Hebrew Myths (24 page)

5
. In the midrashic list of empires, ‘Media’ means Persia; and Greece and Rome have been conflated by the listing of Alexander, Gaius Caligula (if the emendation of GSQLGS into ‘Gaius Caligula’ is correct) and Antoninus Pius as Greek kings. If two more animals had been available, Alexander and the two main Seleucid oppressors of Israel, Antiochus Ephiphanes and Antiochus Sidetes, would have represented the Greek; Pompey, Caligula and Antoninus Pius (138–161
A.D.
), the Romans. Rome is called ‘Edom’ because King Herod ‘the Wicked’, whose seizure of the Jewish throne had been confirmed by the Emperor Augustus, was an Edomite; this usage avoided direct offence to the Roman authorities.

6
. In Abraham’s time, according to
Genesis
, the Promised Land contained not only such early peoples as the Amorites, Canaanites, Kenites and
Rephaim, but the Kadmonites (
bene Kedem
, or ‘Men of the East’), invaders from the Syrian Desert; the Kenizzites, an Edomite clan (
Genesis
XXXVI. 11); the Perizzites (‘Pheresites’ in 1
Esdras
VIII. 69), whose identity is still a riddle; the Hittites; the Girgashites (perhaps the QRQShA, allies of the Hittites in their war against Rameses II); and the Jebusites, whose origin is unknown, but whose King Abdu-Khipa (‘Slave to [the Goddess] Khipa’—see 10.
10
) acknowledged Egyptian sovereignty in the fourteenth century
B.C.
(see 27.
6
)

7
. Israel’s emblem, a pigeon (
Hosea
VII. 11; XI. 11), was the non-migratory
columba livia
, which frequented rocks and caves (
Jeremiah
XLVIII. 28 and
Canticles
II. 14), whereas the migratory turtle dove (
turtur communis
) represented the nomadic Ishmaelites and their kinsmen the Edomites.

(
a
) After ten years of marriage Sarai, Abram’s wife, believing herself barren, offered him her Egyptian bond-woman Hagar as his concubine. Abram, now eighty-five years old, accepted the gift. When Hagar conceived, and Sarai complained to Abram of being held in scorn by her, he answered: ‘Do as you will with Hagar; is she not your bond-woman?’ Sarai took him at his word and tormented Hagar so cruelly that she ran away. God, disguised as an angel, found her at a desert spring between Kadesh and Bered, on the way from Shur, and asked why she had come there. When Hagar answered, ‘I have run away from my unkind mistress,’ God told her to return and suffer in silence, promising that she would mother a race of warriors. He continued: ‘Your son shall be named Ishmael, for
God has heard
your cry of suffering. Ishmael shall live in the wilderness, like a wild ass, and maintain himself by force of arms.’

Hagar cried: ‘The
Living One has seen me!’
, and named the well Lahai-Roi. She then returned to her mistress and bore Abram a son, duly called Ishmael.
²⁵⁷

(
b
) Many years later, when Sarai had borne Isaac, the child of her old age, she saw Ishmael playfully dandling him, and said to Abram: ‘Cast out this bond-woman and her son; Isaac is your heir, not Ishmael!’ Abram grieved at these words, but God comforted him: ‘Grieve neither for Hagar, nor yet for Ishmael! Do as Sarai says; because the children of Isaac shall be My chosen people. Nevertheless, since Ishmael also is your son, his children shall become a great nation.’

(
c
) Abram arose early and, giving Hagar a loaf of bread and a skin of water, sent her away with Ishmael in her arms to the desert of Beersheba. When the skin was dry, she laid Ishmael under a bush and sat down a bowshot from him, saying: ‘Let me not see my son perish!’ As she wept, an angel heard Ishmael calling on God’s name, and said: ‘Weep no more, Hagar!
God has heard
your son’s voice. Take him up again and hold him fast, for Ishmael shall become a great nation.’ Then Hagar’s eyes were opened and, seeing a spring of water, she refilled the skin and gave the child to drink. God guarded Ishmael, who
lived thereafter in the Wilderness of Paran. Hagar married him to an Egyptian woman named Meribah, because she was given to
quarrelling;
though others call her Isa, a Moabitess.
²⁵⁸

(
d
) Some say that vexed by Hagar’s presumption, Sarai turned her out of Abram’s bed, threw shoes in her face, and cast the evil eye on her, so that Hagar’s first-born, a girl, died at birth. She also made Hagar follow behind her, with pails and towels, to the bath house. Sarai then cast the evil eye on Ishmael, who grew so feeble and wizened that he could no longer walk. Therefore, when Abram sent Hagar away, she had to carry Ishmael on her back—though already seventeen years, or even twenty-five, of age; and suffering from such a burning thirst that the water-skin was soon dry.
²⁵⁹

