One Texas night in May 2003, a Pentecostal woman in her late thirties dropped rocks onto the skulls of her sons – 8, 6, 14 months. When a forensic psychiatrist spoke with her once she'd been medicated, it turned out that, for days beforehand, she'd been hearing and feeling urges she took as the voice of God, demanding she kill her children as a test of her faith and a prophetic sign that the end of all things was nigh.1 Decades earlier, at a compound called Jonestown in Guyana, over nine hundred members of a cult group committed “revolutionary suicide” by drinking poisoned Flavor-Aid, with parents willingly administering the deadly brew to their own children first to spare them from falling into captivity to the brainwashing forces of darkness outside.2
Genesis 22 is “a powerful and disturbing story.”3 Over fifteen centuries ago, St. Augustine said that “every time the story is read, it affects the minds of the listeners as though it were happening before their eyes.”4 Scholars today call it “one of the most indigestible scenes in scripture,”5 “one of the most problematic passages in the Bible,”6 which seems like it “conflicts with the moral and biblical prohibition against murder.”7 During the so-called 'Enlightenment,' the German philosopher Immanuel Kant charged that this “myth of the sacrifice” entails an impossible divine summons “to do something contrary to the moral law” that binds universally, and since the universal always outweighs the particular, Abraham should never have believed the voice.8 Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, forty-five years later, retorted that faith suspends ethics and makes “the single individual higher than the universal,” a paradox whose power “makes murder into a holy and God-pleasing act.”9
The question matters, because Abraham is “the father of us all” in whose footsteps believers are to walk (Romans 4:12-16), and this isn't just any obscure scene from his life, it's “the climax of Abraham's religious odyssey,”10 it's “the decisive moment in Abraham's relationship to God.”11 In our own century, atheist critics make hay of the thought that Abraham was “praised to the clouds for showing his sturdy willingness to murder an innocent in expiation of his own crimes.”12 They sit in judgment on “this disgraceful story,” they call it, as “an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defense: 'I was only obeying orders.'”13 In the end, they see no difference between Abraham and the parents at Jonestown or the woman in Texas, proving (in their eyes) that biblical faith is a mentally unhealthy and dangerous thing.14 But even muting the scoffers, I've sat with believers who've been deeply troubled by Genesis 22. Should we all be singing with Leonard Cohen, “If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game.... I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim.... You want it darker; we kill the flame”?15 Well, from the philosophers to the skeptics, there's been a lot of “reading without empathy and without context,” for which the cure is reading closely, attentively, inquisitively, empathetically, and humbly before God.16
This chapter opens up with the phrase “it came about after these things” (Genesis 22:1) – well, what things? There are three main chapters Genesis 22 subtly points us back to. First was when we met Abram in chapter 12, at the LORD's initial call on Abram's life. That was the first time God spoke to Abraham, and this chapter gives us the last, making bookends around that meaty stage of Abraham's life; and they emphasize it with similar summons for Abraham to do something. Second was chapter 20, where Abraham put his own wife and the possibility of her conceiving his son at risk, because, he said, after the godlessness of Sodom, he doubted whether there could be any 'fear of God' in Gerar either. And third is last chapter, when Abraham, assured that “through Isaac shall your seed be called” (Genesis 21:12), was required to surrender his teenage son Ishmael, 'the boy,' to an ordeal in the desert. The description of his and Hagar's plight uses many words and phrases that crop back up here, in this sequel. Now this chapter opens an unknown number of years later, but it's at least ten; where Isaac was then a child, now he can carry loads of wood and carry on meaningful conversation, and serious guesses of his age have ranged from his late teens to his late thirties.17
Right off the bat, the events of this chapter are summed up as “the God tested Abraham” (Genesis 22:1). Two vital things: first, the author tells us up from that we have here “a test of Abraham's relationship with God.”18 But it's weird we're told that, because until now the author has usually held back key pieces of information and then dropped in a twist at the end, forcing us to reinterpret everybody's motives. But here, the Bible abandons that tactic, refusing to let us read this chapter without a big neon disclaimer: THIS IS A TEST.19 The other vital thing is that God starts off here, not as “the LORD,” not even as “God,” but as “the God.” So far in the Bible, this expression crops up before the Flood in stories meant to resemble pagan mythology (Genesis 5:24; 6:4), once when Abraham appeals to “the God” over his unchosen son Ishmael (Genesis 17:18), and more in chapter 20 where the pagan king Abimelech gets revelation from “the God” (Genesis 20:6, 17). This way of starting should make us suspicious that God's going to be playing a more primitive-sounding role, in a pagan accent.20
