Ishmael's name means 'God has heard', and Genesis keeps proving it
Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn, son of the Egyptian servant Hagar. His name, 'God has hearkened', echoes twice in Genesis: once when a pregnant Hagar flees into the desert, and again when mother and son are dying of thirst and God hears the boy's voice. Islam honours him as a prophet and forefather of Arab tribes.
His birth was Sarai's plan. At 75 and still childless, she offered Hagar to Abram so the promise of descendants could be kept. Once pregnant, Hagar grew scornful, Sarai treated her harshly, and Hagar ran away. At the well of Beer-lahai-roi, on the road to Shur, an angel told her to name her son Ishmael, because the Lord had heeded her suffering, and to go back. Abraham was 86 when the child was born.
At 13 Ishmael was circumcised with every male of the household, including Abraham, then 99, as the covenant was sealed. God told Abraham that the covenant would pass through a son yet to be born to Sarah, but promised that Ishmael too would be fruitful, father twelve princes and become a great nation. Isaac arrived a year later, when Sarah was 90.
The break came at the feast for Isaac's weaning. Seeing Ishmael mocking or playing with Isaac, Sarah demanded that the servant and her son be expelled so Ishmael could not share the inheritance. Abraham, who loved Ishmael, agreed only after God promised to make a nation of him. With only bread and water, Hagar wandered the wilderness of Beersheba until the water ran out; she set the boy down and wept at a distance. God heard him, and she saw a well.
Ishmael grew up in the Desert of Paran as a skilled archer, married an Egyptian wife chosen by his mother, and had twelve sons who led tribes from Havilah to Shur. One son, Kedar, is traditionally the ancestor of the Quraysh and so of Muhammad. Ishmael rejoined Isaac to bury their father and died aged 137. Source critics see the stories as woven from several strands, with the list of his sons perhaps added by the Priestly writer in the Persian period.
Source: Ishmael
