11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, ⚫ and shall call his came Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. 8 ch. 17. 19. Matt. 1. 21. Luke 1. 13, 31. 12 And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; "and he shall dwell in the presence of all his breth ren. t ch. 21. 20. u ch. 25. 18. filled in them. yoladtht; 11. Shalt bear. Heb. a very peculiar word, being composed of two tenses implying time present and future, and equivalent to, thou shalt very shortly bear.' So Judg. 13. · shall be born' presents the same significant anomaly in point of grammar. 10. I will multiply thy seed exceed- and promised to him, was intended to ingly, &c. Heb. a multi-be affirmed of his descendants and fulplying will multiply. The angelspeaker here adopts a style suited only to the Deity, and for Hagar's encouragement gives her grounds to expect a portion of Abraham's blessing, of which she must often have heard, viz. a numerous offspring. This was the promp-8, where the Heb phrase for 'child that ting of divine benignity, for it is clear that the language of absolute authority might have been used without any intermingling of gracious promises; but God delights rather to win than to compel the hearts of his people into the ways of obedience. A parallel promise occurs ch. 17. 20, And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly: twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation;' on which we may here take occasion to remark, that the usual idiom of the Scriptures requires us to understand in both passages what is said of Ishmael personally to be true also of his de. scendants. Indeed it is rather his posterity than himself that is primarily intended. When it is said, 'I will multiply him exceedingly,' the word 'him' is obviously meant his posterity, for no one can imagine that he himself was meant to be literally multiplied in virtue of this promise. So likewise in the subsequent clause 'I will make him a great nation,' it is evident that one man cannot be a nation; and therefore Ishmael throughout this whole prediction a wild-ass man. must be viewed as the representative of os avoμwños a wild man. his posterity. What is declared of him ass among men,' i. e. rude, T Shall call his name Ishmael. Heb. " yishmael, God will hear, or, as immediately interpreted, God hath heard, i. e. hath heard, pitied, and relieved, thine affliction; which is well rendered by the Gr. 'Hath given heed to thy tribulation.' Chal. Hath received thy prayer. Targ. Jon. "Thine affliction is revealed before the Lord' This is the first instance of a name given by divine direction before birth, though many such instances occur hereafter, as we shall have occasion to observe. It is remarkable that God is not said to have heard her prayer, for it does not appear that she had yet called upon his name. She merely sat bewailing herself, as not knowing what to do. Yet lo, the ear of mercy is open to what we may term the silent voice of affliction itself. The groans of the prisoner are heard of God, not only theirs who cry unto him, but, in many cases, theirs who do not. See a parallel case, Gen. 21. 17, with the accompanying note. 12. He will be a wild man. Heb. Gr. aypo Chal.' Wild fierce, un told him the creature was perfectly untameable.' The passage of Job to which the author refers is ch. 39. 5-8, 'Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.' By the use of so unusual a phrase in reference to the future seed of Hagar, it was obviously intended to indicate an analogy between the wildness of Ishmael and his descendants, and that of the wild ass (onager); and it is equally curious and surprising to observe how minutely the description in Job applies to the free, wandering, lawless, pastoral, marauding Bedouins, the descent of whose tribes from Ishmael is admitted by the learned, and gloried in by themselves. The manners and customs of these Arab tribes, except in the article of religion, have suffered almost no change during the long period of three thousand years. 'They have occupied the same country, and followed the same mode of life, from the days of their great ancestor, down to the present times, and range the wide extent of burning sands which separate them from all surrounding nations, as rude, and savage, and untractable as the wild ass himself. Claiming the barren plains of Arabia, as the patrimonial domain assigned by God to the founder of their nation, they considered themselves entitled to seize, and appropriate to their own use, whatever they can find there. Impatient of restraint and jealous of their liberty, they form no connection with the neigh cultivated, and impatient of the restraints of civilized life. As remarked in v. 10, the predicted character and fortunes of Ishmael are here identified with those of his posterity. The wild man' here mentioned was to be multiplied into a great nation, and if so it must necessarily be into a great nation of 'wild men ;' and we have only to turn to the page of history to see how apposite this character has been in all ages to the Arab race, the descendants of Ishmael. In allusion to the term here employed it is said of unregenerate men, Job, 11. 12, 'For vain man would be wise, though man be born like the wild ass's colt.' On the contrary of renewed and sanctified men, it is said, Ezek. 36. 38, 'The waste cities shall be filled with flocks of men.' Heb. 'with sheep-men,' i. e. men whose natures are tamed and softened, made gentle and lamb-like. Again, Hos. 13. 