So “the God... said to him, 'Abraham!' And he said, 'Here I am!'” (Genesis 22:1). Abraham's response, as the God calls him in the night, is just one Hebrew word, literally “Behold me!” More loosely, “Reporting for duty, Lord!” He's indicating his availability, his attentiveness, “a preparedness to be at the service of another.”21 So now the God speaks again. “Take, please, your son,” he starts (Genesis 22:2). It's rare in the Bible for God to say please, but in Hebrew he does, even if our English translations gloss over it, so our heartbeat should pick up the pace. Then he starts laying it on thick: “Your son – your only one, whom you love – Isaac” (Genesis 22:2) – three direct objects, which are all the same object.22 This is the first time the Bible uses the word 'love,' and it's here. Abraham is supposed to take Isaac for something, and the God cautiously acknowledges that he's the son “passionately beloved of his father Abraham.”23
Then what? “And walk yourself to the land of the moriah” (Genesis 22:2). “The moriah” is hard to translate, but it could mean the land of revelation, the land of teaching, or the land of fear.24 More interesting is the verb, “go yourself,” which shows up just one other time in the whole Bible – Genesis 12. There, God's first words to Abram were to “walk yourself from your land and from your kindred and from the house of your father, to a land which I will make you see,” an unclear destination to be taken on faith (Genesis 12:1). Notice that what Abraham must abandon is his past identity, described in three narrowing ways; and here Abraham has to take a similar journey with a son described in three narrowing ways – this is a deliberate parallel.25
In chapter 12, the 'going' would separate Abraham from his triply-described roots; but it sounds like here it'll be the opposite, taking his triply-described son along. Well, not so fast, Abraham. This is also a parting tale. “And raise him up there as an ascension offering,” or burnt offering, “upon one of the mountains which I shall say to you” (Genesis 22:2). This here is “the first time God gives instructions for a sacrifice,”26 and shockingly it's a human sacrifice, and more than that, a suggestion Abraham should sacrifice his own beloved son. Even to suggest such a thing “goes against everything we know as moral and ethical.”27
Pause for a moment to really soak in the horror grabbing hold of Abraham's fatherly heart. “A word has been uttered by God which is such as to shatter and try your faith,”28 unleashing “an extremely bitter and turbulent throng of thoughts,”29 leaving Abraham “torn between nature and faith and pulled both ways,”30 dumping him suddenly into “an almost unimaginable moral dilemma.”31 On the one hand is his immensely affectionate love for Isaac, the irreplaceable child of his old age, the one in whom he's invested all his hopes and dreams on the earth. On the other is the God he's learned to trust, the one who gave him Isaac and promised him much through Isaac, and yet now at whose word Abraham's own “hand was chosen to be the sacrificial instrument of [Isaac's] death.”32
In light of this fuller command, that flowery description of Isaac becomes “the triple torment of the father.”33 Isaac's name means 'he laughs' – maybe Abraham's now wondering if his life was just one long, dark prank at Abraham's expense, to give and then set the father up to violently ruin. If that weren't sad enough, this command calls God's reliability into question, since God appears to be contradicting himself.34 It risks making Abraham's last forty years an exercise in pointlessness. What's Abraham to do?
Well, using a phrase from chapters 20 and 21, Abraham “rose early in the morning,” promptly commencing his compliance with the God's request. Abraham was “mastered by his love for God” and, despite the whirlwind within, “remained steadfast as ever.”35 He loses himself in the busy work of packing, saddling his own donkey for the trip rather than letting his servants do it like normal, chopping wood here because his nervous hands need occupation; he's tarrying, dragging his feet, in hopes it'll turn out to have been a bad dream.36 But when no relief came, “he arose, and he went to the place about which the God had spoken to him” (Genesis 22:3).
He'd been told simply to take Isaac, but “he took two of his boys with him and his son Isaac” (Genesis 22:3). The same word, 'boy,' was used for Ishmael last chapter and Isaac coming up (Genesis 21:12; 22:5). These are servants from Abraham's household, but possibly also Isaac's friends and peers, here to keep him company during a trip Abraham won't be much fun on.
