Bible Reference > Bible Facts > People in the Bible
Quick Summary
Ishmael was the firstborn son of Abraham, born to Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Abraham's wife Sarah. For thirteen years he was Abraham's only son. After Isaac was born, Ishmael and his mother were sent away into the wilderness, where God rescued them and promised to make Ishmael a great nation. He grew up in the desert, became an archer, fathered twelve sons who became tribal chiefs, and came back to help his brother Isaac bury their father. He died at 137.
Ishmael's name means "God hears." An angel gave him that name before he was born (Genesis 16:11). Years later, when he was dying of thirst under a bush in the desert, the Bible says, "God heard the voice of the boy" (Genesis 21:17). His name turned out to be a promise.
Most people meet Ishmael as a side character in someone else's story. He is the son who did not inherit the covenant, the brother who was sent away so Isaac could have the inheritance. Genesis does not treat him that way. God speaks about Ishmael by name, blesses him, makes promises to him, and keeps them. Ishmael is the son God did not choose for the covenant, and he is still the son God did not forget.
Scripture Reference
His birth announced: Genesis 16:7–16
Blessed, and circumcised with Abraham: Genesis 17:18–27
Sent away and rescued: Genesis 21:8–21
Burying Abraham with Isaac: Genesis 25:9
His sons and his death: Genesis 25:12–18
In the New Testament: Galatians 4:21–31
A Son Named Before He Was Born
Born from a Plan
Ishmael's story starts with a promise that seemed to be going nowhere. God had told Abraham, then called Abram, that his offspring would be as many as the stars (Genesis 15:5). Ten years after arriving in Canaan, he and Sarah, then called Sarai, still had no children.
Sarah proposed a solution that was common in their world. She gave Abraham her Egyptian slave, Hagar, so that a child born to Hagar could be counted as Sarah's: "it may be that I shall obtain children by her" (Genesis 16:2). Hagar became pregnant, tension exploded between the two women, and Hagar ran away into the wilderness. The full story of what happened to her there is told in Who Was Hagar in the Bible?
"God Hears"
By a spring on the road to Shur, the angel of the Lord found Hagar and told her about the child she was carrying: "Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction" (Genesis 16:11).
In Hebrew, Yishma'el means "God hears" or "may God hear." Ishmael is the first person in the Bible whose name God gives before he is born. The only other one in Genesis is his brother Isaac (Genesis 17:19). The name tells you something about God before it tells you anything about Ishmael. Before this boy had done anything, God had heard his mother. I preached on this chapter in God Sees and Blesses Hagar.
"A Wild Ass of a Man"
The angel went on to describe the kind of man Ishmael would become: "He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin" (Genesis 16:12).
To modern ears that sounds like an insult. In the ancient Near East, it was closer to a portrait. The wild donkey of the desert was a symbol of freedom, an animal no one could tame or put to work. Job describes it roaming the open steppe and scorning the noise of the city (Job 39:5–8). For a son whose mother had been a slave, the prophecy promised that no one would ever own him. It also promised a hard, independent life on the edges of settled society, often in conflict with his neighbors. God is saying to Hagar, “Thus far you have lived like a beast of burden. Your son’s life will be one of freedom, so different from yours.”
Hagar went back to Abraham's household. "Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael" (Genesis 16:15). Abraham was eighty-six years old (Genesis 16:16).
Abraham's Only Son for Thirteen Years
Genesis skips over Ishmael's childhood, but the numbers tell us something. Abraham was eighty-six when Ishmael was born and ninety-nine when God appeared to him again in Genesis 17. For thirteen years, Ishmael was Abraham's only child, and as far as Abraham knew, his heir.
"O That Ishmael Might Live in Your Sight!"
In Genesis 17, God renewed his covenant with Abraham, changed his name, and promised that Sarah herself would have a son. Abraham laughed. He was almost a hundred, and Sarah was ninety. Then he said something that tells you how he felt about the boy he already had: "O that Ishmael might live in your sight!" (Genesis 17:18).
God's answer had two parts. The first was a firm no to Abraham's suggestion: "your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him" (Genesis 17:19). The second was a generous yes to Abraham's prayer: "As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation" (Genesis 17:20).
Notice the words "I have heard you." Once more, a promise about Ishmael begins with God hearing. Then God draws the line clearly: "But my covenant I will establish with Isaac" (Genesis 17:21). Ishmael would be blessed. The covenant promise of land and a special relationship with God, laid out in What Is the Abrahamic Covenant?, would pass through Isaac.
Circumcised the Same Day as His Father
That same day, Abraham circumcised every male in his household as the sign of the covenant, and Ishmael was first in line. "Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised" (Genesis 17:24–25). Genesis adds that "Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised" on the very same day (Genesis 17:26).
