Copyright © 2025 Michael
A. Brown
‘For this
reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and
they will become one flesh.’ (Gen.
2:24-25)
In
our foundational verse above from Genesis 2:24, there are three life
choices indicated. Firstly, the
father and mother chose each other as life partners and got married
together. Secondly, they naturally
desired and then chose at some point to start their own family, giving birth to
a son. (I am well aware as a parent
myself that pregnancy can sometimes occur without prior planning, but I am
considering a generic scenario here in which the desire of parents leads to the
choice to start a family, rather than getting sidetracked by the practicalities
involved.) And thirdly, their son as he
grew up decided to get married and have a wife of his own.
It
is these latter two life choices, seen from the perspective of living
with the consequences of these choices, that are the subject of this
blog. We have to live with the practical
consequences of the choices we make in life, whether it is the person we marry,
the in-law family we marry into, the children we give birth to, and so on. Unless otherwise indicated, all references are from the book of
Genesis.
Ishmael: a wild donkey of a man
The
decision by a couple to have children and start a family of their own is a
choice that changes their life forever.
This decision is invariably followed by joyful expectation and planning
for the blessing that will be coming their way. The couple very understandably and innocently dream
of the perfect child that will be born, about whether it will a boy or a girl, about
what they will call it, they prepare a room for the baby, and so on. This is all perfectly normal. It is a period filled with anticipation and great
joy.
However, if truth be told, when they make this choice, the couple
are at the very same time entering into something over which they have no
control in terms of the outcome, regardless of whether they have understood
this fact or not. Although most babies
are born in good and robust health, yet, despite the couple’s dreams and best
hopes, a significant number of babies are born with some form of physical
handicap, disablement or other form of special needs; others are born with some
kind of rare genetic disorder which may have a significant and long-term impact
on the life of the whole family; and yet others are unfortunately miscarried
during pregnancy bringing heartbreak and shattered hopes, especially to the
mother. Ultimately, we have no
choice over what we are given, we have to play the game of life with the cards
that have been dealt to us (cf. 2 Sam. 9:3, John 9:2).
In
her instinctive desire to have a child, Abraham’s wife Sarai became desperate
and, in a fleshly effort to bring about the fulfilment of God’s promise to them
as a couple, she proposed to her husband that they could have a child through
her maidservant Hagar (see ch.16). I
have no doubt that Sarai was dreaming of Hagar having the ideal and perfect
baby. Abraham agreed with her plan,
since it was a culturally acceptable practice in those days as a way of dealing
with barrenness. (Both Leah and Rachel,
Jacob’s wives, did a similar thing.) Hence,
Hagar became pregnant. So this was very
much a planned pregnancy, not an unplanned or unexpected one.
However,
when the inevitable female mind games then kicked off on Hagar’s part towards
Sarai, Sarai became irritated and eventually sent Hagar away even while she was
still pregnant. Very convenient! It didn’t take very long, did it, for Sarai
to be jolted into the reality of the practical consequences of her decision to
have a child through someone else?!
Anticipation and joyful dreams quickly turned into resentment and even
outright rejection. Sarai
certainly did not want to live with this particularly aggravating consequence
of her plan. As the saying goes,
she had made her bed, and now she had to lie on it!
While
Hagar was in the desert, the angel of the Lord gave her revelation into the
nature and character of the child that would be born, before then sending her
back to Sarai. The angel’s description
of Ishmael is as follows:
‘He will be a wild donkey of a man; his
hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live
in hostility toward all his brothers.’ (16:12)
This description of Ishmael gives us insight into the kind of adult
man he eventually developed into. Wild
donkeys live a solitary life in the wilderness away from society, so they spend
their life wandering in wastelands. They
are untamed, and being donkeys they are also stubborn and obstinate creatures, hence
the description of Ishmael as living in hostility towards everyone around
him. The different renderings given
below of the ironic statement in Job 11:12 give us further insight:
‘An empty-headed person will gain understanding when a wild donkey
is born a human being!’ (ISV)
‘But a witless man can no more become wise than a wild donkey’s
colt can be born a man!’ (NIV)
‘But a stupid man will get understanding when a wild donkey’s colt
is born a man!’ (ESV)
‘But vain man is void of understanding, yea, man is born as a wild
ass’s colt.’ (RV)
Gathering all these together, we get quite
a colourful description of Ishmael. To put
it bluntly, he was a wild, untamed, obstinate, hostile, empty-headed, witless
and stupid man who was void of understanding, and who in consequence regularly
got himself embroiled in conflicts and contentions with people around him. Although the narrative tells us that God was
with Ishmael as he grew up, he did this for the sake of his promise to Abraham
(21:20). It did not alter in any way Ishmael’s
inner nature.
