The reasons can be myriad, but we tend to gather for moments like this. Sometimes that can be a healing moment. At other times old wounds can reopen. As the story goes, the two of them grow older and Sarah moves past the age of child-bearing. She decides that perhaps her slave, Hagar, could serve as a surrogate, and it worked.
Sarah has died and is buried in the Cave of Machpelah, which Abraham purchased Genesis After her death, Abraham marries Keturah and has six sons with her. Where once he was an old man with no sons, now he has eight.
Though only one, Isaac is his heir. Then, as the reading above informs us, Abraham dies at the grand old age of , having lived a good life. Now for the point of the post. Genesis a is intriguing to me. Just a bare statement that these two sons joined together to bury their father. What was going on in their minds? What was the nature of their conversation? The last time they were together, at least in the text, Ishmael was playing with Isaac.
Ishmael was much older than Isaac, maybe by a dozen years or more. In any case, Sarah got concerned and had Ishmael and his mother sent away. They almost died of thirst in the desert Genesis Only now does he reappear in the story. It was their parents not them that had the problem. At the same time, Ishmael had to feel a bit awkward. After all, he was the oldest son, but not the promised one.
As for Isaac, he also had to wonder about how their lives had intersected. However, Ishmael and Isaac appear several times together in the Quran. So, what might this brief statement about two brothers, who have been apart, it would seem, for years, but come together for the burial of their father, say to us?