Their pilgrimage takes a couple days, long enough for Abraham to “give it second and third thoughts,” to make sure this is no impulsive compliance but a considered choice.37 All the while, as Abraham is for days “torn to pieces with his thoughts” and tormented by Isaac's hugs and the meals they share,38 he's “without anyone to share his dilemma with,” no therapist to visit or friend to lean on.39 In every moment, he has the power to turn back and give himself relief. But he doesn't. Instead, step by step, he “obeyed the commands of God with a full and devoted patience.”40
On the third morning of their pilgrimage, “Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar” (Genesis 22:4), much as Hagar lifted up her voice and sat down “afar” from Ishmael (Genesis 21:16).41 Some figure that Abraham stopped here “at a well of water.”42 There, to the servant boys, Abraham orders, “Stay here with the donkey.” The chieftain and his prince will “go over there,” for this is holy ground, and he can't risk that these boys will obstruct the plan.43 At the place, he says, “we will worship” – and so they shall (Genesis 22:5). So far, so good, but then Abraham adds that “we will return to you” (Genesis 22:5). Wait, you will? Because if Abraham burns Isaac's corpse to a crisp, it seems like it's not a 'we' coming down the mountain. So either he's lying to stave off any suspicions, or he's speaking with a hope for an alternate ending.44
Until now, the wood was on the donkey, but now Abraham takes it up, this wood meant to burn with Isaac, and he lays it on the boy's back (Genesis 22:6), that the son might unknowingly carry his instrument of destruction while marching to his dark end, that “the victim himself should bear the load.”45 Talk about macabre! But it parallels how he earlier took a waterskin and laid it on Hagar's shoulder (Genesis 21:14). So while Isaac steps forward bearing the wood, Abraham holds in one hand the flintstone for sparking flame and in the other a big butcher's knife for dividing a sacrificial carcass in pieces. Side by side they walked, they “went both of them as one,” Abraham united with his unique one up the slow incline.
In these verses, the author reminds us again and again that they're father and son, using these words constantly, including the very first time Isaac speaks. Whereas the God had called out to Abraham, 'Father of Multitudes,' Isaac's first word is a cry to “my father.” How does Abraham answer? “Here I am, my son” (Genesis 22:7). Two little words in Hebrew, but so significant. Earlier, Abraham referred to Isaac just as “the boy,” emotionally distancing himself; but that tactic breaks down now as Abraham reaffirms Isaac as “my son.”46 His declaration of availability, the same word he spoke earlier to the God, is a thread tying the tale together but raises the question of whether he can be fully responsive to both his child and his creator.47
So what does Isaac want with Abraham? Well, he's got a question. “He said, 'Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?'” (Genesis 22:7). It's a really good question – so good, in fact, that I have to wonder why he's only asking now, and not yesterday on the road, about this lamb they forgot when they left home. Why didn't Isaac ask before, and why does he ask now? Is he getting uncomfortably suspicious about what will be sacrificed? Note how he calls attention to the fire and the wood, but avoids drawing dad's attention to the sharp instrument of slaughter, perhaps fearing lest it be meant for him.48
The question puts Abraham in a bind. Does he risk a straightforward explanation? Does he make something up and hope his son buys it? “Abraham said, 'God will see for himself to the lamb for the burnt offering, my son'” (Genesis 22:8). Was he hinting at the prospect that God would make Isaac “be the lamb of the burnt offering”?49 Or do his words maybe hold “faint tinges of hope... in the Lord to find us a way out of this,”50 “expressing his confidence in God's intervention” in a way Abraham can't yet fathom?51 The result of this one and only time the Bible lets us hear them talking to each other is that, as two verses before, “they went both of them as one,” “walked with equal speed of mind... along the short straight road at the end of which is holiness, and came to the appointed place,”52 “the place of which the God had told him” (Genesis 22:8-9).
