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Article Hnh.9 This Construction Suggests That God Here Intends To St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 4 | October 2011 GOD’S BLESSING TO ISHMAEL WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ISLAM By Chris Flint1 Introduction The difficulty of Christian mission to the Islamic world continues to prompt much missiological discussion into new and more effective ways of reaching Muslims with the Gospel.2 Proponents of new methodologies are keen to demonstrate that the Bible supports their particular approach to engaging with Islam.3 While the Bible does not discuss Islam directly, it is frequently assumed that Muslims are in some sense descended from Ishmael.4 If so, then God‟s blessing to Ishmael may be directly relevant to developing missionary strategy. Historically, missionaries like Samuel Zwemer, who have given their lives to sharing the gospel with Muslims, have often drawn encouragement from Biblical prophesises about Ishmael‟s descendants.5 Commentator Gordon Wenham, however, considers 1 Chris Flint is a postgraduate theology student with ministry experience in Mus- lim-majority countries. 2 See, e.g., From Seed to Fruit: Global Trends, Fruitful Practices, and Emerging Issues among Muslims (ed. J. Dudley Woodberry; Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2008). 3 See, e.g. The International Journal of Frontier Missions (online: http://www.ijfm.org); The St. Francis Magazine (online: http://www.stfrancismagazine.info/ja); and Evangelical Missions Quarterly (online: http://www.emisdirect.com) for robust discussions of the current trends and methodologies in Christian mission to Muslims. 4 E.g., Anne Cooper, Ishmael my Brother: A Christian Introduction to Islam (rev. and enl. ed.; Tunbridge Wells: MARC, 1993), 9, quotes God‟s promise to bless Ishmael in Genesis 17:20-21 and then continues: “The children of Ishmael have certainly been fruitful and their numbers have greatly increased. There are now some billion Muslims and they continue to increase rapidly in many parts of the world.” 5 Samuel M. Zwemer, “Hagar and Ishmael,” EQ 22 (1950): 35, writes of Isaiah 60:6- 7, “this gem of missionary prophecy leaves no room for doubt that the sons of Ish- mael have a large place in this coming glory of the Lord and the brightness of His 1 St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 4 | October 2011 God‟s blessing to Ishmael to have been fulfilled within the book of Genesis.6 This interpretation may undermine suggestions that Muslims have a special place in God‟s plans today.7 A study of the content and scope of God‟s blessing to Ishmael is thus highly relevant to current missiological discussion. Chapter one of this dissertation investigates Genesis‟ presenta- tion of God‟s blessing to Ishmael, and shows that this blessing is tied to the complex theological role of Ishmael and his descendants. Chapter two demonstrates that wider Old Testament evidence is consistent with, but falls short of proving, the hypothesis that God‟s blessing to Ishmael was perpetuated to the Arabs. Chapter three observes that, nevertheless, in the New Testa- ment, Ishmael‟s theological significance turns, in part, on an as- sumed genetic link between Ishmael and the Arabs. Chapter four investigates the significance of Ishmael within Is- lam, and finds that Ishmael‟s paternity of the Arabs was a key as- sumption in the development of Islam. The conclusion then synthesises these findings and suggests im- plications for current missiology. Abbreviations AB = Anchor Bible Ant. = Jewish Antiquities (Josephus) ASV = American Standard Version ESV = English Standard Version LXX = Septuagint NET = New English Translation NIV = New International Version NKJV = New King James Version NRSV = New Revised Standard Version rising.” As cited in Jonathan Culver, “The Ishmael Promise and Contextualization Among Muslims,” IJFM 17 (2000): 66. 6 Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (WBC 2; Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1994), 165-66. 7 Sam Schlorff, Missiological Models in Ministry to Muslims (Upper Darby, Pa.: Mid- dle East Resources, 2006), 113-14. 2 St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 4 | October 2011 Chapter 1: How does Genesis Present God’s Blessing to Ishmael? In this chapter I shall demonstrate that Genesis consistently presents God‟s blessing to Ishmael as two-edged. This ambiguity, which perpetuates to future generations of Ishmaelites, is rooted in the pre-natal circumstances which define Ishmael‟s theological role. Genesis 17:20 Our study begins with Genesis 17:20, the only Bible verse where God is explicitly said to “bless” (brk) Ishmael. This verse comes within a divine speech,1 delivered in response to Abraham‟s request in verse 18, “If only Ishmael may live before you!” Wenham shows that this speech exhibits semantic chiasm:2 A Sarah will bear a son … Isaac (19a) B I shall confirm my covenant with him (19b) C Ishmael (20) B´ I shall confirm my covenant with Isaac (21a) A´ Sarah will bear next year (21b) This structure suggests both positive and negative theological significance to God‟s blessing to Ishmael. Positively, Ishmael is the speech‟s central focus: he will indeed be blessed, as Abraham requested. Negatively, however, verse 20 is flanked on both sides by God‟s plans for Isaac: Ishmael is overshadowed by Isaac, through whom alone God will perpetuate the Abrahamic covenant.3 1 Genesis 17:19-21 is the fifth divine speech in Genesis 17. