Where Hurt Begins

Ishmael experienced hatred all his life.

 (Sarah demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son! No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac!” (Genesis 21:10) 

Now, well into his teens, his father Abraham rejects both he and his mother. 

 Early the next morning Abraham got some bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He sent her away. (Genesis 21:14)

Their water runs out and what does his mother do? She runs off and sits ‘about a bowshot away” because she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob. (Genesis 21:16a)

While Hagar is thinking of her own pain, her boy is thinking “Momma rejects/hates me, too.”

Did Ishmael become an archer so that Mom was never out of his range again?

 God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert bowman. (Genesis 21:20)

And generation after generation expands on the original rejection. And now we have two countries hating each other.