A Wild Donkey Of A Man (MP 21)

“Abram, could you not wait upon the Lord,
To sire the son of promise by your wife?
When she gave her maid of her own accord,
You could have refused to bring the wrong life!”
But in Abram’s veins blood of Adam flowed,
And the lives of all such by sin are stained;
At her words his secret lust but pious clothed;
Ishmael was conceived; endless war ordained!
The maid with child despised the barren wife;
Conflict erupted in Abram’s own tent;
“Why,” asked Sarai, “did you bring on such strife?”
Of Abram, like he did the plan present!
The sinful union fired the lethal fuse,
Of hatred between the Arabs and Jews!

Scripture Quoted: Genesis 16:11-12 (NIV) [Brackets added]
“The angel of the Lord [the pre-incarnate Christ] also said to her:
‘You are now with child and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael [meaning God hears], for the Lord has
heard of your misery.
He shall be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against
everyone,
And everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.’ “

Commentary on Genesis 16 (NIV)
People ask, “Why can’t the Palestinians and Israeli’s make a lasting peace treaty? Why is there so much hatred between the Arab nations and the Jews in the Middle East?” The answer is clearly explained in the Bible. The beginning of it all is found in Chapter 16 of Genesis. The fuse that started it was when Abram tried to help God solve the problem of promising him offspring as numerous as the grains of dust in the world (Genesis 15:4) when he had no child at all; his wife Sarai was barren and beyond the age of childbearing. Anxious to help solve God’s problem, Sarai offered her Egyptian maid Hagar to Abram, saying he could have sex with her; maybe they’d have a child through a surrogate. Abram should have refused the offer; if he had known the internal conflict it would cause in his own tent, much less the 3600 years of warfare between the descendants of his two sons—Ishmael, the sinfully conceived, and Isaac, the righteously conceived of him and Sarai—he surely would have. Even though God had instituted marriage between one man and one woman as righteous (Genesis 2:24), the custom of a man having several wives or concubines was prevalent in that day. At any rate, the Bible doesn’t say that Abram hesitated to accept Sarai’s offer.

So Ishmael was born to Abram and Hagar, but he was not the son God had promised, and certainly not His chosen who was to sire the race of which Jesus (God) was to be born. The chosen son was Isaac, who was born to presumably barren Sarai 12 years later. Conflict between Sarai and Abram over Hagar and Ishmael was the first of the endless warfare between Arabs and Jews in world history. Abram finally expelled Hagar and the older son from his tent and drove her into the desert. God led her to water and helped their survival, and Ishmael became the leader of the first Arab tribe. Every word of the Lord’s promises about his being “a wild donkey of a man” came true. The spring God led Hagar to is named Zamzam, located in Mecca today, in the Grand Mosque of Islam, the holiest site of Islam.

If Abram had had more confidence in God and had not fathered Ishmael, it would have made a vast difference in world history and in God’s Master Plan for man. God knew in advance Abram would sin in this way, and His plan took enmity between Arabs and Jews into account. God did not plan for Ishmael to be born; that part was wholly the doing of Abram; but God knew in advance it would happen. The Bible, totally inspired by God, provides clear prophesies of the chosen nation Israel’s future. Though the first nation Israel was annihilated in 70 A. D., God promised they would become a nation again, and in June 1948, the second Israel was launched by a grant of the new United Nations. See Psalm 85:1-8 for a clear prediction of today’s Middle Easter conflict.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not die, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)