So, last Thursday, of the Twelfth week of ordinary time, the reading from Genesis 16 tells us in verse 16 that Abram was 85 when Ishmael was born. But yesterday, the reading from Genesis 21, tells us in verse 5 that Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. And yet he was able to put Ishmael on his mothers back and when Hagar and Ishmael walk off, it talks about him as a baby. Which is it?? Was Ishmael a baby or was he 14 years old?
In Genesis 16:15-16 and 21:3-5 we read:
Hagar bore Avram a son; and Avram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore,
Yishma’el (Now Avram was the son of eighty years and six years when Hagar bore Yishma’el to Avram).
Avraham called the name of his son who was born to him - whom Sarah bore to him,
Yitzchak; and Avraham circumcised Yitzchak his son - the son of eight days - as God had commanded him (Now Avraham was the son of a hundred years when his son Yitzchak was born to him).
Now we get to the passage in question (Genesis 21:14-15).
Avraham rose up early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave to Hagar,
putting upon her shoulder, and the boy, and sent her out. And she walked and wandered in the wilderness of Be’er-Sheva.
When the water in the skin was used up, she threw the boy under one of the bushes. Then she walked and sat opposite him at a distance of about a bowshot, for she said, “
Do not let me see the death of the boy.” So she sat opposite him, and she lifted up her voice and wept.
The Hebrew here is ambiguous how “
and the boy” relates syntactically to what precedes. Perhaps the words should be rearranged and the text read, “
and he put [the food and drink] on her shoulder and he gave to Hagar the boy.”
There are three verbs in the immediate vicinity, “
he took,” “
he gave,” and “putting.” Some translations assume “
the boy” as the direct object of “
putting.” The problem with this is, normal Hebrew word order would put it right after the verb, “
putting the boy on her shoulder.” Instead it reads “
putting upon her shoulder, and the boy.”
Most likely it is that the word “and” in this case introduces a resumptive addition - picking up on a previous thought and adding more to it, because it has no preceding noun phrase with which it can connect the phrase “
the boy.” If the text were to indicate that Abraham put Ishmael on Hagar’s shoulder, one would expect the text to read “
putting it and the boy” on her shoulder. However, the objective pronoun “
it” is not there, while “
and” is never used to form a compound noun phrase with an elided noun (one that is missing). In addition, the Hebrew text has a disjunctive accent on the word “
her shoulder” that marks a syntactic division between the phrase “
her shoulder” and “
and the boy”.
In addition, even if Ishmael had been a little child, it is unnatural for a woman to carry a child on her shoulder. There would have been more credibility had it been the hips or the back, but the shoulder? No.
Meanwhile, the word “
thrown” used in verse 15 need not be interpreted that Hagar picked up Ishmael and threw him like a rock. That too is unnatural. When the lad became faint, Hagar helped Ishmael to walk as far as her strength would allow; and when she could go no further, she let him fall or perhaps even dragged or shoved him under the shade of a tree. The word
shalak (“to throw”, “to cast”) is consistent with that understanding. There is no need to imagine Ishmael being an infant or to be a little kid here.
That brings us to the rendering of the passage in question in the present edition of the New American Bible:
Early the next morning Abraham got some bread and a skin of water and
gave them to Hagar. Then, placing the child on her back, he sent her away. As she roamed aimlessly in the wilderness of Beer-sheba, the water in the skin was used up. So she put the child down under a shrub, and then went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away; for she said to herself, “
Let me not watch to see the child die.” As she sat opposite him, he began to cry.
Why is it rendered this way? This emendation to the Hebrew text is followed, it would seem, to support the all too-familiar JEPD Hypothesis. The footnote in this verse in the NAB makes the translators’ decision on this clear:
Placing the child on her back: the phrase is translated from an emended form of the Hebrew text. In the current faulty Hebrew text, Abraham put the bread and the waterskin on Hagar’s back, while her son apparently walked beside her. This reading seems to be a scribal attempt at harmonizing the present passage with the data of the Priestly source, in which Ishmael would have been at least fourteen years old when Isaac was born; compare Genesis 16:16 with Genesis 21:5; cf Genesis 17:25. But in the present Elohist story Ishmael is obviously a little boy, not much older than Isaac; cf Genesis 15:18.