As
I have meditated on verse 16:12 over the years, I have often asked God how it
was possible for Abraham, a man of faith who feared God, who walked in righteousness
and in the covenant promises of God, to have a child with a character such as
Ishmael’s. We are given no hints as to whether
and in what ways Ishmael resembled his mother Hagar, but his character clearly did
not resemble that of his father Abraham.
In fact, Ishmael was significantly different to Abraham. But pan out this way it certainly did, and it
simply proves the point: although our children inherit many of the physical and
personality traits of each of their parents, yet ultimately we have no
control over their inward nature.
We get what we are given, and we have to learn to live with it.
Yes,
all children are born in Adam with a sinful nature; yes, foolishness is bound
up in the heart of every child; and yes, an undisciplined child does cause disgrace
to its mother, etc. (cf. Prov. 22:15, 29:15), but for Abraham the great man of
God and revered patriarch to have had a child such as Ishmael with the
character of a wild donkey?! Well and
truly a big surprise to everyone! Did
Abraham somehow fail in the way he brought Ishmael up? No, the problem was bound up in the
nature of the child. Abraham
simply had to learn how to live with what he had been given. And I often wonder, given Sarai’s initial
desperation to have a child, if she had known beforehand what kind of character
Ishmael would turn out to have, whether she would have changed her mind and
chosen not to produce a child through Hagar.
But of course, she didn’t know…
About
fourteen years later (cf. 17:24-25), after Isaac had been born and was weaned,
Sarai’s decision to send Hagar and Ishmael away permanently was the correct one
(see 21:8-21). The narrative tells us
that Ishmael was mocking during the feast held in Isaac’s honour. The Hebrew word used here indicates cynical
and even malicious mockery on Ishmael’s part.
He was openly expressing his hostile ‘wild donkey’ nature towards
Isaac. What was in Ishmael presented a clear
danger to Isaac’s very life, and, if taken any further, it had the potential to
thwart the covenant purpose that God was intending to fulfil through
Isaac. So God stepped in, and Hagar and
Ishmael were sent away permanently, not for Sarai’s sake, but for the sake of
the covenant purpose that God had for Isaac.
This
whole period of Sarai’s life underlines not simply the consequences of acting
in the flesh to try to bring about the fulfilment of God’s covenant purpose,
but also that, despite her understandable initial desperation to have a child,
she certainly did not get what she had bargained for. Whether she liked it or not, she had to
live with the practical consequences of the choice she had made. She could not go back and undo what she
had decided to do. It led to the
souring of her domestic relationship with Hagar, and, for fourteen long years,
she had to live with the difficult and challenging ‘wild donkey’ nature of the
child that was born, as this nature slowly but surely developed within him.
Isaac and Rebekah as the parents of Esau
As
with Sarai, in the next generation Isaac and Rebekah found themselves in a
similar position: Rebekah could not conceive.
So, as godly parents do, they instinctively and fervently prayed that
God might intervene and cause her to be able to conceive, which he did
(25:21). However, we find the same truth
being borne out perhaps even more starkly: as parents, even though we have the
God-given instinctive desire to have children and we make the choice to start a
family of our own, yet we have no choice in regard to the children that are
born. We get what we are given, or as I
said above, we have to play the game of life with the cards which have been
dealt to us. We have to live with
the consequences of our choice to have children.
In
their case, Rebekah discovered that not only was she was pregnant with twins, which
would itself have been a surprise, these two as-yet-unborn male children Esau
and Jacob were also jostling with each other even within her womb. That’s how early the contention between them
started! (25:22-26). However, it was as
Esau was growing up in later years that his true inner nature was
revealed. Jacob was far from perfect, of
course, but he did become a godly man of faith in adulthood, whereas by
contrast Esau is described as a godless individual. He displayed a total absence of the fear of
God in his life, and he had no desire, respect or honour for the covenant of
God within his family: he despised his birthright and cared not one whit
for it:
‘So Esau despised his birthright.’ (25:29-34)
‘See to it that no one is sexually
immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance
rights as the oldest son.’ (Heb. 12:16)
Again,
I have often asked God how it was possible for godly parents such as Isaac and
Rebekah to have two children who as they grew up displayed such divergent
attitudes towards the things of God. How
is it possible that two godly parents, who we assume endeavoured to bring up
their children in the best way possible, ended up with a child who proved to be
so utterly godless as he grew up?
