There was now a long pause as Isaac seemed to be reliving the whole episode. When he spoke his voice was low and his words measured. “I was actually tied as an animal is tied for sacrifice. He placed me on the altar.” He did not look at Ishmael but off into the distance as though he was seeing all that happened. “Our father actually raised the knife.”
“Do you really think he would have been able to kill you?” Ishmael whispered in a hoarse voice.
“Of course,” Isaac responded without hesitation. “Our father was serious. If Elohim told him to do something, he would do it.”
Ishmael shuddered. “I’m glad I was not the chosen or blessed of my father. Do you sometimes wish he had picked me and let you be free to do as you pleased?”
Isaac kicked at a stone until it spun loose from the sand and went rolling down a small incline. “No, if I escaped the fright of the sacrifice, I would have also missed the joy of the ram in the thicket.”
“So you think Elohim put the ram there?”
“Of course, it was the angel that told my father not to harm me. He had already raised the knife when he saw the ram in the thicket.”
“I have been told our father gave the place its name,” Ishmael said. “Jehovah-Jireh … the Lord will provide.”
The two stood by the fire mulling over their conversation and the strangeness of their lives. At last Ishmael heaved a sigh of relief as he said, “I now understand many things, and it is good I was not chosen by my father for the birthright or the blessing.” The two embraced and then without another word walked silently away from the fire into the shadows and each to his own tent.
* * *
Isaac did not go right to sleep. Instead he lay wide-awake watching the tent cloth billow and fold and hearing the tent poles creak and groan. He found himself puzzling over the birthright and the blessing. What were they worth when it seemed that a man like Ishmael could find the same results without the restrictions and discipline? Ishmael prayed but he didn’t presume to hear the voice of Elohim. He had entered into the covenant through circumcision, but he was not to have the birthright or the special blessing, and so it seemed that he wasn’t expected to regulate his life in such a strict way.
The more he thought about it, the more he grew confused. Ishmael did not have to live apart from the men of the cities. He could even keep an idol in his house and not feel guilty.
He remembered asking his father about the blessing and receiving a very strange answer: “It is not just that we are to be blessed but that through us the whole earth will be blessed,” his father told him.
It was only after Ishmael had gone that Isaac learned the real purpose of his visit. He had come to ask Abraham for a blessing on his twelve sons and also to tell him that Hagar had died. He had buried her in an ancient, pagan temple on the coast of the Red Sea. This temple was built around a strange stone that had fallen from the sky and was considered sacred.
* * *
Several days passed before Isaac rode out to check on the men who stayed with the herds. He and his men rode up the dry riverbeds and circled the jagged mountain ranges to come at evening to an oasis where his herdsmen were camped. He found them all doing well with no reports of sickness or attacks from wild animals. He ate with the men, and when the moon came up he unrolled his pack and slept out under the stars close to the fire.
He often studied the stars, remembering always that his father had said Elohim had promised him descendants as the stars. Sometimes he would hold a fistful of sand and watch it pour in a thin stream onto the hard-packed earth. “Your descendants shall be as the sands,” had been quoted to him over and over again. What did that mean, he wondered, if your wife was barren and had been barren for twenty years?
At times he had thought his father had made a mistake. Now he was almost sure of it. For Ishmael to have twelve sons was almost sure proof of Elohim’s preference. Then there was also Keturah, who already had four sons. Surely if the promises were to come down through his line, he should have at least one son by this time. Was he, Isaac, still the one to have the birthright and the blessing?
When he reached home he went straight to the tent of his father and was relieved to find him alone. The servants had built a fire in the fire pot and Keturah had a delicious stew cooking in a stone dish on the top. Abraham sat holding the big folds of bread, waiting for the moment when he could dip pieces in the soup. This was his favorite dish.
He quickly pulled out a cushion for Isaac, and tearing the bread in half gave him the larger part. “You have been out riding and will find this stew very tasty,” he said.