Genesis 22, which narrates Abraham’s obedience to God in sacrificing his son Isaac, provides a singular example of a trial of faith. In the preceding chapter God had promised Abraham that his true posterity would come through Isaac (Genesis 21:12), but now He commands him to offer up his “only son,” this same Isaac, as a holocaust (22:2).
It is important to the dramatic structure of this story that Abraham does not know he is being tried. Nor does Isaac. Indeed, only God and the reader know it (22:1). In this respect, the story of Abraham resembles the Book of Job, where the reader, but not Job, is instructed that a trial is taking place. In the case of the Abraham story, this notice to the reader is absolutely essential, because both the Jew and the Christian know that the God of the Bible hates human sacrifice. A trial of faith, on the other hand, is exactly what we should expect from the God of the Bible (cf. 1 Peter 1:6-7).
Abraham’s obedience to the command is both immediate and unquestioning. It is not that Abraham is bashful. The reader, recalling Abraham’s earlier “haggling” with the Lord on that business of Sodom and the plight of his nephew Lot (18:16-33), knows that this ancient Semite is not the least bit inhibited about speaking his mind to the Almighty. On the other hand, the reader also notes that when Abraham receives a direct order from God (12:1-4), his obedience is prompt and without reservation. It is the same here. Abraham consistently demonstrates that the real test of faith is obedience (cf. James 2:20-24).
Thus Abraham and Isaac, father and son, climb the mountain of sacrifice (Genesis 22:6). In the enigmatic conversation between the two climbers (22:7-8), the attentive Bible-reader perceives a rich mystery concealed in Abraham’s reply that “God Himself will provide the victim for the sacrifice.” Truly He will! Abraham’s words are a prophecy of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Isaac himself, however, says nothing in reply (22:9-10). Indeed, Isaac remains entirely silent after Abraham speaks. He is like a sheep led to the slaughter that opens not his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). Although the concentration of the story is directed at Abraham, we must not lose sight of Isaac, who prefigures in this story the mystery of our redemption.
We discern this mystery in the victim substituted for Isaac, the ram caught by its horns. This is the Bible’s first instance of a “substitution” made in the matter of sacrifice. This ram caught in the bush foreshadows, first of all, the paschal lamb of the Mosaic Covenant, which would be slaughtered on behalf of Israel’s firstborn sons on the night of the Exodus. Here in Genesis 22, then, we are dealing with the Bible’s earliest configuration of a category important in biblical soteriology.
The Apostle Paul appealed to this category when he wrote that God “did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Echoing this text from Romans, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote: “Abraham, according to his faith, adhered to the command of God’s Word, and with a ready mind delivered up, as a sacrifice to God, his only-begotten and beloved son, in order that God also might be pleased to offer up, for all his seed, His own beloved and only-begotten Son, as a sacrifice for our redemption” (*Against the Heresies* 4.5.4).
Hence, Isaac carrying the wood up the sacrificial hill has always signified to Christian readers-at least since a paschal homily of Melito of Sardis in the second century-the willingness of God’s own Son to take up the Cross and carry it to the place of immolation.
One of our earliest Christian references to Isaac stresses also the mystery of the Resurrection. Abraham’s obedience in offering Isaac, according to Hebrews 11:17-19, was based on a conviction that “God was able to raise him up, even from the dead.” Hence, in receiving Isaac back again, Abraham enacted a “parable” of the future. The “parable” of this event indicates its prophetic sense, according to which God, in the Resurrection, received back His only Son, whom He had handed over in sacrifice for our redemption. (It is worth remarking that the NKJV, by translating *en parabole* as “in a figurative sense,” distorts the intent of the text. Abraham did not receive Isaac back “in a figurative sense,” but in a very literal sense.)
I’ve always wondered this about Abraham: if he would obey the command to slit the throat of his innocent son, how exactly are we to suppose he was able to discern the voice of God from the voice of Satan?
This also raises the question as to whether he obeyed God not because He was good but because He was powerful and if he would have obeyed the dictates of an equally omnipotent Fiend.
If the story is simply a parable and a myth, could not the moral have been better served through a less literal take on “sacrifice”?
This requirement of the shedding of blood for atonement is still a personal stumbling block of Christian theology. Must this bleeding also be accompanied by either human or animal pain or is it simply the draining of the body’s fluids that God requires? I’m not sure exactly what to make of such a being …
Issac also showed great faith and obedience. He did not protest at all either even as his own father was laying him on the sacrificial altar. Issac’s faith has always struck me to be even greater than Abraham’s.
Abraham’s obedience was not based on conjecture or perception of power, but on his communion with God through the Holy Spirit. Abraham knew that God was just, loving, and protective. Abraham’s knowledge was not just in his mind, but in his heart and soul as well.
On one level, James’ question on the necessity for the shedding of blood no longer need concern us because Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, shed His blood once, for all, the perfect sacrifice. However, I suspect that it relates to Cane?s shedding the blood of Abel.
Bill, can you answer this for James?