"And he shall be a wild ass of a man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him..." [Genesis 16:12].
Let us look at the original Hebrew, which has no vowels, and reconsider this passage according to traditional Hebrew grammar:
If this unvoweled Hebrew were given to Israeli grammar school students, how would they interpret it? First of all, let us consider the word . The Hebrew preposition usually means "in" or "with". Therefore, the most plausible interpretation of is "his hand (shall be) with everyone". Not "against everyone"!
For , Langenscheidt's dictionary gives the following possible meanings: "in, at, to, on, among, with, towards; according to, by, because of."
The analogy to English is very good in this case. If we say that we are "with" someone, this almost invariably means that we are for him, not against him. For example, the common expression "God be with you..." surely means "may God be for you" (not "may God be against you"!).
But if we say: "I shall fight with you..." then we have, in English, an example of the use of the word "with" to mean "against", for, if we fight with someone, then we are against that person. But the sense of "against-ness" is provided by the word "fight", not by the word "with"!
Application of the same logic shows that the most plausible interpretation of is: "and every man's hand (shall be) with him". Not "against him"!
Next, let us consider the word . If we look back two verses, to Genesis 16:10, we see "And the angel of the Lord said ... 'I will greatly multiply thy seed, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.' ". Viewed in this light, the word takes on an entirely different significance. There is another Hebrew word constructed from the same consonants, but with different vowel points. This is the verb which means "to bring forth, to bear fruit".
Now, the participle form of is
Since God says here that He will "greatly multiply" [Ishmael's] seed, so that it "shall not be numbered for multitude", we must ask which is the most plausible interpretation of ?
Does it mean "a wild ass of a man", or does it mean "a fruitful man"? In the context of the passage, it can have only one plausible interpretation:
"...a fruitful man..."
which means that what our Bible really says about Ishmael is:
"... he will be a fruitful man: his hand shall be with everyone, and every man's hand shall be with him..." (!!)
Alexei