When we left off last Sunday, we reached what some might consider the climax of the Book of Genesis. Abraham was put to the test in the toughest of ways, with God asking him to give back his whole future and betray the one he loved. It was heart-wrenching, gut-twisting, head-pounding stuff, this summons for Abraham to lead his son Isaac up a strange mountain under the pretext of worship and to then bind, butcher, and burn the beloved boy until there was nothing left at all. We reflected on Abraham's wrestling; we questioned and then vindicated the test itself, and began to glimpse its fruit in revealing Abraham's devotion and desire, and how it made Isaac a man (Genesis 22:1-14). In the end, Abraham was “found faithful in trial, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (1 Maccabees 2:52). For “why was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he did what was righteous and true through faith?”1
And blessed he was. The verses beyond the first fourteen give some specifics by angelic diction (Genesis 22:15-18), and the Jewish people always took this event as a firm basis for God's ongoing commitment to the seed of Abraham through Isaac, that God “would never fail to regard with the tenderest care both him and his race.”2 What happens in this chapter has “become a foundational act, and its consequences extend to every generation.”3 For these things of which we've read have a “hidden, mysterious, sacramental meaning,” unfolded throughout the ages.4
To briefly retell the highlights, after a three-day journey to a mysterious mountain, Abraham displayed his final and supreme devotion in worship, raising up his own son Isaac upon the altar with the intention of making him an ascension offering (the literal meaning of what we usually read as 'burnt offering'). But Isaac was given back by God, redeemed, and in his place another sacrifice was offered, a ram “substituted at God's behest,”5 whose blood and ashes took the place where Isaac's otherwise would've been, but who stood in for Isaac to be received by God as if it were Isaac; “and so representative sacrifice was established by divine command: God gives the lamb, which Abraham then offers back to him.”6 Isaac lived through his hour of sacrifice, because it had been promised by God that through him would Abraham's seed be called (Genesis 21:12) – and so they were.
Now let's fast-forward a few centuries. Since then, Abraham's seed via Isaac have found themselves oppressed and afflicted in a foreign land, Egypt; and as they cry out to the God of Abraham and Isaac, their sighs and tears are heard by the very LORD who blessed their forefathers on the mysterious mountain. He adopts Israel, he claims Isaac writ large, as his very own “firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22). He raises up Moses and Aaron, sending them to Egypt's king, to bid that king to allow God's firstborn to “go a three-day journey into the wilderness,” like Abraham's three-day journey, “that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God” (Exodus 5:3). The LORD says through them, “Let my son go, that he may serve me; if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son” (Exodus 4:23).7 After nine preliminary afflictions find Pharaoh's heart harder than stone, Moses magnified that ultimate threat, that “every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on the throne even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is at the handmill and the firstborn of all the cattle,” but the firstborn of Israel shall not be touched (Exodus 11:5-7). How that difference was to be made, though Moses didn't share this with Pharaoh, was that each house in Israel should take a lamb, a healthy lamb a year old, and have it die in place of the firstborn in their house, and paint its blood around their doorways as a seal of protection from harm. This chosen lamb, this substitute lamb, would be the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:3-7). “The Israelite sons live because the lamb dies,” they're “saved from death by the substitute.”8
What we often miss is that, as they then head for the border, “the LORD said to Moses, 'Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine” (Exodus 13:1). The firstborn saved by the lamb have a consecrated existence; they are not their own. It applies in perpetuity, too: after reaching the land of promise, they “shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb” (Exodus 13:11-12). As the firstborn in Egypt had been destroyed, so the firstborn in Israel are to be consecrated to God, given over to him in sacrifice. But, clarified the LORD, “every firstborn among your sons you shall redeem” – they were not to die, they were to be bought back somehow. “And when, in time to come, your son asks you, 'What does this mean?', you shall say to him: 'By a strong hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery; for when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beasts; therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem'” (Exodus 13:13-15).
