Part 3: Ishmael’s Destiny

Genesis chapter 16 is all about Ishmael’s birth. Abraham and Sarah were childless, and too old to expect a child from Sarah. So Sarah gave her handmaid Hagar to Abraham “to wife,” and she got pregnant. Then she was so uppity, she drove Sarah crazy, Sarah abused her, and she ran away. When she was about to thirst to death, the angel Raphael appeared and showed her a well (a different one than an angel showed her when Ishmael was a teenager). Raphael said she should go home, where she would bear a son. Name him “Ishmael,” God Hears. You will not be able to count Hagar’s descendants for number. And then comes

Genesis 16:12. KJV “And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”

What a dramatic verse! Every bible student remembers it. This goes a long way to explaining trouble others have had with Ishmael as the Muslims, for who could trust a savage like that? Also, people tend to live up or down to your expectations. Everyone created trouble from Ishmael’s descendants and could not realize their own causation. Later in Genesis, God promises Abraham that he will make of Ishmael also a great nation. Today “Ishmael” is Islam. Islam founded a lot of modern chemistry, gave us the zero and advanced civilization, but I believe the greatest period of Islam lies just ahead—for there is a very different version of Gen. 16:12 in the Samaritan Torah. From Sokolov, I edit it as:

Gen 16:12 Samaritan: And he will be a fruitful man, hand-in-hand with all his brothers to cause to tabernacle.

Cause to tabernacle! That means build a tent for worship. Moses had such a tent built as described in Exodus. And Islam has a tent to this day, called the Kaaba, in Mecca. They express Muslim unity by praying in its direction no matter where they are in the world. They say it is the fourth copy, for the original got old and was replaced 3 times. The original was built by Abraham and Ishmael. Yes, that’s old. For Muslims, the important ancestry is Abraham. But this Samaritan torah says all the brothers. That Isaac and the concubines’ sons got to help was the important thing for ancient Israel to remember. Today, it is important to realize that Ishmael led it, and all Abraham’s descendants helped. For the Kaaba was the first fulfilment and The Great Fulfilment must be just ahead, in our time, starting in 2023 or 2024.

One letter makes the difference between fruitful and wild. Samaritan p-r-h; versus Jewish p-r-a. They are probably pronounced the same. So some tired scribe made an error and the Jews or Samaritans had to decide at some point which was correct. The Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek about 3 centuries before Jesus. That Septuagint text reads like the King James. So the wild version is at least that old.

At some point, Samaritan and Jewish Hebrew scribes had to decide which version was correct. The wild version reflects sibling rivalry, and hatred that is more believable of Satan than God, to me. The fruitful version matches what the angel had just said, and matches the blessing given to Abraham, “I will bless them that bless you and curse them that curse you.” (Later, that blessing is repeated to all Israel in the desert with Moses.) And the fruitful version matches the promise that Ishmael will be a great nation. It matches Gen 25:9 which says Isaac and Ishmael buried Abraham when Abraham died. And it matches Gen 25:18, which says Ishmael “died in the presence of all his brethren,” which means he died loved and respected by his brothers.

So. God sends a messenger to Hagar, pregnant with Abraham’s first son. Which message is more believable from God, about a boy who will grow into “a great nation?” Muslims of course, will embrace the nice one. They had better have plenty of patience with Jews and Christians, for this is SCRIPTURE, and has read “wild” for millennia. Fortunately, Muslims do not need Jewish or Christian or UN or anybody’s permission to raise funds, nor to raise awareness of the two versions of this verse and the implications.

Islam has the Biblical destiny to cause to tabernacle, that is, to bring down the Third Temple from Heaven. The main one in Israel will be in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount, constructed without harm to Al Aqsa Mosque, and probably without harm to the Dome of the Rock—unless the fasting period asking God to reveal his will before any construction is done shows that the Holy of Holies needs to be there. Once the plans are clear and construction started, there will be no more need for contention among Abraham’s children.

And what of the Samaritans who preserved the more honoring prophecy of Abraham’s first-born? They had a temple on Mount Gerizim, destroyed by the Jews before Jesus. That would be a good place to build a bricks replica of Solomon’s Temple, as large as possible, for many will want to tour it. Muslims can also help them recover their numbers, for only about 800 remain, and it would please God to have more of them.

Time is of the essence, for the war between Israel and Hamas/Gaza threatens to engulf the world. I have read claims that this is a preplanned war intended to destroy all Jews and Moslems, and then all Christians. To save the world, find all the parts of this message and spread it—especially to Muslims.

The next message will discuss the physical temple from Heaven, my understanding of it. Millions of Abraham’s children will add to that.