will not share the inheritance with my son?’ ”3 This struck the patriarch as severe, however, and God in his wish to comfort the good man said, Heed your wife Sarrah and do what is said by her, and don’t let the remarks about the child and the maidservant strike you as severe; after all, “ ‘your descendants will be called after Isaac,’ ”4 and I will make him into a great nation, since he is your descendant. The whole of the promise to him and the very pledge from God was that the descendants of Isaac