![Praying outside Gaza](https://a7.org/files/pictures/781x439/1137524.jpg)
Parashat Chaye Sarah opens with the death of Sarah our mother in Hebron at the age of 127 years (Genesis 23:1) in the year 2085 (1675 B.C.E.). It concludes with the death and burial of Abraham our father 38 years later, at 175 years old (Genesis 25:7-11), and finally a brief summary of the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s son by his Egyptian servant-woman Hagar, and Ishmael’s death:
“And these are the years of Ishmael’s life – a hundred and thirty-seven years – and he expired and died and was gathered unto his nation. And they [Ishmael’s descendants] dwelt from Havilah to Shur – which faces Egypt – as you approach Assyria; facing all his brothers he dwelt” (25:17-18).
The Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 62:5) relates that “Rabbi Hama bar Ukva and the Rabbis were sitting and puzzling: Why did the Torah see fit to record the descendants of this evil man here? Rabbi Levi passed by, and they said: Here comes a master on interpreting Torah – let’s ask him! Rabbi Levi said in Rabbi Hama bar Rabbi Hanina’s name: It’s so that you know how old your ancestor [Jacob] was when he was blessed [by Isaac]”.
To clarify: the Talmud (Megillah 17a) uses this section to calculate that Jacob was 63 when he received his blessing from his father (Rashi paraphrases this chronological calculation in his commentary to Genesis 28:9).
The Torah records Ishmael’s age at the time of his death solely so that we can calibrate the chronology of Abraham’s spiritual heirs – Isaac and his descendants.
The final verse in Parashat Chaye Sarah tells us that Ishmael’s descendants “dwelt from Havilah to Shur – which faces Egypt – as you approach Assyria; facing all his brothers he dwelt”.
But the final word is נָפָל, literally “he fell”, though many translations render “he dwelt” or “he settled”, following Targum Onkelos, Targum Yonatan, Targum Yerushalmi, Rashi (here and on Ecclesiastes 11:3), Rashbam, Radak, Metzudat Zion (commentary to Judges 7:12 and 1 Samuel 29:3), and others .
This interpretation of נָפָל meaning “dwelt” rather than the literal meaning “fell” is based on a parallel verse: before Ishmael was yet born, when his mother-to-be Hagar was wandering through the Negev Desert after fleeing from Sarah, she encountered an angel of Hashem who told her:
“Behold – you will conceive and will give birth to a son, and you shall name him Ishmael [יִשְׁמָעֵאל, G-d-will-hear] because Hashem has heard your prayer. And he will be a פֶּרֶא אָדָם, a wild man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and facing all his brothers יִשְׁכֹּן, he will dwell” (Genesis 16:11-12).
What does the phrase “a wild man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him” signify?
Targum Onkelos translates, “he will rebel against mankind”. Rashi explains, “‘a wild man’, loving deserts in which to hunt animals”. The Malbim explains, “he will be a man of wildness”.
The Radak (both here and in Sefer Ha-Shorashim, entry פרא) explains the wordפֶּרֶא to mean “wild donkey”, hence the phrase פֶּרֶא אָדָם (which we translated above as “wild man”) means “a man of the deserts like a wild donkey”. The S’forno explains: “פֶּרֶא is a wild donkey, so [the angel] said that he would be a wild donkey in his temperament, inherited from his Egyptian mother…and he would be a man from his father’s side”.
This is the temperament of Ishmael and of those who claim descent from him. A man – fully human – but with the temperament of a wild donkey, suited to the desert, unable to coexist with his fellow-men. A man unable to accept human laws, unable to live with civilised human society.
Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish (Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish) offered different explanations of the phrase פֶּרֶא אָדָם:
“Rabbi Yochanan said, it means that though everyone grows up in inhabited areas, [Ishmael] will grow up in the desert. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said, it means literally a savage among people, because while everyone else plunders property, he plunders lives” (Bereishit Rabbah 45:9).
