The Gospel Story of the Binding of Isaac
The Gospel Story of the Binding of Isaac.
“Some time later, The God tested Abraham’s faith. ‘Abraham!’ God called. ‘Yes, here I am,’ he replied. God said, ‘Please take your son, your only son who you love so much, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” (Genesis 22:1-2).
A Reader’s First Reaction to This Story. What?! You can’t be serious! This outrageous loyalty test for a so-called “friend of God?” This macabre request from a God who thinks that child sacrifice is an abomination? To kill a purely innocent child who was destined to build a faith-centered family line that would become as numberless as the stars? This undeserving death to the child of the Covenant, the boy who will continue the long line of God’s Chosen People who will become God’s light to the world? Is it just me, or is this not completely unreasonable to ask of Abraham! To add to the illogic of it all, “Father Abraham” didn’t even bother to advocate for his son like he did earlier for the residents of Sodom? As Kirkegaard once said, “Abraham’s blind obedience to God was appalling to watch.” After waiting all those years for God to follow through on His promise to Abraham and Sarah, that He would supernaturally bring a baby boy into their world, God ends up ordering that very child to die for no apparent reason? As Rabbi Jonathon Sacks stated in his commentary on Genesis, “The words in this story, in all the intervening centuries, have not lost their power to shock. Throughout history, we Jews have been called to treasure our children. Our entire value system is built on it, since every child is a miracle.” Dr. Ellen Davis commented, “If this is a test, then it would seem that both Abraham and God have failed miserably, both the One who devised the test, and the one who submitted to it. What kind of God commands a father to sacrifice his only son, lets him go through every agonized motion, and then halts the action just as the knife has reached the top of its arc, at the very moment of descent into the boy’s throat? What kind of father accepts the ostensible terms of this loyalty test?” Another way we could put this is that this story of the Binding of Isaac is at best puzzling, and at worst mystifying. It doesn’t make any difference that God started out by essentially saying “Pretty Please?” to Abraham for such an outlandish request.
The Vulnerability of God. Dr. Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity school goes on to proclaim that through this rather bizarre story we nonetheless are able to discover something about God, and that the Binding of Isaac enables us to make some sense of Christ’s own sacrificial death. Dr. Davis explains to us why this sordid story is so close to the beginning of the Bible right there in Genesis, noting that many readers will read this story and make a point of stopping there, never to go further in Scripture. “This story tells us something fundamental about the God of Israel… about a God who is vulnerable in love, terribly and terrifyingly so, in the context of covenant relationship. For love and vulnerability are inextricably linked. The faithfulness of even the best of God’s covenant partners is always up for grabs. God is in effect vulnerable to human unfaithfulness.” So out of love God asked Abraham to do something monumental and difficult, and did not demand obedience. God requested, gave Abraham a choice, and offered the opportunity to trust Him in a profoundly unexpected way. God was vulnerable to Abraham’s potential unfaithfulness, but Abraham came through.
“On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and return to you.’ And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father!’ and he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ Isaac said, ‘Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God Himself will see to it, He will personally provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together.” (Gen. 22:4-8).
Abraham. This pioneering patriarch of the Chosen People of God was around 130 years old at the time of the Binding of Isaac. Rabbinic tradition has held that up to this point, God had given Abraham nine tests to prove his worthiness to begin a new race and religion, and that this major event with Isaac was the tenth and last test. So we could say that this incident on Mount Moriah was Abraham’s Final Exam, the last opportunity for Abraham to prove his commitment to God, his trust in God’s will for his life and heritage. As we can see, Abraham was deliberate, intentional and determined after hearing God’s shocking request to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. He got up early the next morning, saddled his donkey, took Isaac and his two young servants, and started the journey in earnest before he could change his mind. At some point he cut the wood for the sacrifice and took it with him. It appears that he chose not to tell either his wife Sarah or Isaac the reason for leaving in such haste. Abraham kept the mother in the dark about losing her only son, and even Isaac did not have a clue at what was about to take place.
Isaac. This beloved son was no doubt fully aware that he was a miracle child and was probably treated as such by his parents. He was a young man at the time of his Binding, with some historians estimating he was in his mid-twenties and others mid-thirties. So Isaac could have fled the scene at any time when the situation started dawning on him, but evidently he trusted his father through thick and thin. Abraham kept Isaac in the dark until the fateful moment on the altar.
Sarah. Why was the matriarch Sarah, the mother of Isaac, just an afterthought in Abraham’s mind this entire incident? He and Isaac left early before she even got up in the morning, and he didn’t give her a hint about what was going on. He didn’t think to maybe even let Sarah offer her son some final hugs and kisses and farewells? The fact is that there are no recorded words exchanged between Abraham and Sarah after this incident, and that Sarah died soon afterward. Did she die of shock after hearing the full story from her husband and son? Perhaps Abraham’s extreme obedience to God here cost him more than we know.
“Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the Angel of the Lord shouted to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, “Here I am.’ And the Angel said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’ “(Gen. 22:9-12).