In days of yore, Abraham built an altar here, an altar there, but now “Abraham built the altar there,” on this bareheaded hill, and after adding the wood, “he bound Isaac his son, and he laid him on the altar on top of the wood” (Genesis 22:9). In a typical burnt offering, you'd bind the animal's feet together to immobilize it, do the bloody and divisive deed, and only then do you take the pieces and put them on the wood on the altar to be burned (Leviticus 1:3-9); but here, Abraham puts a whole living victim onto the altar, “altogether anomalous.”53 But the more obvious question is how an Abraham in triple digits could wrestle a strong young man in his prime, who's fighting for his life with all his might, into submission. And the answer is, he obviously couldn't; if Isaac is bound by Abraham, it's because Isaac chooses to offer no resistance.54 “Far from shrinking back or protesting against the deed,” an ancient preacher pointed out, “he submitted and yielded to what was being done by his father, and, like a lamb, lay on the altar without resistance, awaiting his father's arm.”55
The time has come. Isaac's trussed up on the altar. “And Abraham sent out his hand, and he took the knife to slaughter his son” (Genesis 22:10). In this game of chicken with God, we're inches from the collision. This is the pivotal minute. Abraham, “whose obedience looks almost like insanity,”56 clutches the upraised blade, its metal gleaming in the noonday sun, as “reverence for God aided his aged hand.”57 If Abraham sought to somehow stop the scarring sight from becoming “a permanent feature of the son's psyche,” that vanishes here.58 Oh, Abraham “did not hesitate to offer with his own hands his son as a victim while he obeyed God with the faith of devotion.”59 Just one fateful motion remains.
And here's where the New Testament freezes the action to let us inside Abraham's mind and heart while he's “in the act of offering up his only-begotten” (Hebrews 11:7). Abraham had been assured by the LORD, before ever Isaac was conceived, that this child would one day have “his seed after him” (Genesis 17:19), and the LORD had more recently reaffirmed to Abraham that “through Isaac shall your seed be called” (Genesis 21:12). Both times, God had guaranteed Abraham, “he who received the promises,” that Isaac would become the father through whom Abraham's covenant line of seed would continue (Hebrews 11:17-18). But now Abraham is told to slash and burn Isaac to nothingness when Isaac is yet childless. So if “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18), then if God's word is to be true, then either God will yield so that Isaac doesn't die, or God will let Abraham go through with the sacrifice but will act retroactively somehow.
So “by faith..., Abraham reasoned that God was able even to raise [Isaac] from the dead” here (Hebrews 11:19). He “believed that after Isaac died, he would be raised up again and would go back down with him,” because Abraham was certain the God of Truth “was not lying.”60 Of course, it's one thing – a big thing – to say that on paper; it's another thing to live it out in action. But “absolute trust in God had permeated every aspect and level of Abraham's existence,” from mind to muscle.61 So as Abraham hoists high his blade, this is “certainly a great act of faith,” as well as being “a great work” of obedience.62
Unpause the screen. In that moment, there called out an angelic voice from the sky (Genesis 22:11), much as during Ishmael's crisis “the Angel of God called to Hagar from heaven” (Genesis 21:17).63 Not only does the Hebrew word for 'angel' sound a bit like this rare word for 'knife,'64 but this is “the Angel of the LORD,” bringing back God's special covenant name, a very different connotation from the abstraction of “the God” who seemed to demand Isaac's blood and ashes. As the God had called Abraham's name once, now this Angel of the LORD calls out, “Abraham! Abraham!” twice in quick succession, arresting the first inches of the downswing. “God the Savior stopped the deed halfway.”65 Abraham slams on the brakes, sacrifices his momentum, to say, for the third time, “Here I am,” “Behold me!” (Genesis 22:11).
