Ishmael said to Isaac, “I am greater than you in the fulfillment of the precepts, for you were circumcised at the age of eight days when you could not protest, whereas I was circumcised at the age of thirteen years when I could have protested” (Sanhedrin 89b).

“Isaac and Ishmael, Abraham’s sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah” (Genesis 25:9). Here Ishmael, the son of the maidservant Hagar, showed honor to Isaac, the son of Sarah, by giving him precedence (Bereishit Rabbah 62:3).

Because Abraham did not want to bless Ishmael, he did not bless Isaac either, so that Ishmael would not harbor resentment against Isaac (Targum Yonatan, Bereishit 25:11).

A particularly endearing characteristic of the Biblical text, and its accompanying rabbinical commentaries, is their constant evaluation of the great personalities coursing through the Scriptural narrative. No character is totally unblemished; no person is considered unredeemable.

Ishmael, son of Abraham’s union with Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar, may be the paradigmatic case in point. Notwithstanding his “underdog” status, there seems to be little sympathy for his Biblical exploits. Banned from the tent of the matriarch Sarah, who finds the surrogate mother, Hagar, haughty and disrespectful, the young Ishmael, torn away from the kindest of all Biblical figures, his father Abraham, faces a life and a destiny defined by pangs of abandonment and wanderlust. This is Divinely prefigured, as Hagar, pregnant with the first patriarch of Israel’s first-born, learns that although Ishmael is so named because “God has heard” her affliction, the disfavored boy would be “a wild ass of a man - his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” (Genesis 16:12).

In an age of psychological discourse, it is easy to see why Ishmael resented and was jealous of Isaac. It may be harder to understand what effects their eventual reunion. Particularly as the Biblical text reveals that it is Ishmael who returns from the middle of the desert, without enmity and rancor (unlike his nephew Esau, who openly reviles and threatens his twin brother, Jacob), to attend his father’s funeral, and defer to his younger brother Isaac at the burial.

The answer may be found in the goodness that is embodied in Isaac and Ishmael’s common father, Abraham. Abraham is careful to assure Hagar and Ishmael that he would continue to dower both of them with his spousal and paternal blessings. After Sarah’s death, Hagar is rewarded for her faithfulness by acquiring a new name, Keturah, and a happy future with her beloved benefactor in the form of more progeny. Simultaneously, Abraham watches over his exiled son, and provides a wife (called Fatimah in the Midrash), who is hospitable and kindly, in the mode of her exemplary father-in-law, so that Ishmael knows that his father still loves him. That paternal love, and filial reciprocation, underlay the peaceful fraternal reconciliation at Abraham’s death. Ishmael’s miscreancy is not forgiven; but the redemption of his character cannot be ignored.