“Abraham had taken another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan; the descendants of Dedan were the Ashurites, the Letushites and the Leummites. The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanok, Abida and Eldaah. All these were descendants of Keturah.”
(Genesis 25:1-4)
We are likely all familiar with the complex interactions and confrontations between Abraham and his wife Sarah (and their son Issac) and Abraham and his concubine Hagar (and their son Ishmael). But after Sarah’s death, Abraham takes another wife: Keturah. She is sometimes referred to as ‘the forgotten wife of Abraham’ and she is only mentioned twice in the whole of the Old Testament. Some Jewish commentators assume that she is simply Hagar re-named. Richard Friedman in his commentary (Friedman, Richard Elliott (2001). Commentary on the Torah. New York, NY: HarperCollins. p. 85) calls her, “The most ignored significant person in the Torah.” He points out that there is no evidence that she is actually Hagar.
Abraham was promised (Genesis 15:5) offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky and Genesis 25 names her as the mother of six sons to him. Our biblical narratives follow the outworking of the promise through Isaac and, to a lesser extent, through Ishmael. Yet it is Keturah, the ‘forgotten wife’, who is the progenitor of multiple nations and she plays a huge part in the fulfilment of the promise. A fundamental aspect of Jewish identity to this day and a principle rooted in Jewish law is matrilineal descent. One is ‘Jewish’ if born to a Jewish mother, irrespective of the father’s lineage. Keturah, arguably therefore, has a greater role than Abraham in the outworking of the promise in Genesis 15:5. What a legacy she leaves!
You may feel ignored and forgotten by your peers or overlooked and insignificant within your family or church yet in God’s reckoning your faithful service may be of eternal and incalculable value.