So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, look how much the logic of substitution and redemption, the theme of firstborn sons and lambs, has in common with what happened centuries before on the mountain. Both stories share this “conviction that the firstborn son belonged to God,” a belonging that could be ratified in death and sacrifice, and both stories then share a joy “that God might accept a sheep in the son's stead.”9 These are just one story. What did Abraham say to Isaac? “God will himself see to the lamb” (Genesis 22:8). There “he foretells the Passover substitution of the lamb for the firstborn in Israel” in Egypt and each year after that.10
In fact, one of the oldest Jewish retellings of Genesis rewrites it in such a way that the fateful moment when the father loomed over his son at the altar had to be the twilight of the fourteenth day of the first month.11 What time of the year was that? Oh, just “the same as the date for the Passover,” the time when the lamb was to be slain.12 In fact, this retelling adds that, after they went home, “he observed this festival every year for seven days with rejoicing, and he named it 'the Feast of the LORD' according to the seven days during which he went and returned in peace; and thus it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets concerning Israel and his seed to observe the festival seven days with festal joy.”13
In this version, “Abraham becomes the originator of Passover,” laying the groundwork for Israel's future redemption, where now “it is the blood of Isaac that procures deliverance” during the final plague and which is celebrated each year.14 A first-century Jew imagined God explaining that “I gave [Isaac] back to his father, and... on account of his blood, I chose them,” Israel.15 The rabbis taught that, when God looked at the blood of the Passover lamb around Israel's doors, what he saw was “the blood of the sacrifice of Isaac.”16 What's more, in some old Jewish readings, God chopped the sea in half for Israel's passage through it out of appreciation for Abraham chopping the wood for the sacrifice,17 and the reason the devil couldn't get in the way then was, he'd been “bound at the time of the exodus on account of Abraham's and Isaac's deed” of binding and being bound.18
To the Jewish eye, then, when Abraham consecrated his son Isaac to God and devotedly brought him to sacrifice him, only for a ram to be offered as his redemptive representative, that was the first Passover, and Isaac was the model for the Passover lamb by which Israel's firstborn were shielded from destruction and redeemed unto life. So every year, as these Jews celebrated Passover with joy, they rejoiced in the echo of Abraham and Isaac for Moses and Israel and all generations, how God had accepted a substitute for the son who needed to live.
If that were everything this meant to them, it seems like that'd be enough. But that's the tip of the iceberg. We glossed over a part of the story last week. When the God lays out his request to Abraham, to offer to the God his one-of-a-kind son Isaac, the God tells him to “go to the land of the moriah” and to “raise up Isaac there as an ascension offering on one of the mountains which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2). There are two interesting things there, and the first in the region, 'the land of the moriah.' Ancient Bible translators were unsure what to make of that word. Some derived it from the verb for 'seeing' – either it'd be a land that's visible because it's a high country, or it'd be a land of visions and revelations. Others derived it from the phrase 'fear of the Lord,' suggesting a land consecrated to worship. Yet others derived it from the verb for 'teaching' – a land where some lesson would be given, a land from which teaching would spread out.19 It's good to balance all three.
The second thing is, within the land, God is clear he's going to choose the mountain. As we go along, Abraham “went to the place of which the God had told him” (Genesis 22:3). In the Bible, 'the place' can sometimes mean a sacred site set apart for worship, like when Moses teaches that “you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose... to put his name and make his habitation there” (Deuteronomy 12:5). Naturally, once on the third day of their journey Abraham “saw 'the place' from afar,” he distanced himself from non-participants and declared that “we will worship” (Genesis 22:4-5). As they ascended to the chosen mountain in the land of hammoriyyah, Abraham answered Isaac's question by assuring him that God would see to – yir'eh – the lamb for their worship (Genesis 22:8). At the height of the mountain, “they came to the place of which the God had told him,” again, a specific location designated and desired by God, and it's where Abraham built “the altar,” the definitive one beyond all the memorial altars he'd built earlier in his travels (Genesis 22:9). In both carrying the wood and then getting onto that altar, Isaac here “becomes both victim and priest.”20
There, after their devotion was witnessed in heaven, Abraham “was prevented by an angel, who provided him with a ram for that offering; and Abraham took down his son from the pyre and offered the ram.”21 Some rabbis held that “the ram of Father Abraham” was created just before work shut down on the week of creation, and had been held in waiting in secret for this fateful moment ever since Eden, God ready in advance with provision.22 “And Abraham called the name of that place 'The LORD Will Provide,'” or 'the LORD Will See,' Yahweh-yir'eh or Jehovah-jireh. The narrator then comments that this explains a saying later current in Israel, which could be translated as “On the mount of the LORD, it shall be seen,” or as “On the mount of the LORD, it shall be provided,” or as “On the mount of the LORD, he shall be seen” (Genesis 22:14). See, “God not only provides for Abraham but, through this action, also makes himself visible to Abraham.”23
So this chosen place that God handpicked to witness Abraham's willingness faith and devotion in offering him the son of his love, the chosen place where God provided another way for Abraham to worship, the chosen place where God made himself present and visible to Abraham, is a mountain peak in the land of seeing or providing or revealing, Moriah. Abraham called it Yahweh-yir'eh, but the narrator just calls it “the mount of the LORD,” a place where in later days the children of Abraham could themselves find what Abraham discovered of revelation and provision, of worship and instruction and encounter, and could be witnessed before the LORD.
