'God hears' (yishma-El) — named by the angel for the affliction Jehovah heard (16:11), born when Abram was 86 (16:15-16), and his only son for the next thirteen years. The oracle makes him 'a wild donkey of a man' (16:12): steppe-free, masterless. At thirteen he is circumcised beside his father on the covenant's first day (17:23-26), and 'as for Ishmael, I have heard you' (17:20) honors his name even as the covenant passes to Isaac. Genesis gives him twelve princes (25:12-16) and a place beside Isaac at their father's grave (25:9); later tradition — Jewish, Christian, and Islamic — remembers him as ancestor of the Arab peoples.