descendant of Abraham. At the very origin of the story of the chosen people, there is the account of God’s election of one brother and his rejection of the other. If Israel was going to presume that being a child of Abraham was all that mattered, they were brought face to face with the fact that Abraham had another child, Ishmael, and that he was cast out and refused a place in the promises of God. If the contemporaries of Paul were going to admit that only the children of Isaac should have the inheritance,