Where in the world were they going to find somewhere like that, the place that was that? I bet you can guess. It isn't like there are many places in the Bible called “the mount of the LORD” (Genesis 22:14), but the prophets say we “go up to the mount of the LORD” when we approach the “House of God” (Micah 4:2; Isaiah 2:3). You know where that is. In case you don't, I wonder if you've ever caught this little line tucked away in Chronicles: “Solomon began to build the House of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where he had appeared to David his father” (2 Chronicles 3:1). Did you catch it? “In Jerusalem on Mount Moriah” is where Solomon's Temple stood! That Jewish retelling of Genesis, just a couple centuries after Chronicles, clarifies that “it is said, 'In the mountain, the LORD has seen' – it is Mount Zion.”24 A first-century Jewish writer emphasized that it was exactly “that mount whereon” Israel “afterwards erected the temple.”25 Later rabbis punned that the very name 'Jerusalem' could be a fusion of Melchizedek's city, Salem, and Abraham's name for the mountain, Yahweh-yir'eh, to make Jireh-Salem.26 But those kinds of puns on Jerusalem's name are actually rich in Scripture, too.27
The Chronicler and the rabbis alike tie together a couple stories on this mountain. The Bible tells how David was tempted into taking a census, how “Satan stood against Israel and incited David” to it (1 Chronicles 21:1); and in the same way, Jewish minds imagined that the devil was the one who, as in the Book of Job, suggested testing Abraham with the slaying of his son.28 Just as the angel watched over Abraham on the mount in Genesis, so in Chronicles “God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it..., and the angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite; and David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the LORD standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem” (1 Chronicles 21:15-16). The Chronicler tells us this this threshing floor is the same place Abraham hovered over Isaac with his drawn blade; now there's an angel there with a drawn blade, ready to sacrifice Jerusalem; this is a destroying angel, like the destroyer who went after the firstborn in Egypt but was held back by the blood of the lamb. But at the pivotal moment, “as he was about to destroy it, the LORD saw, and he relented from the calamity; and he said to the angel who was working destruction, 'It is enough; now stay your hand'” (1 Chronicles 21:15).29
The rabbis were intrigued by that little phrase, “the LORD saw.” They asked, “What did he behold? He beheld the blood of the sacrifice of Isaac,” they answered.30 As they pieced this all together, Jerusalem was spared on that spot, God relented from the destructive order, because he looked back through the ages to Isaac on an altar there – and therefore God now told the angel what the angel had then told Abraham, to refrain from letting his hand touch the beloved. “A line runs from Abraham's great act of obedience,” through the sparing of Israel at the Passover, “to the deliverance of Jerusalem” in the days of David.31 So “David built an altar there to the LORD, and presented ascension offerings,” as Abraham had (1 Chronicles 21:26). And “David said, 'Here shall be the House of the LORD God, and here the altar for ascension offering for Israel,” where Abraham's and now his stood (1 Chronicles 22:1). Later he “gave Solomon the plan” for it all (1 Chronicles 28:11-19), and Solomon fulfilled it on just that hallowed spot, building the temple and its altar right there (2 Chronicles 3:1).
So then, “for the first time, the temple was built in the place which Abraham, instructed by God, had chosen for the purpose of sacrifice,”32 the place God had picked as “the place of sacrificial worship par excellence,”33 the selfsame spot Abraham had originally sanctified at God's direction as a site for complete consecration.34 “The place where Abraham built an altar to sacrifice his son is none other than the future location of the temple..., the only place where God's people could come in order to make sacrifices to God.”35
Okay, but why does any of that matter? Well, a major part of temple worship, as outlined before the temple was there, was that, on a continual daily basis, Israel would sacrifice on the altar two year-old male lambs, one in the morning and another in the evening, as “a continual ascension offering throughout your generations,” God had instructed Moses (Exodus 29:38-42). In the desert, this happened in front of the opening of the tent of meeting. But once the temple was built, it was put on “the place that the LORD your God” chose, that “there you shall bring your ascension offerings and your sacrifices” (Deuteronomy 12:5-6). In fact, Moses warned, “take care that you do not offer your ascension offerings at any place that you see, but at the place that the LORD will choose..., there you shall offer your ascension offerings” (Deuteronomy 12:13-14) – at the temple on the mount.
