Genesis 21:14, How Old was Ishmael when Abraham Sent Him Away? Part I of II

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

//The story is this: Sarah (Abraham’s wife, mother of Isaac) grows jealous of Hagar, and demands that Abraham send her away. So Abraham gets up, puts Hagar’s son Ishmael on her shoulder, and sends her off into the desert with a bottle of water. The story continues like this:

And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.

Question: How old do you imagine Ishmael, the boy, was? Small enough to be carried, small enough to be laid under a shrub to die? An infant, right?

Hardly. More tomorrow.

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