The Everlasting Hatred (11 page)

Say to the Israelites, “The LORD, the God of your fathers— the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God ofJacob— has sent me to you.”

This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
⁵⁰

This name is confirmed throughout the rest of the Bible. But most importantly, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself confirms it:

But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you,
“I AM
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?”

He is not the God of the dead but of the living.
⁵¹
(emphasis added)

When Jesus corrected the Jewish Sadducee sect's denial of the resurrection, He quoted God's statement to Moses. Notice, He emphasizes that the written account is what God said to them. His whole argument to prove the resurrection is based on the Hebrew verbal construction for “continuous being.” This emphasizes that God
continuously is
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, they must be living, since God doesn't have a living relationship with the dead. There is also inherent in this statement that God will always be in a covenant relationship with them and their descendants.

This
I AM
is the specific name that can never be applied to the church, even in a figurative sense. It is also a name that cannot be applied to the Muslims.

Why is this so important? We will see that the God of the Bible is not the God of Ishmael, Esau, Mohammad, and the Muslims. Indeed, we will see that this issue is not just some irrelevant old theological argument, but is the basis of one of the central issues that troubles our world today.

“He will be a wild ass 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 and dwell to the east of them.”

— G
OD'S
P
ROPHESY
A
BOUT
I
SHMAEL
⁵²

SOME DECISIONS WE
make in life carry consequences far beyond our comprehension. There are some things we would give anything to undo, but alas, they cannot be. What's even worse is the generational impact of our sins—that is, some consequences of our wrong choices extend themselves to our relatives for generations.

Abraham had a lapse of faith concerning God's promise to give him a son. The decision he made during this episode of unbelief resulted in such enormous consequences that they have continued through the centuries until this very hour. I am sure that if Abraham had even a small hint of the trouble that would follow, he would never have tried to help God give him a son.

This chapter details the account of how a temporary lapse of faith resulted in a catastrophe for Abraham's future descendants who inherited the covenants. The consequences have affected more than a hundred generations over a period of four thousand years.

Some of the history in this chapter will overlap with that of the last. But since this history is so critical to understanding the modern Arab-Israeli conflict, it is necessary. This chapter will emphasize Ishmael's role in this four-thousand-year-old family feud.

Abraham turned eighty-five-years old. It had been ten years since he moved to Canaan and God made the covenants with him that necessitated his having a son. And Sarah, his wife, was still barren and becoming very impatient. Finally, she decided that since she was now seventy-five-years old and still barren, it was impossible for her to bear Abraham a son. So Sarah came up with a plan to help God:

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
⁵³

Sarah decided that the LORD had prevented her from conceiving and decided He must have another plan for giving them an heir. So she assumed that the LORD needed some help. The custom for the world of that time, as I mentioned before, was for the wife to use her maid as a surrogate mother. So Abraham, whose own faith must have been wavering, agreed with Sarah's plan.

However, the plan had one big problem. It was conceived out of a lack of faith in God's ability to keep His promise. Sarah and Abraham looked at this problem from the human viewpoint
(HVP). The human viewpoint sees a problem from the standpoint of human ability. On the other hand, the divine viewpoint (DVP) looks at a problem from the standpoint of God's ability to keep His promises, no matter how impossible they may appear.

So Abraham, who should have known better, followed his wife's suggestions and had relations with her Egyptian maid. And the moment she conceived, the problems began. Naturally, the maid's attitude changed and a civil war broke out in Abraham's tents.

This situation was predictable. The Book of Proverbs warns, “Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up: a servant who becomes king, a fool who is full of food, an unloved woman who is married, and
a maidservant who displaces her mistress
.”
⁵⁴

To make matters even worse, Sarah blamed Abraham for following her idea: “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”
⁵⁵
Ouch!

Abraham uncharacteristically ducks the problem and throws it back into Sarah's lap. He told her, in effect: “She's your maid, you deal with her. Do whatever you want with her.” And of course Sarah vented her frustration and anger on poor Hagar. She treated her so harshly that she ran away into the desert.

No doubt Hagar would have died in the desert had not the Lord in His great mercy sought her out and encouraged her. The angel of the Lord
⁵⁶
also gave Hagar a great promise and a prophecy about the child she would bear:

The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and
where are you going?” “I'm running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the LORD also said to her:

“You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, [Ishmael means “God hears”] for the LORD has heard of your misery.

“He will 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.”
⁵⁷

This was a marvelous manifestation of God's mercy. Hagar apparently was trying to follow the road across the Sinai back to Egypt. But alone on foot with no provisions, she would have died in route. Hagar, the Egyptian maid, was subjected to an affair over which she had no choice. But the LORD demonstrates that He loved her too, as He does anyone who calls out to Him and throws herself upon God's mercy. The very name that God gives her for the son she is carrying is a memorial that the LORD heard her prayer of distress. He commanded her to name him “Ishmael,” which means “God hears.”

A lone runaway female slave in that day was truly helpless and in danger. The LORD therefore tells her to return and be submissive to Sarah with the promise that He would bless her with descendants beyond numbering through her son. She is promised her own personal inheritance and blessing from the LORD through her son.

