Who is an Arab?

First, the Arab of the Bible is a descendent of Abraham and Ishmael in northern Arabia or of Joktan in southern Arabia. Joktan was the great-great-great granduncle of Abraham. The Arabs briefly ruled Egypt, but they have never themselves been invaded or diluted since ancient times.     (FOOTNOTE 3:  160 / 90-92 / 1767-1768) So the Arabs are as Semitic as any Jew, and the southern Arabs are descended from a line closer to Shem than the Jews.  (FOOTNOTE 4: Genesis 10:22-31; I Chronicles 1:18-27) Arab bashing is as antisemitic as Jew bashing since both Isaac and his older brother Ishmael descended from Abraham and Shem, father of all Semitic people! In chapter two we will show that the Arabs are still largely Ishmaelites.

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Enter Ishmael

We find that the Bible gives the best account of the beginning of the Arab people. The following is from Genesis 16:1-16 in the King James Bible, the only Bible used in this book. Please read carefully, and refer back to this Bible text during the following discussion. The alphabetical letters in parenthesis are the outline for the discussion to follow:

Genesis 16:1-16, Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, [ a ] an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

Abram was Abraham's name before God changed it to Abraham.

[ b ] And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the LORD judge between me and thee. But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thine hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.  [ c ] And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, [ d ] Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.
And the angel of the LORD said unto her, [ e ] I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, [ f ] and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And [ g ] he will be a wild man; [ h ] his hand will be against every man, [ i ] and every man's hand against him; [ j ] and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. [ k ] And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? Wherefore the well was called Beerlahairoi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. [ l ] And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son's name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.

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Now we discuss the text in detail:  

[ a ] "An Egyptian whose name was Hagar" 
The mother of the Arabs is an Egyptian. But, according to the Bible, the blood line is decided by the father, as can be seen in all of the genealogies of the Bible, and in the blood line of The Lord Jesus Christ, He is Lord. The modern notion promoted by Zionists, that the mother decides Jewishness, is a very recent attempt to avoid the lost genealogies of Jewishness through the father which destroys a Jew's claim to the land or to the priesthood according to the Old Testament (see the Bible, Ezra). So, Ishmael is solidly Semitic in father Abraham, and the Arabs have every right to this distinction.

[ b ] "And he (Abraham) went in unto Hagar, and she conceived"
Abraham did not break the law of the land when he took Hagar from Sarai. The code of Hammurabi allowed for this, and that was the civil law under which Abraham lived. Islamic law would permit this also according to Mohammed's example of using concubines, but God had instituted a higher law. The first man Adam had verbally given the doctrine of marriage when God gave Adam his wife named Eve:

Adam said in The Bible, Genesis 2:23-24, "...This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."

In Matthew 19:5 Jesus quoted Adam and said that the two (not 11 as with Mohammed) shall become one flesh. So Abraham violated this doctrine and had a son by Hagar, and the jealousy which followed was exceeded only by the jealousy among the wives of Mohammed 2500 years later! (FOOTNOTE 5:  34 / 172 / 35; 133 / 280-283 / 1489-1490; Koran 33:37; also vs. 50-51) God showed mercy on Abraham and did not punish him, but because God wanted his plan followed, he told Abraham to start over again and have a son by Sarai, his "one flesh" wife.  

[ c ] "The angel of the Lord found her (Hagar)"
The Lord Jesus Christ, He is Lord, is known as the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. He appeared to the mother of the Arab race to stop her from fleeing. Why go back to Abraham's tents?  

[ d ] "Return to thy mistress..."
Jehovah God wanted Ishmael to have in his body the same mark of anointing that every Jew would have-- circumcision:

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Genesis 17:23-26, And Abraham (God changed his name) took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him. And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son.

