[202] For it is no small number of persons who have been deceived by the similarity of the names of different things, and we had better examine here what I am saying. The name Ishmael, being interpreted, means "the hearing of God," but some men listen to the divine doctrines to their benefit, and others listen to both his admonitions and to those of others only to their destruction. Do you not recollect the case of the soothsayer Balaam? [145] He is represented as hearing the oracles of God, and as having received knowledge from the Most High,