Abraham. What was father Abraham thinking when he built the altar, laid the wood, bound his innocent son, and placed him on the altar to be slaughtered? To say he had profound misgivings, that this was mortally grievous to him, does not even approach what he must have been feeling during those moments. But we do get a peek into his thinking from this insight from Hebrews 11:17-19: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ Abraham considered that God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” So it appears that Abraham’s trust in God was to such a degree that if he actually did kill his son, God would simply raise him up from the dead, if only in order to continue the promised family line. Perhaps this was the main way Abraham was able to reconcile God’s horrific request with what he knew about the character of God. The end result of this morally perplexing incident was that Isaac was in fact as good as dead without ever dying. Nonetheless, surely the heart of father Abraham was breaking into a million pieces as he stretched out his hand with the knife over his son.
Isaac. Forget Abraham for a minute… What was Isaac thinking during this ordeal that he could have escaped at any time? Scripture never tells us. The fact that he willingly allowed his father to bind him with ropes to render him helpless, to then submit to being placed on the altar to have his throat slit, his dead body then consumed by fire, all of this when it was obvious he had done nothing to deserve any of this! His torrent of emotions must have included a broken heart that his beloved father would do such a thing, complete misery that he wouldn’t ever be able to say goodbye to his mother, severe trauma as he thought about the pain he would soon experience, and certainly a crisis of faith in the God that he was being raised to believe in. Did Isaac close his eyes and clench his jaw as his father raised the knife to kill him?
Angel of Yahweh. Angel of the LORD. This is another mysterious appearance of a specially designated Angel of Yahweh. In many places in the Hebrew Bible, this particular Angel is specifically identified with the Lord God and is distinguished from Yahweh. This One-of-a-Kind heavenly Messenger has appeared as a divine visitor to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre and on Mt. Moriah, was a welcome comfort to Hagar, and a wrestling opponent to Jacob. This Angel appeared to Moses in the burning bush, as a sustainer to Elijah and a redeemer to Isaiah. This Angel was reportedly with Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace and to Daniel himself on the banks of the Tigris River. He appeared to Gideon on the threshing floor and to Samson’s parents at his birth announcement. Balaam was shocked to see Him while riding his donkey, and so was Joshua just outside the city of Jericho. Most scholars, including the early church Fathers, considered this special Angel of Yahweh to be God in the form of a Man, the preincarnate Christ, Lord God’s unique Representative to speak His mind and do His will on earth. It is safe to say that it is Jesus Himself who is shouting so urgently to Abraham about to slaughter his son. Isn’t it especially poignant that Jesus is asking the father not to slay his son, when a few centuries later He is asking His Father to withdraw the cup of death from Him?
“… and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son Isaac. So Abraham called the name of that place, Yahweh-jireh, ‘the LORD-will-see-to-it and provide’…” (Genesis 22:13-14).
The Sacrificial Ram. Unexpectedly, in the nick of time, God’s Son in heaven held back Abraham’s knife and provided a ram caught in the bushes. The ram, not Isaac, was God’s provision for the sacrifice. Isaac, perhaps still terrified and perplexed, must have been thinking… That could have been me! But God came to the rescue. God was happy to save Isaac’s life and confirm Abraham’s faith in the process. The ram’s horn, the shofar, has been central to Jewish worship ever since in remembrance of this ram caught in the thicket that saved Isaac’s life. Yes, Angel Jesus intervened, saved Isaac from being innocently sacrificed, and confirmed Abraham’s deep trust in God. Abraham then composed a new Name for God to honor the occasion… ‘Yahweh will see to it and provide.’ The Messenger Jesus then spoke to Abraham a second time, repeating the promise to Abraham of so long ago, that there would countless descendants in Abraham’s line. “In your seed, all the nations of earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” And then, interestingly enough, we have no idea what Abraham was thinking after the incident. Scripture simply reports that he went home, and that’s the last we hear of it.
Yearly Prayer in the Synagogue on the Day of Remembrance. “Remember in our favor, O Lord our God, the oath which You have sworn to our father Abraham on Mt. Moriah; consider the binding of his son Isaac upon the altar when he suppressed his love in order to do Your will with a whole heart.”
Gospel Fulfillment. For the 4,000 years since it occurred, this rather strange, difficult and sacred story has remained a clear picture of what happened to another beloved son on a nearby hill, Golgotha. The Mt. Moriah incident reveals a deep mystery beyond us, the mystery of a Father sacrificing a Son. Abraham’s feelings must have mirrored the Father God’s when Jesus stretched out on the cross. And Isaac’s feelings were certainly duplicated by those of Jesus as He prepared to be sacrificed. The difference in these monumental events is that in Isaac’s case, he was spared. And in Jesus’ case, He was not. Jesus was like the ram caught in the bushes. Father God allowed His Son to be sacrificed for the salvation of the world. During Jesus’ Passion and death, the Father’s heart must have broken into a million pieces, just like Abraham. The glorious fact is that Abraham received his son Isaac alive after Isaac had been as good as dead, as did Father God on Easter Sunday. This mysterious episode in the life of the Patriarchs was a living parable, for it prefigured the Death and Resurrection of the Lamb of God. It’s not surprising then that Christian theology has maintained that the Binding of Isaac helped to fertilize the ground for the Passion of Christ. It makes perfect sense that on a wall of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, near the scene of the crucifixion, is a large-scale painting that depicts Abraham’s Binding of Isaac.
