And the Angel of Jehovah said to her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, because Jehovah hath hearkened to thy affliction.
Hagar is a runaway slave, pregnant and alone in the desert, when a voice stops her and names her unborn son. The name carries a message — God had listened to her suffering — and it raises a question: who was speaking to her?
The one who meets Hagar carries the title "the angel of the LORD." Yet the promises He makes are God's own to make:
In these verses that speak of the angel of the Lord (vv. 7, 9, 10), the angel is clearly the Lord Himself. It is He who multiplies Abram's descendants. The term "angel" means a messenger, and Malachi 3:1 speaks of "the Lord whom you seek" as "the messenger of the covenant."
Hagar's mistress had treated her harshly. God's answer neither excuses her nor abandons her:
At this point the Angel of the Lord stepped in. By the customs of that time, Hagar plainly had no choice in the matter. And God is a God of pity, and of judgment. Even if she had been rude to her mistress, she should not be left in the wilderness in her need. Only, on returning, she was to be subject and submit to her mistress. Looking at her as a person, apart from what she stands for, she had sinned, but she had been sinned against just as much. God stepped in and held the scales of justice even.
This sets the true God apart from the idols people trust:
Can idols hear, or can they also look after people? No, the true God of heaven alone could hear and see when Hagar had run away. He is the same today. He hears you and sees you in the way you go.
The name points back to what God has just done. Hagar answers it by giving God a name of her own:
And not only this: God foretold the future of the coming son. He gave the boy his name and marked out his character. His name means "God hears." Hagar spoke of God as "You are the God who sees me," or "You are the God who reveals Himself" (New Trans.). The well where the angel appeared to her became known as "The well of the Living who was seen." So even poor Hagar gained blessing from this painful episode.
Besides Jesus, only a handful of people in Scripture were named before they were born, and Ishmael is one of them:
Five other people in the Bible were named before their birth: Isaac, Genesis 17:19; Ishmael, Genesis 16:11; Josiah, 1 Kings 13:2; Cyrus, Isaiah 44:28, and John the Baptist.
Years later Hagar is in the wilderness again, this time with a dying son. The name given here becomes the ground of her rescue:
The mother gave in to despair. She laid her son down to die at a distance from her. But "God heard the boy's voice," and His angel tells Hagar to hold him by the hand. Had not Jehovah called his name Ishmael, because He had heard her affliction? ... She may have forgotten God's promise that a countless multitude would spring from her, and that Ishmael would live in the presence of all his brothers. But God remembered him, and declares that He will make him a great nation.
Being heard is not the same as being chosen. Ishmael receives a promise and a future, but not the covenant line:
Before he was born, Hagar ran away because her mistress treated her harshly. The angel of the Lord appeared to her and told her to return to her mistress. Her descendants should be countless, and she was to call her son's name Ishmael, which means 'El shall hear.' ... Abraham prayed that Ishmael might live before God. But Ishmael pictures the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. So although God answered that He would bless Ishmael, and multiply him greatly ... yet the covenant should be established with Isaac.
- Heard. The name Ishmael records what God did before the boy was born. He listened to the affliction of a slave woman nobody else heard.
- Seen. The One who heard is the Lord Himself, under the title "the angel of the LORD." Hagar answers by naming Him the God who sees her.
- Sent back. Being heard did not lift Hagar out of her situation. God sent her back to submit to her mistress, and held the scales of justice even.
- Proved. Years later Hagar forgot the promise. In the desert God heard her son's cry — the name held even when her faith did not.
- Not the heir. God heard Ishmael and made him a great nation. Yet the covenant went to Isaac. To be heard by God is real mercy, but it is not the same as being the child of promise.
And he will be a wild-ass of a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell before the face of all his brethren.
Hagar has run from Sarai into the desert. There the angel of the LORD promises her a son — and then describes the man that son will become, in words that sound like a warning. What does it mean to call a man a wild donkey? And how has that word held up over the centuries since?
The same message gives the boy a comforting name and tells Hagar what he will become.
Hagar was not to be the mother of God's promised child to Abram. Yet the Lord cares about her and about her expected child. He tells her to name the child "Ishmael," which means "God will hear" (v. 11). But the boy's character would match the fact that he was born from a union of opposite parents — the father a free man, the mother a slave. He would be contentious, his hand against all other men, and of course they would therefore be against him. This has been one of the characteristics of the Arabs from that time... Abram learned by experience, and all this history teaches us that a wrong union leads to trouble and sorrow.
The phrase is not a general insult. The Hebrew names a specific animal, and the New Testament later explains why that animal fits this child.
He was to be a "wild man." The word really means a "wild donkey." In the light of Galatians 4, this is significant, since "the son of the slave was born according to the flesh." Romans 8:7 tells us that the mind of the flesh "is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot." Man after the flesh has lawlessness stamped upon him, and the wild donkey is a fitting picture of him.
Scripture describes this animal elsewhere. The description matches how Ishmael's descendants lived.
No one ever drew a sharper picture than the one Scripture gives of Ishmael's descendants in the words quoted here. "Who has let the wild donkey go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift donkey, to whom I have given the arid plain for his home and the salt land for his dwelling place? He scorns the tumult of the city; he hears not the shouts of the driver. He ranges the mountains as his pasture, and he searches after every green thing" (Job 39:5-8). Such exactly are the Bedouins. No sober Christian supposes a perpetual miracle as to Ishmael, but that what God said of that race is as sure as what He said of Israel.
The verse did not just come true once. It stayed true while other nations changed beyond recognition.
The meaning of Genesis 16:12 is as plain as it is striking, and as applicable today as for thousands of years past. This is not true of any other notable people. Compare the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Israelites. Every one of them has gone through change after change. How little, if at all, has the Bedouin changed?
The last line of the verse settles something. Nobody would be able to remove this troublesome presence.
Man in the flesh is not only lawless in regard to God but antagonistic in regard to his fellows. The one characteristic springs out of the other. There could be no peace where Ishmael was. Worse still, there was to be no shutting him out and no getting rid of him. The decree was, "he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen." Hagar was a picture of the covenant of the law, given at Sinai. Now that did not abolish the man after the flesh. It only laid restraint upon him.
Ishmael had his father's love and the outward mark of God's covenant. Neither one changed him.
Abraham's heart yearned over Ishmael. His cry was, "Oh that Ishmael might live before you!" More than that, Ishmael was circumcised, so he outwardly carried the mark of the Covenant (Gen. 17:18, 25). Yet none of it worked... He remained wild, stubborn and quarrelsome — a fitting picture of the flesh.
The verse describes a temper, not only a tribe. One writer turns it into a warning for anyone quick to quarrel.
Do not be fault-finding or quick to criticize. Do not quarrel with unscriptural expressions from others, but be extremely accurate in your own statements and quotations from Scripture. Do not be an Ishmaelite (Gen. 16:12) among the people of God, for "the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness" (2 Tim. 2:24-25).
- Cause. Ishmael was born to a free man and a slave. The writers trace his character back to that "wrong union," which "leads to trouble and sorrow."
- Character. "Wild man" means "wild donkey of a man." He is untamed, deaf to the driver's shout, a picture of the flesh with "lawlessness stamped upon him."
- Conflict. He is lawless toward God and hostile toward people. "The one characteristic springs out of the other," so "there could be no peace where Ishmael was."
- Continuance. Abraham's prayer did not change him, and neither did circumcision. The law "did not abolish the man after the flesh. It only laid restraint upon him."
- Confirmation. The verse is still "as applicable today as for thousands of years past." Egypt, Assyria and Israel all changed. And the Bedouin? Hardly changed at all.