This heavenly voice explains he's taken notice of Abraham's willing obedience, how “you have not withheld your son, your one and only, from me” (Genesis 22:12). So far, this word 'withheld' has shown up just once, in chapter 20, when the God 'withheld' King Abimelech from sinning the great sin of adultery with Abraham's wife and Isaac's future mother (Genesis 20:6). He did so because “I knew” Abimelech was acting in blamelessness of heart, in other words, that he feared God. So too, says the Angel, “Now I know that you,” Abraham, “fear God” (Genesis 22:12), his God-fearing heart being on display in action even beyond Abimelech's.66
The LORD isn't looking for anything more than that. Abraham's ultimate willingness to obey, proven visibly as the knife began its descent, was what was desired, not Isaac's blood and ashes. Therefore, where the Angel of God bade Hagar lift “the boy” and hold him tightly with her “hand” (Genesis 21:18), now the Angel of the LORD urges Abraham to “not send forth your hand upon the boy” (Genesis 22:12).67 Speaking more strictly than the God's initial request for Isaac aflame, Abraham is now abjured by a bolder name to do no harm to Isaac whatsoever. So “as he had obeyed in preparing to slay the boy, so he now obeyed in sparing him.”68 The test is now over; Abraham was “found faithful in trial” (1 Maccabees 2:52). He'd received God's “severe command... with patience, and, had God so willed, he would have fulfilled it,”69 “yielding with great love to God's will.”70
Why test Abraham in the first place? The Angel's words pointing back to chapter 20 give us one reason. There, Abraham did to Abimelech what no one should do to another: set him up to sin a great sin. Why did Abraham do it? Because he dismissed the idea that anybody in Gerar could fear God, so he acted from the fear of man (Genesis 20:9-11). But who is Abraham, to prejudge where the fear of God may be found?71 This test challenges him, measuring his own “devotion to... the God who now demands the ultimate sacrifice.”72
But it's bigger still. A few weeks back, we saw how Abraham's heart's truest desire was gradually unearthed and found to center in being a patriarch for a growing family; so naturally, once he's got the promised Isaac, he “thus reposed all his own happiness on the hope of leaving his son unscathed when he departed this life.”73 God has been using Abraham's desire to lead him on, educate and remold him into the kind of man who can be father of nations, and as part of that education, we saw in chapter 21 how God bade Abraham surrender his firstborn son Ishmael to the desert, entrusting him to God's care. This is the almost inevitable sequel, testing whether Abraham's heart's desire has been fully recentered on God or not.
This test is the perfect way to cap off Abraham's journey, which began with a summons to never see again his own land, his family network, the father's house where he became Abram – to forsake his past. Now, as Abraham's season in the spotlight winds down, he faces God's summons to burn away the child of his love, who represents what Abraham has become and what he hopes to pass on – it's a call to relinquish his future.74 These words fit hand-in-glove, asking whether Abraham can put both past and future, legacy and hope, in God's hands.
Fourth, this test changes something in the way God's dealt with Abraham. The LORD told him to leave for an unknown land, but promised to make him a blessed and great nation; therefore Abraham went (Genesis 12:1-4). The LORD told Abraham to walk before him in the covenant, but promised to make him a father of nations; so Abraham circumcised (Genesis 17). From all we've seen, it's possible Abraham's is a mercenary devotion built on a transactional logic: God commands and incentivizes, therefore I obey – to get what I want. But here, the God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, an act always reserved as the ultimate bargaining chip with the divine, and God offers no incentive other than pleasing him; it's only after Abraham renders an obedience without trade value that the Angel of the LORD will speak of further rewards (Genesis 22:17-18).75 The test was necessary to make clear that Abraham knows “not to value above God what God gives us..., because God is to be loved free, gratis, and for nothing,” even though he proves himself to be a God who gives and rewards generously.76
But is that true? Should Abraham be grateful that God solved a problem it seems like he created? Was this test an act of divine mercy or divine cruelty?77 And as for Abraham, early Christians said the goal was “that the good man's virtue be revealed,”78 but is it virtue or is it vice that he was willing to slay Isaac here? It can first be said that the sanctity of human life is founded on the image of God in man, but God, as the One whose image human life is, “has the right to give and to take away life.”79 The “Lord of life and death” has the moral right to authorize an Abraham to do such a thing without sin.80 As St. Augustine pointed out, “if Abraham sacrificed his son on his own initiative, what would he have been but a horrible and insane man? But under God's command, what is he seen to be but a faithful and devout man?”81 It's because Abraham's acting under a rightful authority. And lest this idea seem like a blank-check to religious justifications for anything and everything, supporting the popular (and problematic) “myth of religious violence,”82 we need to note that after thousands of years of having Genesis, this story's impact on its hearers and readers actually hasn't “led to a rash of child sacrifice.”83 Those who admire Abraham's faith don't go around slaughtering others as a proof of their own faith.
It also matters that this was a “severe command which the Lord did not intend should be carried out.”84 God “wished but to test his soul,” and had “no craving for human blood.”85 There's remarkable mercy after the storm. Chapter 21 reached its climax when Hagar had her eyes opened and “saw a well of water,” giving her the option to go and take from it for her son's salvation (Genesis 21:16-19). In parallel, here Abraham “lifted up his eyes and, behold, one ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham,” exercising this option, “went and took the ram... instead of his son” (Genesis 22:13), turning the altar from a symbol of death to a symbol of salvation86 – in this way, “from death, Isaac was handed over living to his father.”87 That was God's plan.