It was mainly for this twice-daily ascension offering that the altar was hallowed (Exodus 29:44). The lamb that was offered on it in the morning was the very first sacrifice of the day, so “all subsequent sacrifices offered during the day were placed upon it” as their foundation, while the lamb offered at twilight was the last sacrifice of the day, the one kept burning through the night so that the holy flames would never die (Leviticus 6:9).36 All the aspects of Israel's worship each day were sandwiched between those two lambs, which kept the whole thing chugging along. So it was mainly for those daily ascension offerings that the priests were chosen (Exodus 29:44). They were chosen from one tribe, which had been selected in place of the brotherhood of the firstborn (Numbers 3:12-13), but ancient Jews came up with a story where the choice of the Levites didn't start with Moses; they imagined how Levi was instructed in “the law of the priesthood” by none other than his grandfather Isaac, who based those teachings on his personal experience as a sacrificial victim and the explanations he was given by Abraham throughout the ordeal.37 At the very first priestly ordination in the Bible, they took “a ram for an ascension offering,” as Abraham did, and paid hands on it (Leviticus 8:18-21; 9:2), and once Aaron had “killed the ascension offering” (Leviticus 9:12), “the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people, and fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the ascension offering on the altar...; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces” (Leviticus 9:23-24). This is actually the second time in the Bible after Genesis 22 where you get a ram, an ascension offering, and the LORD making himself seen.38
So now, these ram-consecrated priests and their twice-a-day lamb offerings are moved to the temple, where their altar is effectively a rebuilding of Abraham's altar. With that, Abraham's sacrifice becomes “a precursor to the temple sacrifices” at that same spot.39 The offering of Isaac becomes “the basis for the twice-daily offering” of the lamb at the temple,40 and so “the sacrifice of Isaac was a foundational offering that paved the way for the ongoing liturgy in the temple,”41 all of Israel's life of worship being based on what Abraham did as his supreme display of faith, obedience, and awe.
Whenever the priests slew those lambs at either end of the day, or any other ascension offerings in between, the rules of God told them that “he shall bring a male without blemish, and he shall kill it on the north side of the altar before the LORD” – a very specific instruction (Leviticus 1:10-11). But the thing about the Hebrew word for 'north' is that the same word can be read as 'hidden.'42 So what, asked the rabbis, is hidden before the LORD at the altar on the mountain at every sacrifice? I bet you can guess their answer. “When Abraham our father bound Isaac his son, the Holy One instituted the sacrifice of two he-lambs, one in the morning and one in the evening. Why did he do this? When Israel offers up the daily sacrifices on the altar and read this verse” from Leviticus about it, God “remembers the binding of Isaac” on that altar,43 which is “preserved in God's memory whenever the [daily lamb] sacrifices are carried out.”44 As God had told Abraham and Isaac, according to a first-century Jewish reteller, “Your memory will be before me always..., from one generation to another.”45 So, they said, “the lamb was chosen to recall the merit of a man, the unique one, who was bound... like a lamb for a burnt offering on the altar.”46 Isaac on the altar is the origin story of the temple lambs and every sacrifice.
Remember what Genesis said: “On the mount of the LORD, it will be seen” (Genesis 22:14). At the temple each day, during the sacrificial service of God, what did God see as he looks down toward their worship? According to this line of thought, every morning and every evening, the priest offers the ascension-offering lamb for Israel, but when God looks down, he sees Abraham laying Isaac on the altar. Every lamb offered in the temple was “a kind of reenactment of the binding of Isaac.”47 God brings it to mind, sees Abraham and Isaac hidden in each sacrificial act at the temple, and imputes to each sacrifice made there the original offering of the beloved son. So “the daily offering taps into the power of that foundational moment” and infuses Abraham's merit into everything offers Israel up, reckons to them sacrificial faith and love, his obedience and devotion.48
Doesn't this revolutionize our vision of what Israel's worship could've meant? Isaac was made to ascend up the mount of the LORD to be slain as an ascension offering at the place (Genesis 22:2). And then the psalmist asks us, “Who may ascend the mount of the LORD, or who may stand in his holy place?” (Psalm 24:3). Of course, we know the answer: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart,” for starters (Psalm 24:4) – that's the one who will encounter, on the mount of the LORD, “blessing from... the God of his salvation” (Psalm 24:5). But when they come, they come and lay Isaac on the altar in each lamb, and everything else is built on that, all of Israel's worship is founded on a supreme sacrifice made present again and again in each animal immolated on the altar.
