call him ishmael.

nearly 4000 years ago, there was a guy called abram and he was old and when i say "old" i mean oldold like i don't know, 80 or something. abram was married to sarai, and they believed in the great creator. when i say "believed" i mean, they believed the way you believe a chair will hold you up when you sit in it. that is to say, they really believed, it wasn't just a word thing. they relied upon TGC.

now, if there was one thing these two regretted, it was that they didn't have any kids of their own. their reliance on TGC was fairly fulfilling, but they had always wanted kids. one day, TGC tells ol' abram - "yo, buddy, my bad on the kids thing. you want some now?" and abram's all like - "ppfahahaha! well sure, big guy. better late than never, eh?"

and abram goes home to tell ol' wrinkly sarai that TGC said they can have kids now, and sarai laughed some goat's milk out her schnozz. "abram! get serious. clearly TGC meant you can make some kids with a younger woman, and we'll adopt them to be our own. that will be a comfort." sarai says abram can make some kids with sarai's do-girl, hagar (no relation to the hagar brothers nor anything to do with the line of men's pants).

so abram and hagar make ishmael, and pretty soon after (or maybe a dozen years), abram and sarai make isaac. you see this happening even today - you will have some couple who is trying to have kids, and trying, and trying, and doing all the fertility stuff, and then they decide kids are not going to happen for them personally in the traditional (conception) method, so they will adopt a child and then, lo & behold, they will themselves get pregnant. this is where we get the expression "that's a sarai slammy".

time passed. sarai changed her name to sarah and abram changed his to abraham. sarah watched ishmael and isaac growing up together and realized that because ishmael was older (some say he had about a 13-yr head start on isaac), that ishmael was going to get a lot of opportunities that she would prefer go to her born-son isaac. sarah decided she had had just about enough of her do-girl hagar and hagar's kid ishmael, so she told abraham that those two had to go. so abraham sent his baby (who was possibly like 17 years old) and his baby-mama out into the desert where hagar wandered around and wailed & cried, and finally she couldn't go on so she put ishmael under a bush and was fixing to leave him there and just lay down & die. (now, you may just pause here and think that it's odd that a 17-yo boy can't take care of both himself AND his momma out in the desert, but that would be because you don't know many 17-yo boys. they are on the whole a worthless lot.) but an angel (not worthless) came to her and showed her to an oasis that would save both ishmael and hagar.

ishmael had 12 sons and was the father of all the arabic nations. isaac had two sons, esau and jacob, who were in conflict like their father & his brother, and in the end jacob prevailed and had 12 sons and was the father of all the israelites.

the conflict just goes back a long way, that's all i'm saying.