It
is a foundational theological truth that every child which is ever born into
this world is born ‘in Adam,’ and therefore is born with a sinful nature, yet
as parents we always trust and hope that, given the right upbringing and
influences, our children will at some point find saving faith in Christ for
themselves. And very often this is
indeed the case, thank God! However,
ultimately there is no cast-iron guarantee that a child who is brought up in
the faith at home and in church when they are young, will necessarily follow in
the pathway of faith as they become an adult.
Isaac and Rebekah were godly parents, and I am sure they did their level
best in every way as they brought their two boys up, yet they still ended up
with a grown-up adult son who proved to be godless. Many extended families do have a so-called ‘black
sheep,’ a dysfunctional or challenging individual who invariably seems to make
the life of everyone else in the family a misery, and who in consequence is often
shunned or avoided by their relatives. Such
was Esau. As godly parents, Isaac
and Rebekah had to live with and bring up one child who proved to be thoroughly
ungodly.
We
see this being played out even further when Esau made his choice as an adult to
get married. Our choices in life,
especially as regards whom we have as friends or whom we enter into
relationships with, reflect the kind of person we are in ourself. Esau’s godless and very carnal character is
clearly reflected in the choice he made:
‘When Esau was forty years old, he
married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of
Elon the Hittite. They were a source of
grief to Isaac and Rebekah.’ (26:34-35)
Neither
God (through prayer), nor Isaac and Rebekah as parents (through godly counsel),
seem to have played any role at all in Esau’s lamentable choice to marry these
two (yes, two!) Hittite women, Judith and Basemath. It was his own selfish (and frankly
brainless) choice: he acted on his own accord out of his godless and carnal
nature, and his choice to marry these two women reflected who he himself was
deep down inside. He was very much a
child without wisdom (cf. Hosea 13:13).
The
descriptions we are given of the Canaanite nations later on in the biblical
narrative, suggest that these two women would have been loud, vulgar, crude,
rude, foul-mouthed, untrained, loose, ungodly, idolatrous, lewd, immoral,
defiant, shameless, disrespectful and drunken, or some combination of many of
these characteristics. Dame Follies,
both of them (cf. Prov. 9:13-18).
Esau
made this choice and brought these two women to live among his family’s tents,
long before he decided (or realised) that it would be better to move out and
set up his own family elsewhere. His
mindless choice subjected his own family for several years to being exposed
regularly and at close quarters to the ungodly behaviour of these two women. Every day, Isaac and Rebekah had to endure
their wanton behaviour, and it became a source of grief to them as
parents. In particular, they made
Rebekah’s life so much of a misery that it wasn’t long before she became
utterly fed up with the domestic family situation, as her words below indicate:
‘Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m
disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of
this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.’ (27:46)
The
simple, but very important truth to draw out from this, is that choices
do have consequences. The
choices we make in life, and especially choices about whom we enter into
relationship with, and the consequences of such choices, affect not only our
own personal life, but also our wider family and in particular our parents. We cannot live unto ourself alone: to
expect to be able to do so is simply selfish, disrespectful and self-centred. And as a corollary, our parents then have
to live with the consequences of our choices as their adult children. This is why in many cultures, parents are
involved in the decision about whom their adult children marry. The best and most suitable marriage partner
is carefully sought out. Unlike in postmodern
and often hedonistic western cultures, marriage is not an individualistic
decision, and neither is it based simply on carnal desires or hormonal
cravings.
The
difference between Jacob and Esau in this regard could not have been
starker. To avoid Jacob from making the
same calamitous mistake, his parents counselled him to leave for Paddan Aram
and to seek for a wife among their relatives in the extended family. They told him explicitly not to marry a
Canaanite woman. So the difference
between them lay in the fact that Jacob allowed his parents to be involved in
this part of his life, and he obeyed their counsel (28:1-5). The result?
Not a perfect life either for Jacob, as the later narrative indicates,
but at least he led a godly life with the covenant blessing of God upon his
family and children.
It
is interesting that it was only at this point that Esau realised just how
displeasing his two Hittite wives were to his parents. Only then?! Only after they had been experiencing ‘family
life from hell’ for so long?! Was Esau
really that brainless?! So what did he
do? Send his two wives away back to
their own respective parents? No. Move out and put some distance between his
wives and his parents? No, probably
because Isaac was old and going blind, so he needed Esau to be there
(27:1). As if having two wives wasn’t
enough, Esau went out and got himself yet another one, his half-cousin Mahalath
the daughter of Ishmael, and she was then also brought to live in close
vicinity with his parents. And again,
without them being involved at all in this decision (28:6-9). Esau evidently thought that bringing in a
third wife who was from their own extended family would somehow mitigate for
the appalling behaviour of his other two wives.