Ishmael carried the sign of the covenant in his body even though the covenant line would run through his younger brother. The thirteen-year-old circumcised beside his father is a detail worth holding onto when you read what happens next.
Sent Away
The Feast for Isaac
Isaac was born the next year. When he was weaned, probably around age two or three, Abraham threw a great feast. Ishmael would have been about sixteen.
At the feast, Sarah saw Ishmael "playing with her son Isaac" (Genesis 21:9). The Hebrew word is metsaheq, from the same root as Isaac's name, which means "he laughs." Translations and interpreters have long argued over what Ishmael was doing. Some read it as innocent play. Some read it as mocking, which is how many older English Bibles translate it. Paul later described it as persecution (Galatians 4:29). Others think the problem was simpler: Sarah saw the older boy "Isaac-ing," acting like the heir.
Whatever Sarah saw, her response was clear: "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac" (Genesis 21:10). She never uses Ishmael's name.
Abraham's Distress
"The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son" (Genesis 21:11). Genesis calls Ishmael "his son." Abraham did not want to do this.
God told Abraham to listen to Sarah, and then he gave Abraham a promise to carry with him: "I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring" (Genesis 21:13). Early the next morning, Abraham gave Hagar bread and a skin of water, put it on her shoulder along with the boy, and sent them away.
"God Heard the Voice of the Boy"
Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba until the water ran out. Hagar put the boy under a bush, walked off about the distance of a bowshot, and sat down. "Do not let me look on the death of the child," she said, and she wept (Genesis 21:16).
The next verse is the one that matches Ishmael's name. "And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, 'What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is'" (Genesis 21:17).
Genesis never tells us what Ishmael said. Maybe he was crying. Maybe he was praying. Maybe he was too weak to say anything at all. The text says only that God heard him, "where he is," under a bush in the desert, outside the covenant family, with no father there to help him.
The angel told Hagar to lift the boy up and hold him fast, "for I will make a great nation of him" (Genesis 21:18). Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.
There is one more thing to notice about this story. In the very next chapter, Abraham rises early in the morning, takes his other son on a journey, and comes close to losing him, until an angel calls from heaven and God provides (Genesis 22). Many readers have seen the two stories as mirror images. Both of Abraham's sons came within a breath of death, and God rescued both.
Growing Up in the Wilderness
"God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow" (Genesis 21:20). The free life of the wild donkey from Genesis 16 had come true. He settled in the wilderness of Paran, south of Canaan in the Sinai region, and his mother found him a wife from Egypt, her own homeland (Genesis 21:21).
Two Brothers at a Grave
Genesis says nothing about Ishmael for decades. Then, when Abraham died at 175, one sentence brings him back: "His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah" (Genesis 25:9).
That is all Genesis tells us, and it is enough to stop a careful reader. The boy who was sent into the desert with a skin of water came back to stand next to the brother who got the inheritance, and together they laid their father in the family tomb at Hebron. Genesis does not say whether they talked, whether there was bitterness, or whether there was peace. It says they did it together.
There is one more connection worth noticing. After Abraham's death, Isaac settled at Beer-lahai-roi (Genesis 25:11), the very well where the angel had first met Ishmael's pregnant mother and announced his name (Genesis 16:14).
Twelve Princes
God had promised Abraham that Ishmael would be "the father of twelve princes" (Genesis 17:20). Genesis 25:12–16 lists them by name, "twelve princes according to their tribes." Isaac's son Jacob would also have twelve sons who became twelve tribes. Ishmael got there a generation earlier.
| Son | Where the name shows up again |
|---|---|
| Nebaioth | Firstborn; brother of Esau’s wife Mahalath (Genesis 28:9). Isaiah pictures “the rams of Nebaioth” (Isaiah 60:7). |
| Kedar | A byword for desert tents (Psalm 120:5; Song of Solomon 1:5) |
| Adbeel | Only in the family lists |
| Mibsam | Only in the family lists |
| Mishma | Only in the family lists |
| Dumah | An oracle concerning Dumah (Isaiah 21:11) |
| Massa | Possibly the Massa of Proverbs 30:1 and 31:1 |
| Hadad | Only in the family lists |
| Tema | Known for its caravans (Job 6:19; Isaiah 21:14) |
| Jetur | At war with the tribes east of the Jordan (1 Chronicles 5:19) |
| Naphish | At war with the tribes east of the Jordan (1 Chronicles 5:19) |
| Kedemah | Only in the family lists |
Names from Genesis 25:13–15 and 1 Chronicles 1:29–31.