15, ' He (Ephraim) hath run wild (Heb. hath assified himself) amidst the braying monsters.' Sir Rob. Ker Porter (Trav. vol. I. p. 459) thus describes one of this species of animals which he met in the mountains of Persia:-' He appeared to me to be about ten or twelve hands high; the skin smooth like a deer's, and of a reddish colour; the belly and hinder parts partaking of a silvery gray; his neck was finer than that of a common ass, being longer, and bending like a stag's, and his legs beautifully slender; the head and ears seemed long in proportion in the gracefulness of their forms, and by them I first recognised that the object of my chase was of the ass tribe. The mane was short and black, as also was a tuft which terminated his tail. The prodigious swiftness and peculiar manner with which he fled across the plain, remind-bouring states; they admit of little or ed me of the striking portrait of the animal drawn by the author of the book of Job. I was informed by the mehmandar that he had observed them of ten in the possession of the Arabs, who no friendly intercourse, but live in a state of continual hostility with the rest of the world. The tent is their dwelling and the circular camp their city; the spontaneous produce of the soil, to which they sometimes add a have often invaded their country with little patch of corn, furnishes them with powerful armies, determined to extirmeans of subsistence, amply sufficient pate, or at least to subdue them to their for their moderate desires; and the lib-yoke; but they always return baffled erty of ranging at pleasure their inter- and aisappointed. The savage freeminable wilds, fully compensates in booters, disdaining every idea of subtheir opinion for the want of all other mission, with invincible patience and accommodations. Mounted on their resolution, maintained their independfavourite horses, they scour the waste ence; and they have transmitted it unin search of plunder, with a velocity impaired to the present times. In spite surpassed only by the wild ass. They of all their enemies can do to restrain levy contributions on every person that them, they continue to dwell in the happens to fall in their way; and fre- presence of all their brethren, and to quently rob their own countrymen, assert their right to insult and plunder with as little ceremony as they do a every one they meet with on the borstranger or an enemy; their hand is ders, or within the limits of their dostill against every man, and every man's mains.' Paxton. To the same purpose hand against them. But they do not the editor of the Pict. Bible on this pasalways confine their predatory excur- sage remarks:-' Even in the ordinary sions to the desert. When booty is sense of the epithet 'wild,', there is no scarce at home, they make incursions people to whom it can be applied with into the territories of their neighbours, more propriety than to the Arabs, and having robbed the solitary travel- whether used in reference to their charler, or plundered the caravan, immedi- acter, modes of life, or place of habitaately retire into the deserts far beyond tion. We have seen something of the reach of their pursuers. Their Arabs and their life, and always felt character, drawn by the pen of inspi- the word wild to be precisely that by ration Job, 24. 5, exactly corresponds which we should choose to characterwith this view of their dispositions and ize them. Their chosen dwelling-place conduct 'Behold, as wild asses in the is the inhospitable desert, which offers desert, go they forth to their work be no attractions to any other eyes but times for a prey: the wilderness yield- theirs, but which is all the dearer to eth food for them and for their children.' them for that very desolation, inasmuch Savage and stubborn as the wild ass as it secures to them that independence which inhabits the same wilderness, and unfettered liberty of action which they go forth on the horse or the drom- constitutes the charm of their existedary with inconceivable swiftness in ence, and which render the minute quest of their prey. Initiated in the boundaries and demarcations of settled trade of a robber from their earliest districts, and the restraints and limitayears, they know no other employment; tions of towns and cities, perfectly they choose it as the business of their hateful in their sight. The simplicity life, and prosecute it with unwearied of their tented habitations, their dress, activity. They start before the dawn, and their diet, which forms so perfect to invade the village or the caravan; a picture of primitive usages as describmake their attack with desperate cour-ed by the Sacred Writers, we can also age, and surprising rapidity; and, plunging instantly into the desert, escape from the vengeance of their enemies. Provoked by their continual insults, the nations of ancient and modern times characterize by no more fitting epithet than 'wild;' and that epithet claims a still more definite application when we come to examine their continual wanderings with their flocks and herds, could not recollect this to be the case with any one among the numerous tribes with which he was acquainted. Such wars, however, are seldom of long duration; peace is easily made, but broken again upon the slightest preHe shall their constant readiness for action, and their frequent predatory and aggressive excursions against strangers or against each other.' But this point resolves itself into the ensuing clause. His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. It is tence.' Pict. Bible. evident that one man could not sub- dwell in the presence of all his brethren. ל פני כל אחיו ישכן .sist alone in open enimity with all the | Heb shall world, nor could one man's hand be dwell before, or over against, the faces literally against every man's. There is, of his brethren. The original word for moreover, not the slightest hint in dwell ( shakan) properly signifies Scripture, nor any reason to believe to dwell