Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 21:15

"And the water in the bottle was spent, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs." — Genesis 21:15 (ASV)

She cast the child under one of the shrubs. —The act was one of despair. Ishmael, though seventeen years of age, had not yet come to his strength, and at a time when human life was so prolonged that forty was the usual age for marriage, was probably not as capable of bearing fatigue as a young man nearly grown up would be in our days. He thus became exhausted, and apparently fainted; and his mother, after trying in vain to support him, cast him down in anguish, and abandoned herself to her grief.