Was it a good plan? Well, Abraham genuinely needed this test. God tests “in order that a person may find out about himself..., bringing to light what was hidden in a person.”88 He needed a deeper understanding of what it means to be God-fearing; he needed to see his own heart laid bare. This test came as a request, one he may have even been “free to refuse,” and the fulfillment of which would've been supererogatory, above and beyond the call of duty.89 But in his willingness to completely and irrevocably give God the one he loved most in the world, Abraham's “love toward the Lord of all is made known,” to himself and to the world.90
What about poor Isaac? Remember that he's old enough to resist and make mature decisions. And once he can see what's going on, he chooses to trust in his father's faith: if holy Abraham believes this will honor God, then Isaac can maturely comply, even if it means giving over his life to God. Later Jews took Isaac as accepting Abraham's explanation “with joy,”91 Isaac reasoning that he must have been “born into the world to be offered as a sacrifice to him who made me,” a privilege through which “my blessedness will be above that of all men.”92 So this is nothing like a story of child abuse; Isaac is no helpless victim, but a fully consenting participant.
This test is built on God's prior promises to Abraham. Because of them, Abraham did not have “faith by virtue of the absurd,” and his faith doesn't “begin precisely where thought stops,” as some allege. Instead, his faith and his reason walked together as one. Experience showed God's flawless track record in keeping the wildest promises; Abraham knew there remained promises for Isaac's future; therefore, Isaac must have a future, so if it looks like this obedience will end that future, no it won't, because God is true. Abraham reasoned from his faith in God's character to his faith in God's outcome. That makes a world of moral difference, because with this sure faith, Abraham's deed would be less like a murder and more like a surgery.93 And as one great mystic teacher said, “God ordains our sufferings that we may love what we must desire, make greater sacrifices, and be worth more; but everything is brief, for it lasts only until the knife is raised, and then Isaac remains alive...”94
And that surgery, while costly and painful, achieves benefits in their most fitting way. In every successful test in the Bible, the result is that “both parties learn that the other is trustworthy,” and this test achieves that for God and Abraham, making him indeed a “friend of God” (James 2:23).95 Abraham's path isn't to “forget all love” for the sake of wrath out of fear for God's authority, as Luther mistakes it;96 far from it, the test relies on Abraham loving Isaac intensely the whole way through.97 Instead, the test makes him an integrated person able to simultaneously love the creation and offer it fully to the Creator, desiring both God and Isaac non-competitively.98 Abraham keeps loving Isaac, but how he loves him has changed: not just his personally beloved son, but a son chosen by God for something greater.99 Only with such love can Abraham become the patriarch of nations he dreams of.100 And on the other side of his life-and-death ordeal, Isaac has ascended in his maturity, from boyhood to manhood, rendered ready for his calling.101
If this ordeal has integrated Abraham's fear and love, it's also integrated his “singular grace” with “Abraham's great merit before God.”102 St. Paul can honestly say that Abraham was initially justified by faith (Romans 4:2-5), and St. James can equally honestly teach that Abraham's “faith was completed by his works” (James 2:22) that were “credited to him as righteousness” (1 Maccabees 2:52), so that Abraham was ultimately “justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar” (James 2:21), yes, “justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). He wins Isaac back as a gift – and as much more than a gift.