Since Ishmael was thirteen years old, we could say that he was circumcised on his Bar-mitzvah. We also know that if Abraham, who was a righteous man, would circumcise Ishmael, he would certainly tell him who Jehovah was and how to worship Him. Later in the book you will realize that Ishmael also left Abraham with God's true name on him and in his mouth.  

[ e ] Ishmael's "seed (descendants)... shall not be numbered for multitude"
God promised Hagar that Ishmael's Arab race would multiply beyond counting. This is true to this day, 2500 years later, with the whole of the Middle East and North Africa being Arabized. In the Middle East, only Israel is not Arab! If this had not happened, God would be a liar. Pity the small souls who try to say that the Arabs of today are some hybrid from elsewhere. These writers have opened debate with God. They ought to read their Bible instead of Mother Goose. (See Appendix No. One.)

[ f ] "...thou... shalt call his name Ishmael"
Ishmael was named by God! His name means "Elohim hears" or "God hears." There were only about 20 men in the Bible who were named by God, and Ishmael is a beautiful name. It is a name of mercy, and it is NOT "Ishma'allah".

Dear reader, you might as well know where we are headed. Allah was not the name that was in Abraham's or Ishmael's mouth. "El" was in the first Arab's name, Ishma-EL, and only a few of the patriarchs of Israel, such as Eli, Elijah. Elisha, and Samu-el, could boast of that distinction.

I hear you Bible "scholars." Yes, God gave the covenanted land to Abraham, but God never allowed the Jews to conquer or destroy the Ishmaelites. The fact is, they lived together very well. When Abraham died, Isaac and Ishmael had no trouble burying their father in family unity, (Genesis 25:8-9).  David's camel herder was an Ishmaelite, (I Chronicles 27:39.) Also, Arabs, the Rechabites, who were faithful to the teachings of their father, Jonadab, refused to drink wine and were used by Jehovah as a model of faithfulness and as an accusation against Judah (Jeremiah 35).

In recent centuries Jews and Arabs have lived together and gotten along very well for long periods.  The present history of Israel has changed this, but in Baghdad, Jews used to pass dishes across the street to their Arab neighbors on Yom Kippur, while Arab Muslims sent food to their Jewish neighbors on the Muslim festival, Eid.

Let us look at the Arab genealogy found in the Bible, Genesis 25:13 - 16, And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, and Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah: These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles; twelve princes according to their nations.

Nebajoth, father of the Nabataeans, settled in northern Arabia. Arabs conquered Egypt as the "Shepherd Kings," where God used them to sustain Jacob and the Jews in Goshen, and they have remained in northern Arabia ever since. It was Hamites, not Arabs, who ran the Arab kings out of Egypt, and then they turned in hate on the Hebrews in Goshen. In the next chapter we see how Nebajoth shows up at Messiah's altar in the future kingdom with his brother Kedar.  Dumah has been a town or settled area for all these centuries. Tema settled in the biggest oasis in Arabia, now called Taima. It is still thriving, and it figures very importantly in the Great Tribulation and in the plans of the coming of Messiah. Bible study reveals much more about these twelve sons and their place in history.

[ g ] "I will make him a great nation."
As the Jews are a nation of twelve tribes, the Arabs are also a nation of twelve tribes, in the Old Testament, today, and in Messiah's Kingdom. Are Ishmael's people still a "nation?" If not, God lied. Anyone who has studied the Arab mind and politics knows that all of the Arab national leaders expound on and on about "The Arab Nation." No other group of nations talks this way. Shut off from the outside world by the sea and the peril of the desert around them, the Arabs are the purest race in the world, even purer than the Jews, many of whom have blond hair and blue eyes. (FOOTNOTE 11:   160 / 90 / 1768)

To illustrate their retention of national heritage from ancient roots and customs, Arab hospitality resembles father Abraham's hospitality much better than that of the Jews of today. Why? The Arabs did not spend 2500 years living with war loving Germans like the Zionist Jews did. (FOOTNOTE 12:  63 / 7698 / 763; Genesis 18)