Of course, the trouble is how difficult it is to keep hands clean and heart pure, isn't it? Inevitably, dirt and filth would collect there, and even if the sacrifices could move it to the temple like a filter, you've got to change your filters every now and then. So Israel had a feast on their national calendar, the Feast of Trumpets, which later was picked as the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. On that day, “you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with the blast of trumpets” (Leviticus 23:24). It sets in motion the Ten Days of Awe, an annual season symbolizing judgment for sin, where in Jewish lore the accounts of each one's deeds for the year are written down but open to revision by repentance.49 The Ten Days of Awe climaxed with Yom Kippur, “the Day of Atonement; it shall be for you a time of holy convocation, and you shall afflict yourselves” by fasting (Leviticus 23:27). What we find out later is that, on days of public fasting in Israel, the trumpets they blew were made from the horns of a ram.50
Remember how the story in Genesis ends when Abraham spies out and sacrifices a ram caught in the thicket by its horns (Genesis 22:13)? Well, what the Jewish assembly shouted at the temple, as the priests raised those ram-horn trumpets, was, “Blow, priests, blow! May he who answered Abraham on Mount Moriah answer you and listen to the voice of your outcry this day!”51 The rabbis went on to explain this prayer by saying that they blew rams' horns to point God back each year to Abraham, Isaac, and the ram, asking him to apply that power of redemption to Israel all over again.52 They imagined it as if Abraham had asked God, “When Isaac's children put their hands to transgressions and evil deeds, remember for their sake their father's being bound on the altar, and be filled with mercy for them,”53 and as if God had replied to Israel that, when they blow the ram's horn while one year closes and another dawns, “I will remember for you the binding of Isaac, son of Abraham, and I will ascribe it to you as if you had bound yourselves before me.”54 That is, God would impute to them the act of Isaac in offering himself totally to God, and would treat them as if they'd loved him with a whole heart. “Since Isaac was redeemed,” they said, “it is as if all of Israel was redeemed.”55 Later rabbis went so far as to say that Isaac “bound on the altar... atones for the iniquities of Israel.”56
That thought, of God identifying them with Isaac, exploded when the situations were ripe. In the days of Moses it had seemed so simple: obey God, enjoy the blessed life in the land. For all their woes with Canaanites and Philistines, for all their belittling by Assyrians and Babylonians and their tolerance by the Medes and Persians, there was seldom a danger that to obey God was to be cut off. But then came the Greeks, and a crisis in which the Jews, under oppression, found the laws of their pagan overlords directly forbidding obedience to the Law of the LORD, on pain of death. There emerged a choice: enjoy life, or obey God, but not both.
There were Jews who fought back; there were others who boldly gave their lives. Reflecting in hindsight from under Rome's thumb, Jews started to pioneer a new theology of what it means to offer your life unto death for the sake of God's name – what we call martyrdom; for them, “Isaac becomes the archetypal martyr, willingly dying for the faith” on the altar.57 The retold the tale of the Jewish woman who'd been forced to watch her seven sons tortured to death, one by one, in front of her eyes. But as the story was retold, her resolute faith in the face of such grief made her “like-souled with Abraham” in Genesis 22, for she “remembered the endurance of the godly fear of Abraham.”58 She's said to have reminded her sons that their late father “used to read to you about... Isaac being offered as a sacrifice,”59 and she told them that, because of God's generous gifts to them, “you are obliged to endure every pain for the sake of God, on account of which even our father Abraham hastened to sacrifice his son Isaac, the father of the nation,” and Isaac “did not cower in regard to his father's sword-bearing hand bearing down on him.”60 No, he “rushed to the altar,”61 he “stretches out his neck.”62
So the seven sons gave their lives, as had others – “tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life” (Hebrews 11:35). The book clarified that it was because of this voluntary gift of martyrs that “the enemies did not conquer our nation” – that for their sake “the homeland was purified,” since they had given their lives to balance out its sin, “and through the blood of these pious ones and through the propitiatory offering of their death, Divine Providence rescued the previously mistreated Israel.”63 In this Jewish theology, the martyrs, precisely by imitating Isaac and laying down their lives as if a sacrifice on an altar, “atone for sin, avert the divine wrath, defeat the tyrant, purify the land, and restore peace” to the people.64
And so the cycle of regular sins and annual cleansing and seasons of emergency would continue, as – like a ram tangled in a thicket – Israel kept getting snared in first this sin, then that sin; snagged by first this empire, then that empire, throughout the ages. But the hope the rabbis kept burning was that their aspirations at the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement could be projected large on the screen of time itself, so that when all these generations had come and gone, and when the final tribulation at last reached its fever pitch, “at the end they will be redeemed by the horns of this ram,” conformed fully and finally to the freedom of their father Isaac.65
That's the story as it played out in the rabbinic Jewish vision: that when Isaac was laid on that altar, and when Abraham was provided a ram to actually slay as if it were him, Isaac was the prototype of the Passover lamb; he was the foundation for the lambs offered daily, the one hidden in each act of sacrifice and seen on the mountain by God in all Israel's worship; he was their annual appeal for mercy, that God would count his merit as theirs and have mercy on them; he was their model in times of crisis, laying down their lives as martyrs in imitation of him on the altar and thus saving the people again; he was the shape of history itself, where in the end they would be redeemed from the chopping block by the horns of the ram, freed unto eternal life.
