When, therefore, the virtuous man knew that the promise was uttering things full of reverence and prudent caution, according to his own mind, he admitted both these feelings into his breast, namely, faith in God, and incredulity as to the creature. Very naturally therefore he says, using the language of entreaty, "Would that this Ishmael might live before thee," Genesis xvii. 18. using each word of those which he utters here with deliberate propriety, namely, the "this," the "might live," the "before thee." For it is no small number of persons who have been deceived by the similarity of the names of different things, and we had better examine here what I am saying.
The name Ishmael, being interpreted, means "the hearing of God," but some men listen to the divine doctrines to their benefit, and others listen to both his admonitions and to those of others only to their destruction. Do you not recollect the case of the soothsayer Balaam? Numbers xxiv. 17. He is represented as hearing the oracles of God, and as having received knowledge from the Most High, but what advantage did he reap from such hearing, and what good accrued to him from such knowledge? In his intention he endeavoured to injure the most excellent eye of the soul, which alone has received such instruction as to be able to behold God, but he was unable to do so by reason of the invincible power of the Saviour; therefore, being overthrown by his own insane wickedness, and having received many wounds, he perished amid the heaps of wounded, Numbers xxxi 8. 

 Deuteronomy xxxiii. G. 
 Numbers xxiv. 17. 

 Genesis xvii. 18. 
 Numbers xxxi 8. 
 
because he had stamped beforehand the divinely inspired prophecies with the sophistry of the soothsayers.
 Very righteously, therefore, does the good man pray that this his only son, Ishmael, may be sound in mind and health, because of those persons who do not listen in a sincere spirit to the sacred admonitions, whom Moses has expressly forbidden to come into the assembly of the Ruler of the universe, for those men are broken as to the generative parts of their minds, or are even rendered completely impotent in that respect, who magnify their own minds, and their external sense, as the only causes of all the events which take place among men; and there are others who are lovers of a system of polytheism, and who honour the company which is devoted to the service of many gods, being the sons of a harlot, having no knowledge of the one husband and father of the virtue-loving soul, namely, God; and are not all these men very properly driven away and banished from the assembly of God?