Genesis 21:21: Two countries, a marriage, and no road between them the text will name
Read it →Commentary on Genesis 21:21
Genesis closes its account of Hagar's son with two quiet facts: a place he settled in, and a marriage arranged by his mother. Both are small. Yet they sum up a whole life lived outside the line of promise — and not outside God's care.
The place he settled
This is a real place, and it keeps returning in Israel's story.
The wilderness on the south of Canaan and west of Edom. Ishmael lived here. It also held Kadesh, where the Israelites camped when they sent out the twelve spies, and again near the end of their wanderings. David also at one time took shelter in this wilderness.
Kept alive by God alone
Bellett traces what became of Ishmael once the supplies ran out — and where his own taste then pulled him.
At first he is all but dead. The provision he left Abraham's house with is all spent, and he is cast entirely upon God. But under His provision he grows up and thrives, as a man of the wilderness. There he lives and works, and the earlier prophecies about him came true. But in the bent and taste of his mind he returns, as far as he can, to his mother's native land. She gets him an Egyptian wife.
The wife from Egypt
Commentators read the marriage as the final line in a consistent picture.
As the slave mother was an Egyptian, so the wife she took for her son was out of the land of Egypt: law, flesh, and world go together.
Grant gives the reason Egypt stands where it does.
Hagar, an Egyptian herself, chose a wife from the land of Egypt for Ishmael, because the law's closest relationship is with the world, symbolized by Egypt.
The archer and the shepherd
Grant sets Ishmael's desert trade against the settled life of the son of promise.
He grew up living in the wilderness and became an archer. He seems to have earned his living by selling the meat of the animals he hunted. This was in contrast to Isaac, who owned flocks and herds. As a type of Christ, Isaac had a shepherd character. Ishmael's archer character fits better with his picturing the law, which keeps firing its arrows to cause damage.
Barren ground, crowded with descendants
Where he settled carries its own lesson, and Grant applies it to readers today.
They spread over some area to the south of Israel — "the wilderness of Paran." Ishmael was the son of a slave woman. So he pictures those under the bondage of law, wild and rebellious. Living in the desert, he reminds us that the law is not a fruitful way of living. It is barren and produces no fruit for God. Yet he has many descendants, and this is true spiritually today also. Many prefer the bondage of law to the liberty of the pure grace of God.
A nation outside, yet under God's eye
Being cast out and being abandoned are not the same thing.
Ishmael, like Israel after the flesh, cannot take the inheritance by law, but is cast out, though preserved by God.
Bellett carries the same pattern forward to the Jewish people.
A full end has been made of other nations, but not of Israel, and never will be. For so the promise runs: outcast that people are, but not destroyed. It is true that they have gone back as far as they could to the flesh they had come out of by profession. In principle they have returned to Egypt, or found kinship with the ways of an uncircumcised world. But there they are to this day, kept by the present hand of God for the coming purposes of God.
Summary
- Cast out. The slave woman's son could not inherit beside the son of promise. He was sent away. But God did not throw him away.
- Kept. His supplies ran out and he was near death. He lived only because God provided — outcast, but not destroyed.
- Wilderness. Paran is barren ground south of Canaan. Desert life pictures the law, which grows no fruit for God. The archer's bow stands opposite Isaac's shepherd character.
- Egypt. His mother chose his wife from her own country. With her came the stamp of the world: law, flesh, and world travel together.
- Nation. Ishmael's line grew large. But numbers are not the same as God's promised inheritance. Many still choose the bondage of law over the liberty of grace.