“He would dwell in the desert and rob passers-by, which is the meaning of ‘his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him’” (Rashi, Genesis 21:20).
Just over a month ago, we witnessed and were devastated by the most brutal, the bloodiest attack against Jews since the Nazi Holocaust. An attack committed by those who claim descendancy from Ishmael the “wild man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him”.
But only the most naïve or ignorant could have been surprised, or believed that this was uncharacteristic. Those same people who claim descendancy from Ishmael have been committing the same atrocities against Jews for centuries if not millennia – albeit in recent years in Israel in fewer numbers.
Even before this latest outrage, Israeli news media were saturated with stories of violence in the Arab sector. For decades, more than 70% of all murders committed in Israel involve Arabs murdering other Arabs – whether in clan warfare, “family honour” killings, organised crime, or a whole host of other factors – even though the Arabs constitute but 20% of the Israeli population.
Israeli social and political commentators went into overdrive in their desperate attempts to explain why Israeli Arab society is so incorrigibly steeped in violence – just as I the last month, [mainly] foreign social and political commentators went into overdrive in their desperate attempts to explain why the Arabs of Gaza were responding to “Israeli oppression”.
Pundits, particularly from the Left, have a distressing propensity to blame the “occupation”, alienation from Israeli society, and the Israeli Arabs’ alleged “disadvantages” for their savagery.
But the Torah tells us whence this propensity for bloodshed: Ishmael “will be a פֶּרֶא אָדָם [wild man], his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him”.
And let anyone who doubts this, or who wishes to ascribe this genocidal brutality, to Israel, simply observe Lebanon, or Syria, or Egypt, or Yemen, or Libya, or Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or anywhere else ruled by the descendants of Ishmael, where no Jew lives.
The angel had told Hagar to call her as-yet-unborn son Ishmael, “because Hashem has heard your prayer” (Genesis 16:11), and Ishmael could have chosen to actualise his name for good. But he instead chose the bad.
“So why was he called יִשְׁמָעֵאל, Ishmael (‘G-d-will-hear’)? – Because in the future time, G-d will hear the screaming of the nation [of Israel] because of what Ishmael’s descendants will do to them in the Land of Israel at the end of days” (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 32).
That time in which “G-d will hear the screaming of the nation [of Israel] because of what Ishmael’s descendants will do to them in the Land of Israel” was in the far-distant future when Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, known as Rabbi Eliezer the Great, wrote these prophetic words: he was a second-generation Tanna, living at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans.
But his future time is our present. These are difficult times – yet this Midrash can infuse us with hope and inspiration. If Ishmael’s descendants are making us scream in the Land of Israel – then this is an indication that we are approaching the end of days.
In this context, then, let us consider well the terse explanation of the Ba’al ha-Turim (Rabbi Ya’akov ben Asher, Germany and Spain, c.1275-1343) on the phrase “facing all his brothers he נָפָל, fell/dwelt”, the concluding words of Parashat Chayyei Sarah:
“The Torah immediately continues with, ‘And these are the generations of Isaac’ (Genesis 25:19, the opening words of Parashat Toldot), to tell you that when Ishmael will fall at the end of days, then the son of David [i.e. the Mashiach], who is of the generations of Isaac, will flourish”.
Yes the violence to which we, the Children of Israel, are subjected by today’s descendants of Ishmael, particularly in Israel, is gruesome and unsettling. Indeed many – far too many – Jews in exile cite it as a reason for their refusal to make Aliyah and to dwell in Israel.
Yet paradoxically, it stands as a veritable beacon of light, beckoning us to safety:
Indeed “G-d will hear the screaming of the nation [of Israel] because of what Ishmael’s descendants will do to them in the Land of Israel at the end of days”, and that time is well and truly and indisputably upon us.
It is the time in which the savage will fall; and when Ishmael will fall at the end of days, then the son of David, meaning the so-long awaited Mashiach, who is of the generations of Isaac, is about to begin flourishing.