Because Ishmael is also a son of Abraham, God promises to bless him and make him into a great multitude of people and nations. God loves Ishmael and his descendants, even though he foreknew his wild nature that would be multiplied in his descendants. The Lord made an amazing prophecy about the kind of
temperament and nature that would be in Ishmael's genes and passed on to his descendants. It is fascinating to analyze each to see how accurately it has been fulfilled in the descendants of Ishmael—the Arabs.

1. “He will be a wild ass of a man.” [Note: this refers to Gen. 16:12.]

Hebrew scholars Keil and Delitzsch comment on how accurately this metaphor describes the Arab people. “The figure of a wild ass,' they write, “that wild and untamable animal, roaming at its will in the desert … depicts most aptly the Bedouin's boundless love of freedom as he rides about in the desert, spear in hand, upon his camel or his horse, hardy, frugal, reveling in the varied beauty of nature, and despising town life in every form.”
⁵⁸

God poetically describes the nature of the “wild ass” in His challenge to Job:

Who set the wild ass free?
Who loosed the bonds of the swift ass?
Whose home I have made the wilderness,
And the barren land his dwelling?
He scorns the tumult of the city;
He does not heed the shouts of the driver.
The range of the mountains is his pasture,
And he searches after every green thing.
⁵⁹

This perfectly describes the genetic characteristics and nature of Ishmael and his descendents, the Arabs. Like the wild donkeys of the wilderness, they fiercely love their freedom and independence. They have always had a warrior's temperament.

2. “Whose home I have made the wilderness, And the barren land his dwelling.” [Note: this refers to Job.] This description from Job accurately describes how the wild ass illustrates the
Arab characteristics. God predicted that the Ishmaelites would live to the east of all their brethren. God gave them the Arabian Peninsula, which is to the east of all the rest of Abraham's descendants. Philip Hitti writes about the Arab home:

Despite its size—it is the largest peninsula in the world—its total population is estimated at only seven to eight millions. It is one of the driest and hottest countries in the whole world. True, the area is sandwiched between seas on the east and west, but these bodies of water are too narrow to break the climatic continuity of the Africo-Asian rainless continental masses. The ocean on the south does bring rains, to be sure, but the monsoons (an Arabic word, incidentally), which seasonably lash the land, leave very little moisture for the interior. It is easy to understand why the bracing and delightful east wind has always provided a favorite theme for Arabian poets.
⁶⁰

The migrant Arab is called a “Bedouin.” He loves the desert and the freedom to move about the vast desert regions from oasis to oasis with the seasons—always searching after every green thing.

The Arabs call their peninsula an “island,” because it is surrounded on three sides by sea and ocean—and to the north where it connects to land, the great Nafud Desert isolates it even more than an ocean.

The richest part of Arabia in ancient history was the southern coast, which thrusts out into the Indian Ocean. This area received seasonal rains and produced some of the most exotic in-demand plants of the ancient world. The much sought after fragrance called myrrh came from there. It also accumulated great wealth because its seaports were along the main trade route from Asia.

3. “His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him.”
⁶¹

This characteristic has been dominant throughout the history of the Arabs. Hitti summarizes accurately the Arab Bedouin nature:

The Bedouin still lives, as his forebears did, in tents of goats' or camels' hair (“houses of hair”), and grazes his sheep and goats on the same ancient pastures. Sheep-and-camel-raising, and to a lesser degree horse-breeding, hunting and raiding, are his regular occupations, and are to his mind the only occupations worthy of a man.
⁶²

Blood feuds have been fought between the many Arab tribes of the peninsula for centuries. Their lists of grudges against each other can go back for centuries. If an Arab is forced out of the protection of his tribe, he usually doesn't last very long.

The wild donkey reflects this very characteristic, for he groups together in small herds and is hostile with even other herds of his own kind. Similarly Arab society from its earliest history divided up into many clans. Again Hitti describes the predominant Arab social structure:

The spirit of the clan demands boundless and unconditional loyalty to fellow clansmen, a passionate chauvinism. His allegiance, which is individualism of the member magnified, assumes that his tribe is a unit by itself, self-sufficient and absolute,
and regards every other tribe as its legitimate victim and object of plunder and murder
.
⁶³

There have been only a few things that have been able to unite the Arabs in all their history. The most important unifier was Mohammad and the initial impact of the Muslim religion. And over time, even the common religion could not hold the different Arab tribes together.

Then there was the common threat to their “Holy Places” posed by the Catholic crusaders. Muslim armies united to fight
off the successive waves of European knights sent by the pope to liberate Jerusalem and the ancient Holy Land.

In our present era, the most powerful unifying factor of all has arisen. Nothing can unite the warring Muslim factions like their historic hatred for Jews, which has been reignited by their reestablishment of the state of Israel. To the Muslims, Israel's existence in the midst of what they consider their sacred sphere of the earth is the ultimate sacrilege. It is an insult to Allah that must be avenged and destroyed. To the Muslim, the fact that Israel has beaten them in five wars even threatens the veracity of the Koran, which promises them victory over the infidels, especially when their fight is a “Jihad to liberate their third holiest site— Jerusalem.” The Jewish occupation of Jerusalem is a “humiliation” that must be avenged for the sake of the honor of Allah and the truth of the Koran. The combination of all these issues elevates religious passion to an intensity that cannot be fathomed by the Western mind.