The result is that both will be compensated and rewarded for their faithful endurance, as the Angel of the LORD relays his sworn oath to magnify Abraham's blessing and make his seed through Isaac ever more fruitful and victorious, a source of universal blessing, “because you have hearkened to my voice” (Genesis 22:17-18). The next couple weeks can teach us of the blessings unleashed into the world by this event, but suffice it to say they'll vastly eclipse the darkness of one day, as both Abraham and Isaac would gladly tell you if you could hear them this morning. “What lovelier reward, after all, can you get from God than God himself?”103 What seemed a devastatingly dark decree was an instrument meant to lead Abraham on a journey to his clarity, his obedience, his integration, his fulfillment, his blessing – to fruits borne only among such thorns as these.104
Do we have to dread a command like what Abraham received? No. For forty years, Abraham has lived in a world “in which God's revelation and miraculous involvement in human affairs is taken for granted.”105 He's heard God's voice on multiple occasions, met God, verified the promises. All this was necessary to ensure that he could know for certain in this case that he was hearing the actual voice of God, and not a delusion in his head or a misreading of a sign or a deception of a demon or a demand of human corruption. Anyone without a biography like Abraham's could and should chalk up a call like this to other causes;106 Abraham uniquely could be entrusted with it. He also lived in a world where “barbarian nations... have for long admitted child sacrifice as a holy deed,” and he's living there before the Law, so it could be initially plausible for him that the God might ask such a thing;107 but we live after a more definitive revelation of the LORD's will that such sacrifice would be an unthinkable “abomination” in his sight (Jeremiah 32:35).108 Plus, Abraham's test also relies on the context of his special assurances regarding Isaac's future children and his own destiny to be a father to nations; the one gives him extraordinary grounds for believing, while the latter explains how “to whom much was given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12:48).109 So rest assured that “all of these services are not asked of you.”110
And yet Paul calls us “children of Abraham” (Romans 9:7), and Jesus teaches that the children of Abraham will “do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39). “Let us imitate Abraham, the friend of God,”111 whose sacrificial faith was to “prove an occasion of instruction... for later generations.”112 But how, then, do we learn from him here?
Start with this: many words from God might confuse us, and we're well-practiced to reject instructions whose rationale we don't instantly grasp. But from Abraham we see how it brings “countless blessings for us that we... fulfill his directions like dutiful servants and leave to the Lord the reason for them.”113 See, “the evidence we seek in knowing God is not going to become available to us until we make the journey to Moriah.”114 For “unless you shall fulfill the works of faith, unless you shall be obedient to all the commands, even the more difficult ones..., you will not know that you fear God.”115 It's good to cherish that we've been saved by grace through faith, but Abraham's story calls us further, to complete our faith in our works (James 2:20-24).
Then, we can understand that God is calling us, in Abraham, to find “a proper loyalty to the world and its finite goods” in the context of our absolute devotion to God, by understanding them as gifts we consecrate back to him one and all.116 We're bound, not to sacrifice a beloved child to God, but to render him “the inward sacrifice” of our heart and mind and soul117 – “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your logical worship” (Romans 12:1), which leads us to a more supreme love of all. And “God takes more pleasure in this than in all the other things put together, a special gift, a faultless gift.”118 Abraham's test challenges us to lay our all on the altar – and reminds us how dear that all is, not that we might cease to love it, but that we might love it more perfectly in the hands of the LORD. Thanks be to God. Amen.
1 Eve Bender, “Forensic Experts Probe Mind of Mother Who Killed Kids,” Psychiatry News 39/24 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.24.00390016
2 David Chidester, Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown, rev. ed. (Indiana University Press, 2003), 147-148, 154-155.
3 Iain W. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Context, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 145.
4 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.1, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:175.
5 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 199.
6 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 232.
7 Shira Weiss, Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 19.
8 Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), in Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, eds., Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 283.
9 Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843), in Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds., Kierkegaard's Writings (Princeton University Press, 1983), 6:53, 55.
10 Shaul Bar, Daily Life of the Patriarchs: The Way It Was (Peter Lang, 2015), 115.
11 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 309.
12 Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve, 2007), 207.
13 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Black Swan, 2007), 275.
14 Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve, 2007), 53, 208.
15 Leonard Cohen, “You Want It Darker,” from the 2016 album You Want It Darker.
16 Paul J. Kissler, “The Near-Sacrifice of Isaac: Monstrous Morality or Richly Textured Theology?,” in M. Daniel Carroll R. and J. Blair Wilgus, Wrestling with the Violence of God: Soundings in the Old Testament (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 27.
17 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 150; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 347.
18 Qiang Fu, How God Forms Abraham to Be a Blessing: Using Formative Narrative Approach and Narrative Discourse Analysis (Wipf & Stock, 2023), 166.
19 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 323; Paul J. Kissling, “The Near-Sacrifice of Isaac: Monstrous Morality or Richly Textured Theology?”, in M. Daniel Carroll R. and J. Blair Wilgus, Wrestling with the Violence of God: Soundings in the Old Testament (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 21.
20 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 351.
21 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 240.
22 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 203.
23 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.222, in Loeb Classical Library 242:109.
24 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 305.
25 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 370-371.
26 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 350.
27 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 216.
28 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:137.
29 Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 3.2.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:159.
30 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 74, in Library of Early Christianity 1:151.
31 John C. Lennox, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt (SPCK, 2024), 237.
32 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.1, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:175.
