Genesis 17:23 is the verse in which Abraham stops listening and starts doing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders it with the urgency the Hebrew encodes: Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all brought up in his house, and all bought with money, every male among the household people of Abraham, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the same day in which the Lord spake with him.
Three words carry the moral weight. Same day.
Abraham is ninety-nine. Ishmael is thirteen. The household includes hundreds of souls — home-born servants, purchased servants, men of every age and background. The law has just been revealed. And Abraham does not wait until spring. He does not wait until the household is prepared. He does not wait until he himself has recovered from his own circumcision. He circumcises them all, on the day the command was given.
The Maggid hears this as the Torah's first great lesson in zerizut — eager, immediate obedience. A commandment that arrives in the morning does not belong to the afternoon. Abraham's whole household becomes a covenant community in one day because Abraham refuses to let good news go cold (Genesis 17:23).
There is also tenderness buried in the list. Ishmael goes first. Not the servants, not the slaves. The son Abraham was told would not inherit the covenant gets cut into the covenant anyway, alongside his father, on the same afternoon. Ishmael may not be the covenant's chosen line, but he is still the covenant's first adult son.