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Analysis Of The Story ' Of Ishmael And The Story Of Esau '

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Two stories and One lesson While reading the story of Ishmael and the story of Esau, readers could easily find some similarities. Both stories delineates the process of the disfranchisement of the elder sons’ firstborn right, the expulsion of certain characters, and the instruction of God. Those similarities make people to wonder that whether the two stories are just the same kind of story written to teach the believer the same lesson. This essay is divided into three parts and aimed to prove that the disfranchisement stories of Ishmael and Esau are essentially the same story told over two generations First of all, every main character of the Ismael narratives has its exact counterpart in the Esau narratives: Ishmael corresponds to Esau, Isaac to Jacobs, Abraham to Isaac, and Sarah to Rebekah. In Ishmael and Esau’s case, according to Genesis, Ishmael was the child of Hager, the Egyptian slave, and Abraham. He was hated by his “mother”, Sarah, who was Ishmael’s mother in law according to the “ancient surrogate motherhood customs: a wife could give her maid to her husband and claim the child as her own” () and initially protected by his father Abraham. He was the victim who was casted out by Sarah and lost his birthright. Esau was also hated by his mother, Rebekah, while loved by his father, Isaac, accordingly(Genesis 25:28), and he lost his birthright and the death blessing in the end. Not only did Esau and Ishmael share the similar kind of living circumstances, they also

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