Genesis 17:15-22 And God said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. Two reasons in particular seem to have made it unsuitable, or even incompatible with the Divine purposes, that Ishmael should be the continuator of the sacred line, and the inheritor of that blessing for mankind which had been secured to Abraham by covenant. I. For one thing, Ishmael was slave born. The children of a slave mother shared her condition, even when the father was a free man — indeed, though he were the master himself. In the absence of any issue by the free and proper wife, it is true that Ishmael could have inherited his father's wealth, just as, in the absence of any issue, Eliezer of Damascus might have done so. Inherently, however, he possessed no right of inheritance. So soon as a free-born son appeared, Ishmael sank to his mother's level. It is easy to see how unfit such an heir would have been to represent, at the very outset of a family history which was to be saturated throughout with symbolical meaning, the entire body of God's spiritual children, for whom the great blessing was ultimately destined. II. In the second place, God's covenant with Abraham's seed was one of gracious promise. By it, the Eternal and Omnipotent drew near again to sinful men, laden with spontaneous blessings, such as they themselves could neither win by force nor merit by virtue, but must expect to receive through the superhuman operations of God. The Promiser of such blessings must be also their Donor. The fulfilment of a Divine promise, whose characteristic is sovereign grace, could not lie within the sphere of man's natural ability, or what in Bible language is called "flesh." It lay outside that region altogether; in a redemptive, and therefore miraculous, interposition of God. Now it corresponded ill with an alliance like this, that the first to inherit and transmit its benefits or hopes to posterity should be one into whose origin there had entered so little faith, and so much fleshly policy and fleshly desire. (J. O. Dykes, DD.) Parallel Verses KJV: And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. |
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