Gospel Parallels. The Binding of Isaac was perhaps the supreme mini-gospel in all the Hebrew Bible. The unforgettable story that happened on Mt. Moriah was mirrored centuries later on the nearby hill Golgotha. Mt. Moriah was the land on which Solomon built the Holy Temple. And Isaac was a picture of Jesus before there was ever the incarnate Christ much later. Yes, Isaac proclaimed the gospel story thousands of years before its time. Think of the parallels between the two stories… the miraculous conceptions of both Isaac and Jesus; they were both named before birth and given a God-ordained destiny; they were both beloved sons of their fathers; Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice just as Jesus carried the cross for His; the sacrificial spot, which was also Isaac’s figurative resurrection spot, was seen on the third day, as on Easter Sunday for Jesus’ resurrection; the ram caught in the thicket was the sacrificial lamb, just as Jesus was on the Cross.
Isaac’s After-Shocks. One wonders, though, how that dramatic, historic episode on Mt. Morah impacted Isaac’s life. Think of it… As a young man with his whole life ahead of him, he was stretched out on a sacrificial altar, bound, expected to just lie there submissively like an obedient child. The knife was in his father’s raised hand, ready to slay him, and was only stopped at the last minute by the Son of God, the special heavenly Messenger. What was Isaac thinking during that near-death experience? Was he wondering what he had done so wrong that he would be executed? Was he mystified that the father he loved and trusted would kill him for no apparent reason? Did he doubt the very God that had been so close to his family growing up? If he was at all human, and he was, his whole world must have turned upside-down. He would certainly have been shaken to the core for who knows how long. The question is, did Isaac ever get over his experience on Mt. Moriah with his father? Did it effect his relationship with father Abraham in any way? Did he have a difficult time trusting his father after this incident? We don’t know, since the Scripture never tells us about this incident from Isaac’s perspective. We do know, though, that there are no recorded conversations between Abraham and Isaac after the incident on Mt. Moriah. Unsurprisingly, Isaac grew up as a protected, if not coddled, only child. Even his marriage to Rebekah was arranged by father Abraham. But Isaac seemed to accept the way he was raised, he tended to mind his own business, and was not an initiator like his father. Isaac was content to stay at home, raise a family, and increase the family’s wealth as an owner of much livestock. Isaac was a very patient man, and a first-rate husband to Rebekah. He faithfully grew into his enduring role of Jewish patriarch, and is a major hero in Biblical history.
The Prayer Life of Isaac. We are not given very much information about Isaac’s adult life, but we do know he was a man of prayer. Isaac participated in the gospel story by maintaining a deep and intimate relationship with the Father through prayer and meditation. It’s interesting to note that the Jewish sages based each of their weekday prayers on the character and actions of the patriarchs. Thus, the recommended daily prayers of Jewish believers were inspired by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham represents the morning prayer, since he often “rose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before God” (Gen. 19:27, 22:3). Isaac inspired the midday prayer, since he “went out to converse with God (or, to meditate) in the field toward evening” (Gen. 24:63). And Jacob represented the night prayer, since his powerful encounters with God were in the night, including his visions and dreams and his momentous wrestling with the mysterious angel (Gen. 28:11, 32:22).
Quiet Heroism. Isaac’s life symbolized the midday prayer. He, like the afternoon, was a gradual transition from one reality to the next. “Isaac’s is the quiet heroism of continuity, a link in the chain of the covenant, joining one generation to the next.” (Rabbi Jonathon Sacks). Isaac was not the initiator or the prime mover like his father or his son. His role was to continue the transitional virtues of steadfastness, loyalty, and the will to persevere. Isaac’s afternoon prayer was described in rabbinic tradition as a dialogue, a conversation between God and himself. Isaac went off by himself into a field and talked with God and reflected about the faith in the middle of the day. He continued the faith of his father Abraham, and he did so responsibly and dependably. Isaac captured the spirit of the midday prayer and lived it out.
A prayer to the Person of Yahweh-Jireh (yah-way yeerah), LORD-will-see-to-it-and-provide:
We rejoice in You, Yahweh-jireh, LORD-provides. For You have provided our redemption through Your only Son, the very Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. You have sacrificed Him in Your compassion for us, Lord, because we were bruised reeds You would not break, smoldering wicks You would not snuff out. You delivered Him up while we were yet helpless and bound by our own sinfulness, that we might live through Him. O what a mystery of love, that Jesus was like a ram caught in a thicket, a lamb led to slaughter, bruised for our iniquities, pierced for our transgressions. How marvelous is Your mercy, LORD-Provider. Worthy is Your beloved and only begotten Son, Your pure Provision, through Whom You will see to our needs and graciously supply for us according to Your riches in glory. We bow before You, Yahweh-jireh, and praise Your holy Name. Amen.