=27. Some years after this battle= we have the account of the birth of Ishmael, the son of Abram by Hagar. As the descendants of Ishmael exerted great influence in years afterward, it is well at this point to study the early history of this son of Abram. When Isaac was born Ishmael was about 16 years of age, Gen. 17:21, 25; 21:1, 8, and until the day of the divine promise to Abram, at which time his name was changed to Abraham, he was evidently, from the context, greatly attached to Ishmael. Moreover, Abram was considered by his neighbors as “a mighty prince among them,” Gen. 23:6. Under these circumstances this only son must have been allowed privileges and attentions at the hands of the hundreds of Abram’s servants such as an heir apparent to all the wealth of Abram would be certain to receive. When, however, Sarah became the mother of Isaac a change necessarily transpired. Ishmael was no longer the expected heir. Hagar’s spirit of self-importance, which showed itself before so positively that she was forced to leave the family, was now repeated in some disagreeable actions of her son Ishmael, and, despite the persistent love of Abraham, Ishmael and his mother were summarily dismissed from the family. =28. There can be no reasonable doubt= that the action of Abraham in sending Hagar and her son out upon the desert with only sufficient food to support them for a time was greatly or almost entirely influenced by the direct revelation to Abraham that the divine interference would be exerted on behalf of the exiles. That had been assured, as we see in verses 12 and 13 of chapter 21. At the same time both the mother and son, after all the preceding years of privilege, would naturally imagine that a great wrong had been done them, and Ishmael readily became a wild wanderer upon the vast deserts east of Egypt. He was the progenitor of twelve great tribes whose names in part are recognized among some of the tribes existing at the present day and whose characters are accurately represented in the description of what they were to be, as it occurs in Gen. 16:12, and the expression “he shall dwell in the presence of his brethren” simply alludes to the fact that his race should be wanderers upon the desert without any fixed habitation, this being the life of all the most pleasurable to the desert Arabs. =29. As Abraham was 99 years= of age when Ishmael was 13, Gen. 17:24, 25, and died at 175, it is plain that Ishmael must have been about 90 years of age at Abraham’s death. The love and reverence which Ishmael had for the patriarch were apparent after this long time in the fact that at the death of the latter, Isaac and Ishmael united to perform the burial at the cave of Machpelah at Hebron, Gen. 25:9. HEBRON AND MACHPELAH.