But it's not enough. You could see from the start where the story of Isaac was really going, couldn't you? That story “actually happened and is a prophecy.”66 In Genesis, Isaac is described to Abraham as “your son, your only, whom you love” (Genesis 22:2), a line which the Greek Bible reads as “your son, the beloved one, the one whom you love.”67 Fast-forward, and the New Testament begins with “the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1), and when the voice calls down from heaven, “with a fatherly voice, as from Abraham to Isaac,”68 what does it say? “You are my Son, the Beloved One; in you I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), quoting precisely from Genesis 22.69
At the other end of his ministry, Jesus “brought” three disciples “up a high mountain by themselves” (Matthew 17:1), as in Greek Genesis Abraham was called to “bring” his son up a mountain “in the high country,” and added two servants for a group of four.70 In Jewish tradition, Abraham recognized the mountain because he “saw the cloud of glory enveloping the mountain,”71 and on the mountain Jesus “was transfigured before them..., and a bright cloud overshadowed them” (Matthew 17:2-5). Then, as a voice called from heaven before, so again it came: “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5). In Genesis, after the heavenly voice, Abraham “lifted up his eyes” and he “saw one ram” (Genesis 22:13); here, when the disciples “lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only” (Matthew 17:8).72 Only then does Jesus warn them to “tell no one the vision” from the mountain until after the passion (Matthew 17:9-11).
Genesis 22, at heart, is a father asked to offer up his only-begotten son, whom he loves, as a sacrifice; so, when the time comes, the son leaves his friends behind and carries the wood for the sacrifice on his shoulder up the hill to the site where he's to give his life. What more familiar event does that sound like to you? In Genesis 22, Isaac was “prefigured in the likeness of the Lord.”73 The Father summoned the Son to such a purpose. Like the servants staying behind, the disciples fled Jesus in the decisive hour.74 Then “they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called Place of the Skull” (John 19:16-17). Early Christians marveled that he “bore the wood on his shoulders, going up to slaughter like Isaac at the hand of his father,”75 fulfilling the image “set forth in Isaac when he was offered on the altar.”76 Everything that Isaac went through “happened as a type of the cross” of Christ.77 In fact, in some Christian traditions, instead of identifying Mount Moriah with the Temple of Solomon, Abraham's mountain became “the very place where the cross of Christ was fastened; there also grew the tree which held the ram that saved Isaac. This place,” they said, “is the middle of the earth, Adam's tomb, the altar of Melchizedek, Golgotha... There Abraham made Isaac ascend upon the altar, and saw the cross, Christ, and our father Adam's salvation.”78
Where “Abraham offered God a mortal son who wasn't put to death” in the end, “God delivered to death an immortal son for men.”79 Didn't Abraham say, “God will himself see to the lamb” (Genesis 22:8)? Well, “behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:36)! Isaac was freed, for a thorn-crowned ram entangled in a tree took his place (Genesis 22:13). Abraham saw that ram “and recognized the mystery, that our salvation would be on a tree.”80 Abraham “saw the Messiah in the sheep which was offered instead [of Isaac] as a sacrifice to God.”81 As Isaac had been a foreshadowing of Jesus, “we can even say that the ram was a symbol of Christ, for to be held fast by thorns is like a crucifixion. So all this obscurely prefigures Christ.”82
The Isaac of Jewish tradition believed he'd “been born into the world to be a sacrifice to him who made me,”83 and later sources even added that Isaac “wished to sacrifice himself for the sake of the world.”84 Jesus called himself the One “whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world” (John 10:36), adding that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17) – for “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). For in fact, “the death of Isaac would not have liberated the inhabited world, but only that of our Savior, by whose wound we all have been healed.”85 In Greek Genesis, the voice of God rejoices that Father Abraham “did not spare your beloved son because of me,”86 and St. Paul tells us that now God is a Father “who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). “For the sake of the world, the Father offered his beloved Son.”87
In fact, one early Christian draws the tightest possible connection between the two: Abraham “readily offered his only-begotten and beloved son as a sacrifice to God, so that God in turn might have the good pleasure of offering his beloved and only-begotten Son for his entire offspring as a sacrifice for our redemption.”88 Did you catch that? Abraham offers his son to God so that God will offer his Son for humanity. On this reading, what we find in Genesis 22 is a cause of God sending his Son, God receiving his Son as a sacrifice at the cross, God sparing him not but giving him up for us all. Genesis 22 is so much more than an example of a man's most audacious faith; it's a foreshadowing of the greatest story ever told and the pretext for your salvation!