33 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:138.
34 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 339-340.
35 Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 32 §170, in Loeb Classical Library 289:87.
36 Jonathan Jacobs, “Willing Obedience with Doubts: Abraham at the Binding of Isaac,” Vetus Testamentum 60/4 (2010): 554; Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 330.
37 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 154.
38 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.3-4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:139-140.
39 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:17.
40 Cyprian of Carthage, On the Good of Patience 10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 36:272.
41 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 149.
42 Jubilees 18:4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:91.
43 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 20.1.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:168.
44 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:140.
45 Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 32 §171, in Loeb Classical Library 289:87.
46 Jonathan Jacobs, “Willing Obedience with Doubts: Abraham at the Binding of Isaac,” Vetus Testamentum 60/4 (2010): 556; Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 151.
47 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 342.
48 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 335; John C. Lennox, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt (SPCK, 2024), 241.
49 Targum Neofiti Genesis 22:8, in Aramaic Bible 1A:117; cf. David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 155.
50 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 343.
51 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 151.
52 Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 32 §172, in Loeb Classical Library 289:87.
53 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 135.
54 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 302; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 199; John C. Lennox, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt (SPCK, 2024), 243.
55 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:20.
56 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 205.
57 Ambrose of Milan, On His Brother Satyrus 2.97, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 22:240.
58 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 237.
59 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 58.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 51:166.
60 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 20.2.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:168-169.
61 Berel Dov Lerner, Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures: Covenants and Cross-Purposes (Routledge, 2023), 52.
62 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.9, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:181.
63 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 142.
64 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 152.
65 Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 32 §176, in Loeb Classical Library 289:89.
66 Qiang Fu, How God Forms Abraham to Be a Blessing: Using Formative Narrative Approach and Narrative Discourse Analysis (Wipf & Stock, 2023), 175.
67 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 150.
68 Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 30.3.9, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/15:341.
69 Tertullian of Carthage, On Patience 6.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 40:204.
70 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:17.
71 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 241-242.
72 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 130.
73 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.223, in Loeb Classical Library 242:111.
74 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 149; Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 127; Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 321.
75 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 146-147.
76 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.4, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:178.
77 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.1, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:175.
78 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.11, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:20.
79 Iain W. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Context, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 147.
80 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q.64, a.6, ad 1, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 17:604.
81 Augustine of Hippo, Answer to Faustus the Manichean 22.73, in The Works of Saint Augustine I/20:350.
82 William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2009).
83 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 361.
84 Tertullian of Carthage, On Patience 6.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 40:204.
85 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.233, in Loeb Classical Library 242:115.
86 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 124.
87 Epiphanius of Salamis, Ancoratus 94.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 128:192.
88 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.2-3, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:176-177.
89 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 336.
90 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 20.2.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:168.
91 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.232, in Loeb Classical Library 242:115.
92 Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32.3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:345.
93 Berel Dov Lerner, Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures: Covenants and Cross-Purposes (Routledge, 2023), 50-51.
94 John of the Cross, Letter 11, in Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, eds., The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (ICS Publications, 1991), 745.
95 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 152.
96 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21:15-16, in Luther's Works 4:44.
97 Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 120-121.
98 Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford University Press, 2010), 480.
99 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 126.
100 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 337; Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford University Press, 2010), 305-306.
101 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 142.
102 Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews 1, in Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 14:62.
103 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.4, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:178.
104 Hendrik Klinge, “Does God Command Something Horrible? The Aqedah and Contemporary Theistic Metaethics,” in Jean-Pierre Fortin and Heiko Schulz, eds., Aqedah: Gen 22 as a Challenge for the Rationality of Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (De Gruyter, 2025), 89.
105 Berel Dov Lerner, Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures: Covenants and Cross-Purposes (Routledge, 2023), 51.
106 Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), in Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, eds., Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 223.
107 Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 33 §181, in Loeb Classical Library 289:91.
108 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 292-293.
109 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 393.
110 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.7, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:142.
111 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 58.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 51:166.
112 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.12, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:21.
113 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.18, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:24.
114 Bradley Beach, “Our Journeys to Moriah,” in Bradley Beach and Matthew Powell, eds., Interpreting Abraham: Journeys to Moriah (Fortress Press, 2014), 220.
115 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.7-8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:143.
116 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 196.
117 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q.85, a.4, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 17:782.
118 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 17.10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 107:92.
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