Abraham had two Sons: A Study in Pauline Hermeneutics

Статья опубликована в сборнике: Huber L. Drumwright, Curtis Vaughan, eds. New Testament Studies: Essays in Honor of Ray Summers in His Sixty-Fifth Year. — Waco, TX: Markham Press Fund, Baylor University Press, 1975. — P. 71-84.Abraham had two sons—Ishmael, the elder, and Isaac, his junior by fourteen years. When Sarah, Abraham’s wife, had given him no child and had now reached an age when she was unlikely ever to have one, she decided to give him one by proxy through Hagar, her Egyptian maidservant. Hagar became pregnant immediately and did not conceal her sense of superiority over her mistress, who felt correspondingly humiliated. Relations between the two women were thenceforth strained. Hagar in due course gave birth to Ishmael, who was his aged father’s pride and joy. But the time came, years later, when Abraham and Sarah received the promise of Yahweh that Sarah herself would have a son, and the promise was fulfilled the following year in the birth of Isaac—so named because of the laughter, first of incredulity and then of exultation, which attended his annunciation and birth.