Immediately after the history of the union of Isaac and Rebecca we read of some other children of Abraham by a different line: and so after the episode of the church-dispensation there will be another order of things; and, though an inferior order, yet a dispensation in which there shall be many spiritual sons of Abraham=inheritors of his faith. “In these children of the second wife we get (typically) the Millennial nations." “Abraham gave gifts [to them] and sent them away from Isaac.” Those nations, who in the future shall inherit the blessings of the Millennium, shall be in a far more distant petition from Christ than the church, of course; yet they shall have withal a rich and splendid endowment: “for the earth shall he full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” “They shall not hunger nor thirst: neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for He that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them.” This is said of the Gentiles; of Israel the refrain is, that “The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall blossom as the rose."
Keturah is the mother of them, and represents the earthly Jerusalem that shall he brought into blessing and union with Jehovah; Hagar answering to the earthly Jerusalem “that now is,” as Sarah answers to the heavenly Jerusalem, “who is the mother of us all.” The writer already quoted compares Keturah's position, in contrast with Sarah's, to that of the Ethiopian wife of Moses, contrasted with Zipporah, a secondary and subordinate one. When, according to the Talmud, the children of Keturah and Ishmael came to the Rabbi Gebiah, claiming part of the inheritance of Israel, he replied that they had had theirs, that no man gives portions to his children in lifetime when he designs to leave them a future legacy: which was true in a larger sense than he wot of. Present and temporal prosperity is the blessing of the earthly peoples; future and eternal affluence the portion of the heavenly.
Then comes Abraham to his “grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season.” A fruitful life indeed, and—typical of the man of faith—a fruitful death. It is characteristic of faith that it plucks the sting from death itself and transforms it into a servant, as a Hindoo charms the serpent from which he has extracted the fang, into obedience. Even the dead body of Elisha when touching the dry bones of a forgotten corpse shall thrill them into life. Death cannot extinguish the light of these noble lives: indeed it brings to effect that which nothing else can; Isaac and Ishmael stand reconciled for a time at their father's grave! The hard untameable nature is touched and subdued at last by “The shadow cloaked from head to foot, Who keeps the keys of all the creeds." “O eloquent, just and mightie Death! whom none could advise, thou hast perswaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie and ambition of men and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!"
The same principles—as fire or water—which are most horrible as masters, become when servants most beneficent. Death is yours, says Paul, and what does it not do for us? “Sin brought in death, which put out Sin.” It has satisfied the demands of justice, silenced the threatenings of judgment, and opened the portals of paradise.
Still, Ishmael and Isaac must take divergent lines; the wolf and the lamb may meet amicably in the Millennium (whereof this is a type in some degree), but they are not likely to travel far together; for even if the wolf did not revive the consideration of that hereditary grievance, with which he considers the lambs have afflicted his race, yet their paces and goals are widely different. Ishmael travels too quickly for Isaac: while the man of faith is waiting for twenty years for the first signs of the fulfillment of his hopes, the man of flesh rapidly develops into a very efflorescence of prosperity; a round dozen of princes in the family in little or no time! Nevertheless the lamb outstrips the wolf in time, like the tortoise of the ancient fable. When a man is in the right path, time is on his side and he can afford to wait. “Time and myself,” said Philip II of Spain, “are stronger than any other two.” It makes a great deal of difference whether we work with time or against it: put a seed into the ground and time will transform it into a forest; put a sword into the ground and time will transform it into a streak of rust.