Ishmael's descendants spread across the deserts south and east of Canaan, "from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria" (Genesis 25:18). Several of the names show up again much later as Arabian tribes and trading peoples. Kedar became a byword for desert tent dwellers: a psalm writer far from home laments, "Woe is me, that I am an alien in Meshech, that I must live among the tents of Kedar" (Psalm 120:5).
Ishmael lived to be 137 years old. "He breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people" (Genesis 25:17), the same words Genesis uses for Abraham's death a few verses earlier.
Ishmael's Family in Later Stories
Ishmael's family keeps crossing paths with Abraham's other descendants. Esau, the son Isaac favored, married Ishmael's daughter Mahalath (Genesis 28:9), which links Ishmael's line to the Edomites.
And when Joseph's brothers sat down to eat beside the pit where they had thrown him, they looked up and saw "a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin" (Genesis 37:25). By then "Ishmaelites" had become a general name for desert traders. The descendants of the son who was sent away carried the favored son of the next generation down into Egypt.
Ishmael After Genesis
Paul's Allegory in Galatians
The New Testament mentions Ishmael's story once, and not by name. In Galatians 4, Paul is arguing with Christians who insisted that Gentile believers had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. He reaches back to Abraham's two sons and reads them as an allegory: "one, by a slave woman, and the other, by a free woman" (Galatians 4:22). The slave woman's son was "born according to the flesh," and the free woman's son "through the promise" (Galatians 4:23). Hagar stands for Mount Sinai and slavery under the law. Sarah stands for "the Jerusalem above" and freedom.
It helps to read Paul carefully here. His argument is about how people come into God's family, by human effort or by God's promise. He is using the two sons as figures for two ways of relating to God, and his letter says nothing about Ishmael's actual descendants. Paul himself calls it an allegory (Galatians 4:24). The site explains the difference in What Is the Difference Between a Parable and an Allegory?
In Jewish Tradition
Jewish interpreters have read Ishmael in more than one way. Some rabbinic writings treat him harshly. Others are surprisingly generous. Rashi, the great medieval Jewish commentator, noticed that Genesis 25:9 names Isaac before Ishmael at their father's burial, even though Ishmael was older. He took it as a sign that Ishmael had made peace with his brother and let Isaac go first.
In Islam
Islam honors Ishmael, called Isma'il in Arabic, as a prophet. Muslim tradition traces the Arab peoples, including the Prophet Muhammad, to Ishmael. The Qur'an describes Abraham and Ishmael together raising the foundations of the Kaaba in Mecca (Qur'an 2:127). The Qur'an's account of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son does not name the son, and many Muslims understand him to be Ishmael, where Genesis 22 names Isaac.
Those traditions are part of why Ishmael's name still carries weight in conversations among Jews, Christians and Muslims today. All three trace their faith back to Abraham, and all three have had to think about what it means that Abraham had more than one son.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the name Ishmael mean?
Ishmael means "God hears." The angel of the Lord gave Hagar the name before he was born, "for the Lord has given heed to your affliction" (Genesis 16:11). The name came true when "God heard the voice of the boy" in the wilderness (Genesis 21:17).
Was Ishmael Abraham's firstborn son?
Yes. Ishmael was born when Abraham was eighty-six (Genesis 16:16), fourteen years before Isaac. Abraham later had six more sons with Keturah (Genesis 25:1–2).
Why didn't Ishmael receive the covenant?
God told Abraham that the covenant would pass through the son Sarah would bear: "my covenant I will establish with Isaac" (Genesis 17:21). In the same breath, God promised to bless Ishmael and make him a great nation (Genesis 17:20).
How old was Ishmael when he was sent away?
Genesis does not say directly, but he was thirteen at his circumcision (Genesis 17:25), and Isaac was born the next year and weaned after that. So Ishmael was probably around sixteen. Some readers note that Genesis 21 describes him much like a small child, and they have discussed how the ages fit.
Did Ishmael and Isaac reconcile?
Genesis never describes a reconciliation, but it does say that "his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him" together when Abraham died (Genesis 25:9).
Is Ishmael the father of the Arabs?
Genesis places Ishmael's twelve sons in the deserts south and east of Canaan, and several of their names match later Arabian tribes. Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition have long identified the Arab peoples as Ishmael's descendants. Historians note that Arab peoples today have many ancestries, so this is a traditional identification more than something history can trace in detail.
How old was Ishmael when he died?
He died at 137 (Genesis 25:17).
Works Consulted
Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary.
Brueggemann, Walter. Genesis (Interpretation).
Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians (Anchor Bible).
Sarna, Nahum M. Genesis (The JPS Torah Commentary).
Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 16–50 (Word Biblical Commentary).
Westermann, Claus. Genesis 12–36.
