Thursday, January 9, 2020

In The Beginning. Day 103. The Family Of Ishmael

Abraham is now buried in the cave of Machpelah beside his wife Sarah. The Bible moves on next to tell us about his sons Ishmael and Isaac and their family lines. Today we will study the family line of Ishmael.

"This is the account of the family line of Abraham's son Ishmael, whom Sarah's slave, Hagar the Egyptian, bore to Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, listed in the order of their birth: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah." (Genesis 25:12-14)

It is believed that Nebaioth was the forefather of the Nabateans, due to the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. This tribe was also mentioned several times by ancient Greek historians and they were eventually conquered by Tiberius Caesar.

The tribe of Kedar is referenced in the book of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. It is also referenced in Assyrian historical documents because the Kedarites kept stirring up conflict with Assyria. In my research I found mention that Mohammad claimed he was descended from Ishmael through his son Kedar.

The Akkadians wrote of Adbeel's tribe which dwelt in northern Arabia and who at one time were employed as border guards by the Egyptian Empire.

Mibsam was known as a chieftain (or king) but very little is known about his tribe or the tribe of his brother Mishma because they intermarried with the Simeonites and there are no genealogical records of them after that.

The tribe of Dumah became the people known as the Idumaeans of whom the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Greeks spoke. There was also a city called Dumah in Canaan which may have been founded by Ishmael's son.

The tribe of Massa is mentioned in the annals of Assyrian and Greek history as well as in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. Josephus referred to them as the Masanaeans.

Little is known about Ishmael's son Hadad, but there were two tribes known as Hadad during Biblical times. It's not clear which of them was descended from Ishmael. During those days there was an Akkadian pagan idol known as Hadad, but whether there is any connection between this idol and Ishmael's son we do not know.

Job spoke of the tribe of Tema being one who plundered the goods of others. A city existed at that time by the same name and it lay near Dedan. It was sometimes used as a city of exile for political prisoners and enemies of the state, for an ancient Babylonian king was once deposed and exiled to prison and hard labor at Tema.

Jetur's tribe was written about by the Greeks and the Romans, with the Romans referring to them as "a band of robbers".

Naphish's tribe is not mentioned anywhere outside of the Bible, at least not in any writings that have yet been found. In 1 Chronicles 5:19 we find some of the tribes of Israel waging war against the tribe of Naphish and its allies. The Bible states that the Lord helped the tribes of Israel win this battle against their enemies in the land of Canaan.

Little is known about the tribe of Kedemah and it is only mentioned in the accounts of Ishmael's family line here in Genesis 25 and later in 1 Chronicles 1.

"These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps. Ishmael lived a hundred and thirty-seven years. He breathed his last and died, and he was gathered to his people." (Genesis 25:16-17) It is not believed that Ishmael is buried in the cave at Machpelah with Abraham, so this is not what the Bible means when it says "he was gathered to his people". This is the same thing the Bible said about Abraham at his death. This is an expression the Bible sometimes uses when speaking of the death of a believer. We don't know much about how Ishmael lived his life, but verse 17 seems to indicate that he remained faithful to the one true God and that upon his death his soul joined the body of believers in heaven. He would have been reunited with Abraham and Sarah. He would have been reunited with his mother Hagar, who likely predeceased him. Hagar appears to have converted from the gods of Egypt to the God of Abraham, for she has the honorable distinction of being the only woman in the Scriptures to give a new name to God, calling Him "The God Who Sees Me". I think that when Hagar died, she saw the God who saw her, and so did her son Ishmael when he died.

"His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt, as you go toward Ashur. And they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them." (Genesis 25:18) This is not what we want said about our descendants, is it? But the Lord predicted that this was how Ishmael's descendants, calling the entire nation "Ishmael" and saying of it "he will live in hostility toward all his brothers". (Genesis 16:12) The "he" in Genesis 16:12 is not so much Ishmael himself, for he seems to have kept in contact with his brother Isaac and he worked with Isaac to help inter their father Abraham in his burial plot. But in this verse it seems as if the Lord is calling all the descendants of Ishmael by his name. He does the same thing with the twelve tribes descended from Jacob, calling them as a whole either "Israel" or "Jacob".

The twelve tribes of Ishmael were warlike, stirring up conflicts and plundering the goods of those who lived around them. The mentions of the twelve tribes of Ishmael in historical documents tend to be neutral (just a simple mention of what territory they occupied) or negative (calling them troublemakers and robbers). Tomorrow we will move on to the family line of Isaac, which is the line from which the Messiah will come, and we must keep in mind that not all of his descendants were model citizens either. As we move through the Bible, we'll find people of his family line exhibiting all the faults and failures of human nature. But this ought to encourage us in our own struggles against the faults and failures of human nature. If the Redeemer was willing to be born into a family line that includes scoundrels and harlots and idolaters, He can make somebody out of anybody.




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