I want to share the story of Abraham and his two sons Isaac and Ishmael. I first went to Wikipedia and looked up Abraham and some of the information was not entirely accurate. Somebody needs to update that information. I did take the following snipits from Wikipedia though to clarify why I am posting this information: "Abraham, a name which Genesis explains as meaning "father of many nations". Jews and Christians call him father of the people of Israel through his son Isaac by his wife Sarah. Jesus Christ (Yeshua) is a descendent of Isaac and Jacob (Israel). For Muslims, he is a prophet of Islam and the ancestor of Muhammad through his other son Ishmael born to him by Sarah's Egyptian maidservant Hagar."
I continued a search and stumbled upon this website called Keyway. I liked the way the information has been accurately portrayed. However, I was taken aback when I read that the Arabs say that Abraham was told to sacrifice Ishmael and NOT Isaac!?!? This is precisely where the conflict of interest begins. Please read the following:
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Isaac and Ishmael
by Wayne Blank
Abraham
Abram was born in Ur of the Chaldees, located in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley region, in what is today Iraq. From Ur, Abram and his family moved to Haran, about 600 miles / 975 kilometers to the northwest. There, at the age of 75, he received his calling from God:
"Now The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." (Genesis 12:1-3 RSV)
An important point about Abraham is that although all bloodline Jews of today are descended from him, Abraham himself was not a Jew. Abraham's son Isaac, had a son Jacob (who was renamed Israel), who had 12 sons (from whom came The Tribes Of Israel), one of which was Judah, from whom came the Jews. The first "Jew" was Judah, Abraham's great-grandson (see Hebrews). Both Jews and Arabs are equally descended from Abraham, but Abraham himself was neither "Jew" nor "Arab".
Isaac
Isaac was the only son of Abraham and Sarah, and the father of Esau and Jacob, who God renamed Israel. The patriarchs are often named together in both the Old Testament and New Testament e.g. when speaking to Moses, God said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (Exodus 3:6 RSV).
Isaac's birth came about from a miracle - Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born (Genesis 21:5), and Sarah, at age 90, had been unable to have children (Genesis 16:1, 17:17). As explained by God:
"Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him and make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation." (Genesis 17:19-20 RSV).
Isaac was not Abraham's firstborn, or only, son. Fourteen years before, when Abraham was 86 (Genesis 16:16), Sarah (then called Sarai) had arranged for a child to be born to Abraham through her own Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. Ishmael was born from the arrangement (Genesis 16:1-4).
The promise did not however go through Ishmael because the covenant had already been made with Abraham, with a yet-unborn Isaac the designated heir, before Ishmael was conceived or born (Genesis 15:2-6). While God does not play favorites, He was also not bound to any other arrangements for children that Abraham and Sarah had taken upon themselves to bring about after the matter had been firmly decided by God.
Abraham's greatest test of obedience to God involved Isaac:
"Take your son, your only son [i.e. only son with his wife Sarah] Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." (Genesis 22:2 RSV)
Abraham passed the test, while God stopped it before any actual harm to could come to Isaac:
"Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son [i.e. only son with his wife Sarah], from Me." (Genesis 22:12 RSV).
Abraham had been willing to give up his son to God, just as God Himself would later give up His Own Son to a sacrifice that was allowed to happen. An interesting point is that the place where Abraham was sent to sacrifice Isaac, Mount Moriah, is today known as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem - Isaac (Isaac, not Ishmael, was a direct ancestor of the Messiah, Jesus Christ) would have been sacrificed very near the place that Jesus Christ was Crucified.
Ishmael
Ishmael, meaning God hears, was the son of Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant of his wife Sarah. When Sarah had found herself not having children, she arranged to have a child with Abraham by Hagar acting as a surrogate mother (Genesis 16:1-4), even though God had specifically stated that a child (i.e. Isaac) would be born to Sarah in due time.
Ishmael was born at Mamre, when Abraham was 86, 11 years after Abraham's arrival in what would become the land of Israel (Genesis 16:3). He grew up to be a man of the desert wilderness, with a wild and hostile attitude toward people, exactly as God described him to his mother before he was born:
"Behold, you are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call his name Ishmael; because The Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen." (Genesis 16:11-12 RSV).
When a feast was held to celebrate the weaning of Isaac, who was born 13 years later, Ishmael caused trouble by insulting and mocking his little brother (Genesis 21:8-9). After Sarah, who by then had come to dislike both Hagar and Ishmael, saw what he was doing, she said to Abraham "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." (Genesis 21:10 RSV)
Abraham opposed Sarah's demand - despite Ishmael's difficult personality, Abraham loved him and did not want to see him go. God however settled the matter:
"But God said to Abraham, "Be not displeased because of the lad and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendants be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring." (Genesis 21:12-13 RSV)
Hagar and Ishmael were sent away, but they were not abandoned. God appeared and spoke to Hagar, assuring her that He would watch over them and see them prosper (Genesis 21:17-19). "And God was with the lad, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt" (Genesis 21:20-21 RSV).
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