In accord with the meaning of Ishmael’s name, “God heard” his cry for help, provided the necessary water, and allowed him to live to become an archer. As a nomadic inhabitant of the Paran Wilderness, he fulfilled the prophecy that said of him: “He will become a zebra of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and the hand of everyone will be against him; and before the face of all his brothers he will tabernacle.” (Ge 21:17-21; 16:12) Hagar found an Egyptian wife for her son, and he in time fathered 12 sons, chieftains and family heads of the promised “great nation” of Ishmaelites. Ishmael also had at least one daughter, Mahalath, who married Esau.​—Ge 17:20; 21:21; 25:13-16; 28:9; see ISHMAELITE.

As God had promised, the Ishmaelites grew to become “a great nation” that ‘could not be numbered for multitude.’ (Ge 17:20; 16:10) But instead of settling down (they built few cities), they preferred the nomadic life. Ishmael himself was “a zebra of a man,” that is, a restless wanderer who roamed the Wilderness of Paran and lived by his bow and arrows. His descendants were likewise tent-dwelling Bedouin for the most part, a people who ranged over the Sinai Peninsula from “in front of Egypt,” that is, to the E of Egypt and across northern Arabia as far as Assyria. They were noted for being a fierce, warlike people hard to get along with, even as it was said of their father Ishmael: “His hand will be against everyone, and the hand of everyone will be against him.”​—Ge 16:12; 21:20, 21; 25:16, 18.