Scripture
does not tell us much at all about Mahalath, but my question is this: what
would we expect of a woman who had been brought up in the desert by a man who was wild, untamed, obstinate,
hostile, empty-headed, witless and stupid, who was void of understanding, and
who regularly got himself into conflicts and contentions with everyone around
him? I suggest that it
might well have been a case of ‘like father, like daughter,’ so personally I
suspect that taking on board a ‘female wild donkey’ like Mahalath as a third
marriage partner did little to mitigate the family situation, rather it would
have stoked up even more trouble and grief for Isaac and Rebekah. As parents, whether they liked it or
not, they had to live with the consequences of the lamentable and foolish
choices of one of their adult children, and they knew nothing but heart-ache
and grief as a result.
Christian
parents need to understand that there is far more to bringing up children than
simply the verse which says that if we train up a child in the way s/he should
go, then they won’t depart from it when they grow older. Although as parents we always hold onto this
verse as we are bringing up our children, and understandably so, yet it is not
a cast-iron guarantee that one or other of our children will not stray from the
godly path we have tried to bring them up in.
There are other verses that balance it out. For example, it is also true that a wise son
brings joy to his father, but a foolish son brings grief to his mother:
‘Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.’ (Prov. 22:6)
‘A wise son brings joy to his father,
but a foolish son grief to his mother.’ (Prov. 10:1)
Both of these verses are true, and yet there
is a very real tension between them in the experience of many Christian parents. We have to live with both the wisdom and the
foolishness of our children. We
celebrate their successes in life, and gleefully display our parental pride by
posting photos of their special days on our Facebook or Instagram pages for the
whole world to see. But when they mess
up, as parents we feel embarrassed or even ashamed, so we keep it quiet and
brush it all under the carpet as a closely-guarded family secret, in the hope
that no one ever finds out.
I have no doubt that Isaac and Rebekah
tried to bring up both of their sons with pretty much the same values and
expectations. They were godly parents,
and they would have sought to instil godliness and wisdom into both Jacob and
Esau. However, as these two sons grew
up, one of them eventually became a godly father and a patriarch of God’s
people (so he therefore did not depart from the way in which he was trained as
a child), but the other one became a byword for ungodliness (never actually
walking in the way in which his parents tried vainly to train him, and becoming
a source of grief to them). We can
see the truths of both of the above verses being played out in the lives of
these two sons. The root of the
problem was not that Isaac and Rebekah somehow failed in their parenting when
it came to Esau, it was in the inward nature and character of this child they
had given birth to. They were not
responsible for Esau’s foolish choices as an adult, but they did have to live
with the consequences of them.
Our challenge as Christian parents,
when we are faced with living with the consequences of the wrong choice(s) of
one or other of our adult children, is to navigate this difficult path as a
believer. We shed tears and are grieved
over their wrong life choice(s), yet we never lose the natural affection and
love for them that we have as parents.
No other child is like our child!
On occasion, we may criticise or even reject the children of other
people because of their behaviour, but no matter how much our own child messes
up, we never stop loving or having compassion on them (cf. Ps. 103:13). When they mess up, we grieve for them. We grieve for them because we love them
and because we still want the best for them. Isaac and Rebekah grieved not simply because
Esau was godless and made regrettable choices, but because as parents they
loved him. Yes, we still love our
godless child, the one who has departed from the ways of righteousness as a
prodigal and is presently in a far country squandering their life in wild
living, as it were. We still have
compassion on them (cf. Luke 15:11-24).
It is this tear-stained and heart-torn path that Christian parents are sometimes
obliged to walk, in living with the consequences of the choices of their adult
children.
It is significant that when Jacob
returned from Paddan Aram many years later with his large family and extensive possessions
in tow, he briefly met up with Esau.
Esau invited Jacob to come and live near him, but Jacob declined his
invitation and instead moved on elsewhere, making sure to put some appropriate
distance between himself and Esau.
Although we might be tempted to think that the reason Jacob did this was
simply that he was afraid that Esau might try to take his life, I think there
was more to it than just that. Jacob had
experienced from childhood what it was like to live with such a godless man and
then also with his equally godless wives.
So I think he was simply voting with his feet, because he did not want
to live anywhere near Esau. Jacob knew
Esau’s inner nature, and he wanted to live a God-fearing life, without the
influence of Esau’s godlessness coming anywhere near him and his family
(33:1-20). A wise choice, made when he
was a position to freely make it. Esau’s
godlessness not only brought grief to his parents, it also ultimately cost him
his relationship with his twin brother.
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