Treasure in Genealogies

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One of the ladies in my church bible study group made a comment after one of our studies .
 She said, "I don't think there is any scripture that is not interesting ... " and then she qualified ... "except maybe genealogies." But, then in an afterthought added that even these contain interesting details of interest.
I so agree with her !!

That same night, in my personal bible reading I opened to the genealogies at the end of II Kings that carry on into I Chronicles. My attention was immediately engaged.

In I Chron. 1:28 it says this ... "The sons of Abraham were Isaac and Ishmael...." 
Wait ... something is out of order.  Genealogies are very orderly - always from father to sons in order of birth. Here we have the order reversed, since we know Ishmael was 13 years old when Isaac was born.
Then in I Chron. 1:32 we are given another surprising detail.  Abraham had six sons born to him after Isaac.  When his beloved wife Sarah died, Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. In Genesis 25:1 she is referred to as his wife, yet in the genealogy of I Chronicles she is not referred to as his wife but as his concubine.
There is another strange detail .. in the genealogy wording the six sons born by Keturah are not 'given to' Abraham.
Check references such as Gen. 35:5, Genesis 46:22, II Sam. 3:2, 5, I Chronicles 3:5 and you will see the standard pattern.  If sons are born to a man by more than one woman/wife/concubine the wording is that they were 'born to' the man 'by' the woman who bore the children.  But here, the only reference to Abraham is that these sons were born to a woman who 'happened' to be his concubine, not even giving her the respectful status of wife.

We know very little about the lives of these six sons. We do know that from one of them, Midian,  descended the Midianites who were enemies of Israel. So to surmise that these sons were not blessed, or that they chose - as Ishmael did - a wild side of life, is not unreasonable.

But .. the question arises - "Why would God reverse the birth order of Isaac and Ishmael? Why would God not record the six sons of Keturah  as 'belonging to' Abraham? And why is Keturah identified as a concubine and not a wife?

The starting point in any bible search has to be that no detail in the bible is by accident and that all scripture comes by inspiration of God -- not by the intellect or experience or opinion of man.

So the reversal of order of birth for Isaac and Ishmael , and the sons by Keturah not recorded as Abraham's  sons must have significance for us.

Perhaps it is not such a difficult thing to understand.

In Gen. 22:2 God, in speaking to Abraham, refers to Isaac as "your only son Isaac, whom you love..."  Isaac was not Abraham's only son at that time, but he was the the only son of Sarah.

God had promised Abraham a son, a promised son that would be a miracle birth, a son born to him and Sarah. (Gen. 18:10)  From the descendants of  this son, God would bring forth His people and through this son would be shown the prophetic picture that pointed to Jesus' , the coming Promised Son, who would be the sacrificial Lamb.
Abraham was the father of faith , Rom. 4:11,16.   It was only through Isaac that this blessing came down to us.  Ishmael was rejected, "cast out" as Gal. 4:30 states in a  quote from Gen. 21:10-12.

So the sons born to Abraham through Keturah, would also have to be cast out, and could not be joined to what God had purposed through the one promised son - Isaac, who would picture the One Promised Son, Jesus. God needed to keep the descendant line without confusion from the promised son to the Promised Son.   Abraham was both the father of the physical nation of Israel and  the father of faith of the spiritual people in the New Covenant.