(
e
) Some absolve Sarai of blame, saying that Ishmael, as a child, shot an arrow at Isaac but missed him; and later he raised an altar to a false god, worshipped idols, caught locusts, lay with harlots, forced virgins. Ishmael also mocked those who told him that Isaac would receive the first-born’s double portion after Abram’s death, asking: ‘Am I not the first-born?’
²⁶⁰

(
f
) Others say that when God let the spring flow in the wilderness to save Ishmael’s life, His ministering angels protested: ‘Lord of the Universe, why spare one who will leave Your own chosen children to die of thirst?’ God asked: ‘Does he honour me now?’ They answered: ‘He still lives in righteousness.’ God said: ‘I judge every man as he is now, not as he will be!’
²⁶¹

(
g
) Others, again, deny Ishmael’s idolatry and evil living. They say that Abram, many years after Hagar’s expulsion, told Sarai: ‘I yearn to visit my son Ishmael.’ Sarai cried: ‘Stay, my lord, I beseech you!’ However, seeing Abram determined on the journey, she made him swear not to alight from his camel when he reached Ishmael’s tent, lest his heart should be turned against Isaac.

Abram rode out into the Wilderness of Paran and, about noon, found Ishmael’s tent, but neither he nor Hagar were at home; only Meribah, his wife, and some young sons. Abram inquired: ‘Where is Ishmael?’ Meribah answered: ‘He has gone hunting.’ Abram, keeping his promise to Sarai, did not alight. ‘Give me refreshment, daughter,’ he said, ‘for travel has made me faint.’ Meribah told him: ‘We have neither water nor bread.’ She would not leave the tent, nor look at Abram, nor ask his name, but beat her young sons and reviled the absent Ishmael. Abram, greatly displeased, ordered Meribah to approach him; and then, still mounted on his camel, said: ‘When your husband returns, tell him: “An aged man of such and such appearance
came here from the Land of the Philistines, in search of you. I did not ask his name, but reported your absence. Thereupon he said: ‘Advise your husband to cast away this tent-peg and cut himself another!”” Then Abram rode off. Upon Ishmael’s return, Meribah delivered the message, from which he understood that she had denied his father hospitality. He obeyed Abram by divorcing Meribah and marrying another wife, his mother’s kinswoman Patuma.

Three years later, Abram again visited Ishmael’s tent. Patuma ran out to greet him, saying: ‘I regret that my lord Ishmael has gone hunting. Come in, take refreshment, and await his return; for you must be weary of travel.’ Abram answered: ‘I cannot dismount; but pray give me water to quench my thirst!’ Patuma fetched water, and also pressed him to eat bread; which he did gladly, blessing Ishmael, and God also. Abram told Patuma: ‘When Ishmael returns, say: “An aged man of such and such appearance came from the Land of the Philistines, in search of you. He said: ‘Assure your husband that the new tent-peg is an excellent one; let him not cast it away!” Upon receiving this message, Ishmael understood that Patuma had paid her father-in-law due respect; and presently took her, his sons, flocks, herds and camels, to visit Abram in the Land of the Philistines, where they spent many days; and his house prospered.
²⁶²

(
h
) Ishmael met Isaac only once more: when together they buried Abram in the Cave of Machpelah at Hebron.
²⁶³

(
i
) Before Ishmael died, at the age of one hundred and thirty-seven, he had twelve sons. They were Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedmah. Each became a prince, and each had a village from which his people set out on their wanderings.
²⁶⁴

***

1
. This myth supports Israelite claims to nobler, though later, descent than the Southern kinsmen who had been forced into the wilderness by their step-mother Sarai.
Hagar
in South Arabic means ‘village’, which explains why her grandsons are said to have lived in villages of their own.

Lahai-Roi
is more likely to mean ‘Well of the Reem’s Jawbone’, on the
analogy of others named after animals, such as
En-Gedi
, ‘Well of the Kid’, (
Joshua
XV. 62) and
En-Eglaim
, ‘Well of the Two Calves’ (
Ezekiel
XLVII. 10). In
Judges
XV. 17–19 Samson, like Ishmael, is given water by God when thirsty, at a well called Lehi (‘jawbone’).

Bered is identified by the
Targum Yer.
with Khalasa, an important town on the road from Beersheba to Egypt. Kadesh, east of Bered, possessed an oracular spring, En-Mishpat (
Genesis
XIV. 7).

