(4) Character. Ishmael appears to have been a wild and wayward child. His training and dis position unfitted him for the tame and unexciting life of a mere shepherd. In his boyhood and ear ly youth he had been the darling of the great Abraham, and had grown impatient of restraint, and overbearing, from the flattery shown him as the heir-apparent of a desert prince. He could never have dreamed of any other than an easy, dignified life, in which he might enjoy himself without a care as the head of a tribe. spirited, and fond of listening, at the watch-fires of his father's herdsmen, to their stories of en counters and feuds with hostile neighbors at the wells, or with the freebooters of the desert, he had early given his whole heart to the excitement of border life on the wild wastes. The chase of the gazelle or the wild goat, and the more dangerous pursuit of the bear or the leopard, had inured him to exertion and wild adventure, and the tastes of his youth clung to him through life. If he could not gratify them as the son of a great emir, he would do so as the head of a tribe of his own, and would outrival the bands who had of old so often harried the folds of Abraham. His emblem would be the wild ass of the desert, which no man can tame, with its home in the pathless wilderness.
He would live in wild freedom, afar from the hated communities of those who had banished him from their midst.
2. A prince of the royal line of Judah, who found refuge among the Ammonites from the ruin which involved his family and nation. After the Chaldwans had departed he returned, and treach erously slew the too-confiding Gedaliah, who had been made governor of the miserable remnant left in the land. (See GEDALIAII.) Much more slaughter followed this, and Ishmael, with many people of consideration as captives, hastened to re turn to the Ammonites. But he was overtaken near the pool of Gibeon by Johanan, a friend of Gedaliah, and was compelled to ahandon his prey and escape for his life, with only eight attendants, to Baalis, king of the Ammonites, with whom he appears to have had a secret understanding in these transactions (B. C. 588), (Jer. x1:7; xli:15; 2 Kings xxv :23-25).
3. A son of Pashur (Ezr. x:22), who put away his Gentile wife. (B. C. 459.) 4. Father or forefather of Zebadialt (2 Chron. xix:t1), B. C. goo.
5. A man of Judah, son of Jchohanan, and cap tain in the force that assisted Jehoiada in repla cing Joash on the throne (2 Citron. xxiii :1), B. C. 877.
6. A Benjamite. son of Azel, and descendant of Saul (I Chron. viii:38; ix:44), B. C. before 588.