Preferential Treatment for Kids

We all as parents try to avoid preferential treatment towards any one child. Yet, it can be very taxing, and daunting, and even impossible. 

Avraham Avinu tried as hard as anyone, and succeeded to the point, where God had to put him in place, right his course and even instruct him to banish his oldest from his home. 

In biblical times there was a notion that to be the mother of a child, you didn't actually have to give birth to him or her. A maidservant's son was that of the woman who gave her to the master. Thus, for all intents and purposes, Yishmael was to be Sarah Imenu's son - but, and this comes with a big qualification, he didn't because Hagar, his mother looked at Sarah dismissively after having conceived, at which point, Sarah wrongfully felt she had no choice but to subjugate her through affliction. 

That affliction led to her absconding; she was pregnant with child, but miscarried, hinted at by the fact that the angel who came to intercede needed to tell her that she was pregnant, meaning she had lost her former child. 

"Return," tells her the angel, "and be afflicted by your mistress," for - adds the angel, "I will multiply your offspring to the point where they cannot be counted."

She returns, but Yishmael becomes a bad influence, and Avraham is pained incredibly and doesn't know how to deal with his disappointment. "Can he really cast away his child?" he asks himself. And he does, but not wholeheartedly. When you are commanded to do something, you never do it wholeheartedly. 

Sarah, on the one hand, demanded Yishmael be banished, and in contrast to earlier when he had given his wife free reign, this time around, God needs to intervene and tell him to listen to Sarah, for Isaac will be your successor, spiritually and otherwise. 

Avraham Avinu, though does not accept this and still has a heaviness of heart - which is why, I'd like to suggest, in very large part, God commanded him to bind Isaac. 

It was absolutely necessary for the future of the Jewish people that Avraham would wholeheartedly prepare Yitzhak to be the one who would follow him, inherit him, and pass on the future of our people. If his loyalties were split, he could never succeed - and so, by virtue of commanding Avraham to sacrifice his son, "Your son, your only son, the one you live - Isaac," Hashem compelled him to internalize once and for all, that it was only Yitzhak and not Yishmael who would follow in God's path. It was through the delicate choices Yitzhak made, his voice, the questions he asked, and more importantly, the ones he didn't, the fact that they walked, the verses state, "together," both before and after Yitzhak's binding, and that Avraham could proudly walk "together," with his ne'arim, or young men thereafter (after the binding) - Yishmael included, that meant Yitzhak was the right choice. 

Yishmael was omnipresent - "his hand was upon all and all hands were upon him" - and thus, could not make room for either God or his fellow man, and thus "the binding of Isaac" was more of a lesson for Avraham, that he was right not to engage in preferential treatment, for life's trials themselves would show Yitzhak worthy, and Yishmael not.