, subtly undermining her before guests. When noble women visited, Hagar would let them draw their own conclusions about who in that household was truly favored. Sarah brought her complaint to Abraham. He told her to handle it as she saw fit. The tradition is uncomfortable with what followed: Sarah treated Hagar harshly enough that Hagar fled. The angel found her at a spring in the wilderness and sent her back with a name for the child she carried.

The crisis came in earnest years later, at a weaning feast Abraham held for Isaac. The older boy was practicing with his bow and arrow near Isaac, aiming close, claiming it was sport. Sarah saw through it. She told Abraham: send them away. Give everything to Isaac. Abraham heard her and was devastated. Of all the trials he faced, the Legends of the Jews says, this was the most agonizing. God had to appear to him directly that night to assure him that Ishmael would survive. More than survive. "What Sarah spoke unto thee was naught but truth," God said. And in the morning, Abraham gave Hagar a bill of divorcement and sent them into the wilderness with bread and a skin of water.

Bereshit Rabbah 47:5 wrestles with the exact terms of what Ishmael received. (Genesis 17:20) is explicit: God would make Ishmael fruitful, multiply him exceedingly, father twelve princes, become a great nation. The rabbis could not dismiss this. It was there in the text, unambiguous. But the next verse says the covenant, the deeper covenant, would be kept with Isaac. Two verses, two kinds of blessing. Rabbi Yohanan read them so that the blessings promised to Ishmael were derived from the blessings intended for Isaac, a kind of overflow from the greater to the lesser. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana reversed the reading: the blessings in verse 20 applied to Ishmael, but applied even more to Isaac. Both were trying to hold both verses honestly.

The water ran out in the wilderness. Hagar could not watch her son die. She left him under a bush at a distance and wept. Then God opened her eyes, and there was a well she had not seen (Genesis 21:19). The Midrash Rabbah tradition holds that the well had always been there, present from the first Shabbat of creation. Hagar could not see it until she needed it. The wild man who left with bread and water became twelve princes and a great nation. The boy who was cast out had been named before his birth by a God who knew exactly what was coming, and had already arranged the well in the wilderness for the day he would need it most.