The way to Shur was a pretty heavily traveled road at that time, about 40 or 50 miles south of the southeastern edge or shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea, it runs between Beersheba and central Egypt. Undoubtedly she was headed on her way back to Egypt using that road to get there.
The Angel of the Lord, as you probably picked up there is really Yahweh, Melchizedek, God who was there. She recognized that. He promised her a son and innumerable multitude of seed. This at least was partly for Abraham’s faith because what was in her womb was also a seed, a son of Abram. Her seed though, her child was not the promised heir. But still, she was going to be honored because he was Abraham’s, that is the recipient of the promise because he was Abraham’s son. Therefore came the blessing of the innumerable seed.
Ishmael means, “God hears.” What it is implying is that God heard her at her time of distress. Ishmael is kind of interesting, and what God says about him is indicative of the kind of man that he turned out to be. This does not mean that he was bad, it does not mean that at all. We are just making a comparison here with one of the beasts of the desert that indicates the personality of the man.
What it says here is that “He shall be a wild man.” Now what it literally says in Hebrew is “a wild ass of a man.” The reference here is to a “wild ass,” a donkey. It roams the desert area, somehow or another it is adapted to surviving in wilderness areas that did not support the life of many other animals.
That description is given in contrast to what Hagar was going through. She was being oppressed, that is why she fled, oppressed by Sarai, by Sarai’s anger. So God says, this is a blessing to Hagar, that her son will not feel that kind of oppression. In other words, he is going to be living the kind of life that is free, independent.
So Ishmael and his descendants, the Bedouins, will be free, they will be free roaming the desert on horse, on camel, they will be a hardy, frugal people, we might even say reveling in the beauty of the nature of that area. Surviving life in virtually every form and living in an almost constant state of feuds with one another and their neighbors. In other words, there would be a nature there that would have them, what we might call today, a kind of free spirit, roaming the desert, not wanting to become involved in city life.
Another thing that it says, “And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” The brethren here that God is referring to is undoubtedly the descendants of Abraham who would come through Isaac. Again, it literally says that “he will dwell before the face or the presence of,” meaning they will be neighbors of one another. So they will be in the same general area as the children of Abram, however, they will be independent of them. Interesting in the light of what is going on in the Middle East today.
Hagar recognized that she had seen God. She thought that she should die. But she did not. Here she was, still alive. Then she names the well, pretty much literally translated, “the well of being alive.” Now it seems to me, if you are a God of peace, you are a God of seeing, He is the all-seeing One, whose all seeing eye of helplessness and forsaken, meaning herself, is not hidden even in the farthest corner of the desert.
It became then, a very well recognized spot, because there she had seen God, and named the well because God had seen her.
