Setting: Genesis 21:8-20
What was our crime that we were banished to the desert? My mother did only what Sarah bade her to do, and for that she was punished. And I? I was only child, and I only laughed at the one whose very name is yitzhak.
Sarah may have meant it for evil, but El meant it for good. I know that Abraham would never have sent us away at all had El not told him that we would be protected in the wilderness. El himself heard my cry when I was dying of thirst, just as he saw my mother when she was first driven into the wilderness by Sarah, when I was not yet born.
To this day, we worship El Elyon just as Abraham taught us, and He blesses us here in the wilderness of Paran.
I grew strong even in the wilderness, for there is much honey here if one knows where to look, and honey is a most excellent food. In those early days we often ate grasshoppers, but also fish, which my mother knew how to catch in nets that she weaved from the reeds, and hares and shrews that she taught me how to catch in snares.
I became an excellent hunter with a bow, so that I took more gazelles and ibex than we needed to eat, and foxes and jackals besides, and so we began to trade with various cities and caravans: meat and pelts for luxuries that made our lives more tolerable.
In time we became quite wealthy, and I achieved much renown for my archery, and we acquired servants and livestock, and my household grew into what it is today.