If some said that Isaac was the first Passover lamb, we know who the last and truest one was: “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). It was from him that the Passover derived backwards its protecting power, because Isaac was a shadow of this “firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29), and “in him we have redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7). If some said that Isaac was the basis of their plea for mercy at the trumpet call, we know better still that we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24), for we are not simply bound with Isaac but “crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus is the model of martyrs, for he is the one “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood” (Romans 3:25), whose death conquers the devilish tyrant to win us purity and peace, a power extended through “the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6). It's him whom we await at “the sound of the trumpet of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
And in the meantime, the power of the sacrifices in the temple wasn't truly based on looking back to Isaac, not ultimately. Because Isaac was a type of Christ. And it was Christ to whom they pointed ahead in implicit faith with those offerings, it was Christ whom they meant, “for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:13). As the priests in the temple acted as Abraham on the mount day after day, presenting again the original sacrifice in each offering, so it was said, Christ's single offering is made present day after day in the Church – not in new offerings of blood, but on altars and in hearts, presenting Christ and pointing to Christ and celebrating the feast of the Lord Christ, the Son of God. Because he is the true foundation of all Christian worship, everything we do. His temple, his Church, is made the place of provision, where his grace is offered for us; the place where he sees us, as we gather unto him; the place where he is seen, when we behold the King in his beauty; the place of the vision of heaven, where we worship “a Lamb standing as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). Worthy is he, worthy is the Beloved Son, worthy is the Passover and Temple and Martyr of Martyrs, worthy is the Mercy and Forgiveness made flesh, worthy is the True Isaac, to stand alive from the altar on the heavenly Mount Zion “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Revelation 12)! Hallelujah! Thanks be to God. Amen.
1 Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 31.2, in Loeb Classical Library 24:91.
2 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.234, in Loeb Classical Library 242:117.
3 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 174.
4 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.6, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:179.
5 Julius Firmicus Maternus, Error of the Pagan Religions 27.4, in Ancient Christian Writers 37:106.
6 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000), 38.
7 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 310.
8 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 206.
9 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 111, 177.
10 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 198.
11 Jubilees 17:15; 18:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:90-91.
12 Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten, “Abraham, Job, and the Book of Jubilees: The Intertextual Relationship of Genesis 22:1-19, Job 1–2:13, and Jubilees 17:15–18:19,” in Ed Noort and Eibert Tigchelaar, eds., The Sacrifice of Isaac: The Aqedah (Genesis 22) and Its Interpretations (Brill, 2002), 75.
13 Jubilees 18:18-19, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:91.
14 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 179-180.
15 Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 18.5, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:325.
16 Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Pisha 7, in Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 40.
17 Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Beshallah 4, in J. Z. Lauterbach, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 145.
18 Leroy Huizenga, The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew (Brill, 2009), 92, summing up 4Q225.
19 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 391.
20 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:140.
21 Demetrius the Chronographer, fragment 1, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:848.
22 m. Avot 5.6, in Shaye J. D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin, eds., The Oxford Annotated Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 2022), 2:742.
23 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 155.
24 Jubilees 18:13, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:91.
25 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.226, in Loeb Classical Library 242:113.
26 Genesis Rabbah 56.10, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:500.
27 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 120-121.
28 Jubilees 17:16, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:90.
29 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 181-182.
30 Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Pisha 11, in Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 61.
31 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 182.
32 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q.102, a.4, ad 2, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 16:330.
33 Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (Yale University Press, 2009), 118.
34 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 351.
35 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 302.
36 Gary A. Anderson, That I May Dwell Among Them: Incarnation and Atonement in the Tabernacle Narrative (Eerdmans, 2023), 167.