2
. A close parallel to the difficult relationship between Abram, Sarai and Hagar is found in the Laws of Hammurabi: ‘If a man marries a priestess—
naditum
(a hierodule, or temple servant, forbidden to bear children)—and if she gives her husband a bond-maid to bear him children, and if afterwards this bond-maid demands equal honour with her mistress because of the children she has borne, the priestess must not sell her, but she may be returned to bondage among her fellow-slaves.’ Casting a shoe across property was a ritual act of asserting possession (
Ruth
IV. 7;
Psalm
LX. 10). Sarai cast shoes in Hagar’s face as a reminder of her servitude.

3
. Abram circumcised Ishmael at the age of thirteen (
Genesis
XVII. 25)—circumcision being originally a pre-marital rite—and Isaac was born about a year later (
Genesis
XVIII. 1–15; XXI. 1 ff); which makes Ishmael the elder by fourteen years. Since Ishmael here appears as a babe in arms whom Hagar lays under a bush, a later mythographer has repaired this inconsistency by explaining that Sarai had cast the evil eye on him, so that he grew wizened. His catching of locusts probably means that Sarai suspected Hagar of planning to supplant her in Abram’s affections: according to the Ethiopian
Kebra Nagast
, Pharaoh’s daughter used locusts and a scarlet thread to seduce King Solomon.

4
. The Wilderness of Paran, occupied by Ishmael, lies in Northern Sinai. Most of the twelve Ishmaelite tribes here named appear in other records; but their confederacy does not seem to have been securely fixed. In
Judges
XIII. 24 the Midianites are reckoned as Ishmaelites, although
Genesis
XXV. I ff ranks Midian as Ishmael’s half-brother. Nebaioth and Kedar, the first two sons of Ishmael, are mentioned by
Isaiah
XLII. 11; LX. 7;
Jeremiah
XLIX. 28;
Ezekiel
XVII. 21. Nebaioth’s territory lay east of the Dead Sea; Kedar’s north of Nebaioth, in the Syrian Desert. Nebaioth has been implausibly identified with the Nabataeans. Hadad’s territory is unknown; but
Hadad
was a Canaanite Storm-god.
Kedmah
means ‘people of the East’—probably the Syrian Desert.

5
. Adbeel, Massa and Tema appear in records of the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III (eighth century
B.C.
) as the
Idiba‘ilites, Mas’a
and
Tema
—all Arab tribes. The records of Assurbanipal (seventh century
B.C.
) contain the names
Su-mu‘-il
, or
Ishmael
whose king was Uate or Iaute, and Kedar: whose king was Ammuladi. Tiglath-Pileser assigned Idibi‘lu of Arabia the task of guarding the Egyptian frontier and, after conquering the Philistines, gave him twenty-five of their cities. Tema is the oasis in Northern
Arabia still called Tayma. Dumah seems to be Adumatu, an oasis and fort in the Syrian Desert conquered by Sennacherib. Mibsam and Mishma rank in 1
Chronicles
IV. 25 among the sons of Simeon, which suggests that the Israelite tribe of Simeon, whose territory spread southward from Judaea, assimilated at least part of them.

6
. Jetur and Naphish are mentioned in 1
Chronicles
V. 19, together with Nodab and the Hagrites, as tribes against whom the trans-Jordanian Israelites—Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh—made war. The same passage (V. 21) indicates that the Hagrites were camel-breeders and shepherds. Josephus, St. Luke and the Church Fathers mention the Jeturites, or Ituraeans (
Itouraioi
). Their territory bordered on Edom (Idumaea) and, in 104
B.C.
, King Aristobulus the Hasmonean annexed some of it, at the same time forcibly converting the Ituraeans to Judaism. Two generations later, they moved northward and occupied parts of the Hermon range and Syria where, in Gospel times, Herod’s son Philip the Tetrarch ruled them. Their archers served as Roman auxiliaries, and are mentioned by Virgil and Cicero—who calls them ‘the most savage race on earth’.

7
. After David founded his kingdom and strengthened the Aramaean nomads, the Ishmaelites seem to have been forced southwards, where they merged with better established Arab tribes. Subsequently, the Arabs accepted the view, still held by them, that all Northern, or Adnani, Arab tribes were descended from Ishmael. Hagar’s name has been preserved by the Hagrites (
Hagrim
or
Hagri’im
), a tribe mentioned with Jetur and Naphish in 1
Chronicles
V. 19, and with the Ishmaelites in
Psalm
LXXXIII. 7. Eratosthenes, cited by Strabo, places them east of Petra.