I Am The Blog

Genesis 21 — EweTube

Some more great family fun here, with some ewes thrown in at the end for fun!

Sarah the 90+ year old has a boy, Isaac. She thinks it’s hilarious that she would have a son at her age, as does everyone else. That rascal God, he really knows how to make people laugh.

But Ishmael laughed at his new brother, and Sarah is outraged. Laughing at what God does, okay. Laughing at your younger brother, not okay. Sarah wants rid of Ishmael and his mom. Abraham doesn’t want to kick out his son, but God sides with Sarah on this. God tells Abraham not to worry though, because Ishmael will also become a great nation after you kick him and his mom out.

After their meager supply of water run out (how nice of Abraham to abandon his son and the woman he slept with in the desert without enough water!), Hagar the mom tries to abandon her son to die, but just can’t go through with it. Turns out though that there was actually a well of water there, Hagar just couldn’t see it until God "opened her eyes" (21:19). From then on, God followed Ishmael wherever he’d go, kind of like the My Buddy doll from the 80s, I guess. Ishmael got to be an archer!

The story of Ishmael, Isaac, and the gang, along with some other related anecdotes from the Bible, is related in Roy Zimmerman’s song Two Brothers , which you can see on YouTube.

Speaking of you/ewe, the last part of this chapter is some more business between Abraham and Abimelech, the leader Sarah and Abraham duped in the last chapter. Abimelech makes Abraham promise God won’t pull any more shenanigans on him or his ancestors. There was this dispute about a well of water, but it was nothing that seven female sheep couldn’t clear up. I would have thought five ewe would have sufficed for such a minor matter!

Genesis seems to be obsessed with saying why places and people were named as they were. Beersheba is apparently named because of the oath between Abraham and Abimelech there. To me, it kind of sounds like they had the names for these places and people and then they just made up the stories, kind of like how parents make up stories for little kids when they don’t know why something is the way it is, or how kids just make things up when they don’t understand something.

Nah, that couldn’t be the case!

Update: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible gives a possible explanation of why Ishmael was kicked out. Maybe it was more than just laughing at his brother…