From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XII)

In Genesis 21:1-21 we find the heat-breaking story of Abraham's concubine Hagar and Ishmael her son, sent into the desert of Beersheba because of Sarah's jealousy. I'm fully prepared to accept the risk that I'm reading way too much into this here, but it strikes me as curious that in Genesis 21:16, when Hagar in her desperation abandons Ishmael under a shrub to die, it says that she "sat down opposite from him, about a bowshot away." And then in 21:20, after God's saved them both, it says (and it's this really random, throw-away line), it says, Ishmael grew up and became an archer. The connection between these two verses is even clearer in Hebrew, because the word for "bow," qesheth appears in both.

When he was just a child, his mother abandoned him and then sat down a "bow-shot" away to weep; when he grew up, he became a "bow-shooter" for a living.

I'm not sure what that means, if anything, but I love mulling over these weird details in the Bible. Maybe it means nothing. Or maybe it means that the Bible gets it, how the emotional traumas we experience as children actually do leave their mark on us, and in strange, subtle ways they set a course for our lives as adults. If I was given to flights of exegetical fancy I'd say something like this: As a lad, Ishmael almost died in the desert with his traumatized mom only a bow-shot out of reach, and he'd spend the rest of his life shooting a bow, haunted by the memory of that event and trying desperately to close the distance that once separated him from her. If nothing else, it gets me wondering, what events from my childhood might actually still be playing out for me in the decisions I make and paths I choose to walk.