Chapter 10: The God Who Sees

God was with the boy as he grew. Ishmael lived in the Desert of Paran and became an archer. The wild, free, untamable man the angel had described at the spring. Hagar found him a wife from Egypt, her homeland. She gave her son what no one had ever given her: a choice.

Ishmael fathered twelve sons. Each one became the ruler of his own tribe, and from those tribes grew a nation, exactly as God had promised.

Years later, Abraham died. Scripture records who buried him: Isaac and Ishmael, together, at the cave of Machpelah. The son who was kept and the son who was cast out, standing side by side at their father's grave.

And then a detail that should stop us. Long before Abraham died, Isaac had already made his home near Beer Lahai Roi. Of all the places in Canaan, the son of the promise chose to live beside the well where God had seen the woman his family sent away. The well of El Roi. The God who sees.