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 16. 2 Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 26. with which verse 21 begins is prefixed to the direct object, making the ו The 3 clause disjunctive. Cf. IBHS §39.2.3(c). William J. Dumbrell, Covenant and creation - an Old Testament covenantal theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1984), 26, explains that qvm in the hifil form is used to signify the perpetuation of a covenant. Thus, Gene- sis 17:19 (vhqmty ’t-bryty ’tv) and 17:21 (v’t-bryty ’qym ’t-yṣḥq) announce that through Isaac‟s line alone will the covenant already established with Abraham continue. 3 St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 4 | October 2011 To determine the content of God‟s blessing to Ishmael, the disputed temporal sense of the Hebrew clause in verse 20, hnh brkty ’tv, must first be determined.4 The first significant observation is that the verb, brkty, takes the qatal tense-form.5 In Hebrew narrative, the qatal regularly signifies past actions.6 However, there are examples of the qatal being used to convey future actions,7 especially in divine promissory contexts.8 A future sense, then, is possible in Genesis 17:20. Second, the verb is immediately preceded and emphasised by the particle hnh.9 This construction suggests that God here intends to 4 Translations differ on how to translate verse 20. The NIV, NET and NRSV have God announcing a future blessing, which is implicitly identified with God‟s accom- panying promises for Ishmael‟s future (e.g. NIV: “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation” [emphasis added]). By contrast, the ESV, ASV and NKJV put God‟s bless- ing to Ishmael prior Genesis 17, so making the promises in verse 20 additional to a blessing already given (e.g. ESV: “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation” [emphasis added]). 5 Fully located, brkty is a 1st person common singular piel perfect of brk, “to bless.” 6 When translated into English, the qatal often conveys the simple past, perfect or pluperfect tenses (GKC §106b-i). Since the qatal tense-form encodes the perfective aspect, and the perfective aspect envisages actions as a whole, it is unsurprising to find the qatal commonly used in this way. 7 Gesenius describes the Hebrew perfect tense as expressing “actions, events, or states, which the speaker wishes to represent from the point of view of completion, whether they belong to a determinate past time, or extend into the present, or, while still future, as pictured in their completed state.” GKC §106a. In the catego- ries of modern linguistics, this is because the qatal tense-form encodes only the perfective aspect as a non-cancellable semantic value; the associated time reference, by contrast, is a variable, context-determined pragmatic value. There are parallels here with New Testament Greek: see Constantine R. Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). 8 GKC §106m. E.g. Genesis 15:18 and Judges 1:2. Judges 1:2 is a particularly close parallel, because here, as in Genesis 17:20, the verb follows the particle hnh. 9 A Bibleworks search reveals 135 biblical examples of hnh immediately preceding a qatal, in many of which cases hnh serves to emphasise the finite verb. On only two other occasions is the verb brk (Numbers 23:11; 24:10), but on both of these occa- sions, hnh clearly functions to emphasise the verb. 4 St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 4 | October 2011 emphasise the certainty of the blessing: precisely the illocutionary force expressed when a future event is portrayed using the perfective aspect.10 Genesis 17:20, then, should be understood as God promising a future blessing for Ishmael, the content of which is delineated by the following parallel weqatal clauses:11 hnh brkty ’tv Qatal clause “I will surely bless him” vhpryty ’tv Weqatal clause “I will make him fruitful” vhrbyty ’tv bm’d m’d Weqatal clause “I will greatly increase his numbers” God will bless Ishmael by making him fruitful and greatly increase,12 two verbs which are then themselves given concrete expression: Ishmael will sire twelve rulers,13 and God will make him a great nation.14 This blessing echoes God‟s promise in Genesis 16:10 to multiply Hagar‟s offspring.
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