37 Aramaic Levi Document, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures 1:136-137; see discussion in Gary A. Anderson, That I May Dwell Among Them: Incarnation and Atonement in the Tabernacle Narrative (Eerdmans, 2023), 168-173.
38 Christophe Nihan, “Abraham Traditions and Cult Politics in the Persian Period: Moriyyah and Shalem in Genesis,” in Mark G. Brett and Jacob Woehrle, eds., The Politics of the Ancestors: Exegetical and Historical Perspectives on Genesis 12-36 (Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 265.
39 Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 142.
40 Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Perspective on the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (Yale University Press, 2009), 128.
41 Gary A. Anderson, “The Akedah in Canonical and Artistic Perspective,” in Nathan MacDonald, Mark W. Elliott, and Grant Macaskill, eds., Genesis and Christian Theology (Eerdmans, 2012), 50.
42 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 185.
43 Leviticus Rabbah 2.11, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 4:31.
44 Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 143.
45 Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32.4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:346.
46 Targum Neofiti Leviticus 22:27, in Aramaic Bible 3:87.
47 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 185.
48 Gary A. Anderson, That I May Dwell Among Them: Incarnation and Atonement in the Tabernacle Narrative (Eerdmans, 2023), 173.
49 Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 149.
50 m. Rosh Hashanah 3.4, in Shaye J. D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin, eds., The Oxford Annotated Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 2022), 1:689.
51 m. Ta'anit 2.5, in Shaye J. D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin, eds., The Oxford Annotated Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 2022), 1:706.
52 Genesis Rabbah 56.10, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:499.
53 Pesikta de Rav Kahana 23.9, in William G. Braude and Israel J. Kapstein, ed., Pesikta de-Rab Kahana: R. Kahana's Compilation of Discourses for Sabbaths and Festal Days (Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 480.
54 b. Rosh Hashanah 16a, in Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, ed., Koren Talmud Bavli (Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2014), 11:317.
55 y. Ta'anit 2.4, in Heinrich W. Guggenheimer, The Jerusalem Talmud (De Gruyter, 2015), II/3:69.
56 Song of Songs Rabbah 1.14, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 9:81.
57 Iain W. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 148.
58 4 Maccabees 14:20; 15:28, in David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Sinaiticus (Brill, 2006), 49, 53.
59 4 Maccabees 18:11, in David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Sinaiticus (Brill, 2006), 61.
60 4 Maccabees 16:19-20, in David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Sinaiticus (Brill, 2006), 55.
61 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.232, in Loeb Classical Library 242:115.
62 Targum Neofiti Genesis 22:10, in Aramaic Bible 1A:118.
63 4 Maccabees 17:20-22, in David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Sinaiticus (Brill, 2006), 59.
64 Leroy Huizenga, The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew (Brill, 2009), 119.
65 y. Ta'anit 2.4, in Heinrich W. Guggenheimer, The Jerusalem Talmud (De Gruyter, 2015), II/3:69.
66 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.7, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:180.
67 Susan C. Brayford, Genesis (Brill, 2007), 93.
68 Testament of Levi 18.6, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:795.
69 Leroy Huizenga, The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew (Brill, 2009), 153.
70 David Andrew Smith, “Isaac Transfigured: The Aqedah as Mashal in Matthean Midrash,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 84/1 (January 2022): 70-71.
71 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 22:4, in Aramaic Bible 1B:78.
72 David Andrew Smith, “Isaac Transfigured: The Aqedah as Mashal in Matthean Midrash,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 84/1 (January 2022): 72.
73 Cyprian of Carthage, On the Good of Patience 10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 36:272.
74 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 199.
75 Melito of Sardis, fragment 9, in Popular Patristics Series 20:76.
76 Barnabas 7.3, in Loeb Classical Library 25:37.
77 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 47.14, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:21.
78 Cave of Treasures 29.4-8, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures 1:562.
79 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 8.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:144.
80 Ambrose of Milan, On His Brother Satyrus 2.98, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 22:241.
81 Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letter 6.19, in Translated Texts for Historians 81:86.
82 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 30.3.9, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/15:342.
83 Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32.3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:345.
84 Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.15, in Yancy Smith, The Mystery of Anointing: Hippolytus' Commentary on the Song of Songs in Social and Critical Contexts (Gorgias Press, 2015), 453.
85 Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letter 6.20, in Translated Texts for Historians 81:86.
86 Genesis 22:12 LXX, in Susan C. Brayford, Genesis (Brill, 2007), 93.
87 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 74, in Library of Early Christianity 1:151.
88 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.5.4, in Ancient Christian Writers 72:22.
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