in tents, or to tabernacle, that Ishinael lived personally in a state whence a portion of the Arab tribes are of opposition to his brethren. Bear- denominated Scenites, tent-dwellers, ing in mind what we have already answering to the modern Bedouins, in said respecting the collective import of opposition to those who inhabit cities. the name Ishmael in this prediction, we The meaning undoubtedly is, that he can have no difficulty in understanding i. e. his descendants, shall pitch his this as a declaration, that his posterity tents near to and in sight of his brethshould exist in an attitude of perpetual ren, and shall maintain his independhostility with the rest of mankind. ence in spite of all attempts to conquer And there is certainly no people to or dispossess him. There is some whom this applies with greater truth doubt as to the latitude in which the than to the Arabs; for there is none of term 'brethren' is here to be underwhom aggression on all the world is so stood; some taking it in a more reremarkably characteristic. 'Plunder stricted sense for the other descendants ein fact forms their principal occupation, of Abraham, viz. the Israelites, Midianand takes the chief place in their ites, Edomites, &c while others, as all thoughts; and their aggressions upon mankind are brethren in a larger sense, settled districts, upon trivellers, and consider it as equivalent to saying that even upon other tribes of their own peo- the race of Ishmael should still subsist, ple, are undertaken and prosecuted with notwithstanding the universal enmity a feeling that they have a right to what of all nations, as an independent people they seek, and therefore without the in the face of the whole world. From least sense of guilt or degradation. the general tenor of Scriptural usage, Indeed the character of a successful and we think the former the most probaenterprising robber invests a Bedouin ble interpretation. It is unquestionawith as high a distinction in his own ble, as an historical fact, that they have eyes and in the eyes of his people, as the ever been mainly surrounded by the most daring and chivalrous acts could above nations, or their posterity, and win among the nations of Europe. The nothing is more notorious than that operation of this principle would alone they have never been effectually subsuffice to verify the prediction of the dued. Although continually annoying text. But besides this, causes of vari the adjacent countries with their robance are continually arising between beries and incursions, yet all attempts the different tribes. Burckhardt as- made to extirpate them have been absures us that there are few tribes which ortive; and even to this day travellers are ever in a state of perfect peace with are forced to go armed, and in caravans all their neighbours, and adds, that he or large companies, and to march and X 13 And she called the name of Have I also here looked after him the LORD that spake unto her, that seeth me? Thou God seest me: for she said, x ch. 31. 42. that the Heb. word roi rendered 'thou seest' is really an abstract noun of the form of 5 oni, affliction, " ani, ship, &c. signifying here as elsewhere vision or the subject of vision. Thus, 1. Sam. 16. 12, 'Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to (Heb. keep watch like a little army, to defend themselves from the assaults of these roving freebooters of the desert. These robberies they justify, according to Mr. Sale (Prelim. Dissert to the Koran) by alleging the hard usage of their father Ishmael; who being turned out of doors by Abraham had the open plains and deserts given him by God for his good or fair of visage or sight).' patrimony, with permission to take Job, 33. 21, 'His flesh is consumed whatever he could find there. On this away that it cannot be seen (Heb. 7 account they think they may, with a from sight, from visibility).' Comp. safe conscience, indemnify themselves, Job, 7. 8. The purport of her words is as well as they can, not only on the undoubtedly that of a grateful recogniposterity of Isaac, but on every one tion of the fact, that God had condeelse; and in relating their adventures of scended, in the person of the Angel to this kind, deem themselves warranted, make himself graciously visible in instead of saying, 'I robbed a man of the hour of her extremity. —¶ Have such a thing,' to say 'I gained it.' In- I also looked after him that seeth me. deed from a view of the character and Or Heb. 8 have 1 lookhistory of this remarkable people du-ed upon the back parts of my seer, bering a period of 4000 years, as compar- holder. Although the letters of the oried with, this prediction, we may say ginal are the same as in the pre with Dr. A. Clarke, that 'it furnishes an absolute demonstrative argument of the divine origin of the Pentateuch. To attempt its refutation, in the sight of reason and common sense, would convict f most ridiculous presumption and excessive folly.' me. seen. ren ceding clause, yet the vowel-pointing 13. She called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest Heb. thou (art) the God of vision, or rather of visibility; i. e. the God that sufferest thyself to be The Gr. indeed renders differently; Ev & Oɛs & εяidov μe thou art the God that seeth me, i. e. who careth for me, who pondereth and pitieth my afflictions; a sense which the original word for see often bears in the Scrip-itive can be affirmed respecting it. We tures, as Ex. 3. 7. Ps. 9. 14.-25. 18. This rendering, after the example of the Lat. Vulgate, has been followed by our translation. But there is little doubt have suggested that which seems to us most probable. If this be not satisfactory to the reader, he is left at liberty to exercise his choice among the fol |