There is so much context here! But what stands out in Genesis 22 more than anything are the conflicting emotions and turmoil. Tired of platitudes and pat answers to the hard questions? Me too. There is a lot going on here that too many people don’t even want to acknowledge. This is a text tailor-made to be wrestled with, and we aren’t given any easy answers to important questions, so why pretend otherwise? Sometimes, in order to be our ally in our faith walk, the Bible must eschew easy interpretations to force us to hunt for the meat hidden within.
Genesis 22 is hard for adults who aren’t willing to just say, “Okay, this is a picture of Messiah and God is always right, so I am not going to think very hard about this. Don’t make eye contact, just don’t make eye contact!” Seriously, for those who wrestle with the text as Jacob, Moses, and the prophets all wrestled with God, we all probably wish that it just wasn’t in the Bible at all. The story is horrifying, and we are unable to give definitive and comfortable answers for what happened and why. It isn’t nearly as clear in Hebrew as it can sometimes appear in English and it isn’t very clear in English as it is. Why did God do it—I mean, couldn’t He have tested Abraham another way? Was it a request or a command? Why didn’t Abraham say anything for three days? What was Isaac’s response? Or Sarah’s? What actually happened afterward? How much do we read into the text as opposed to what is really said? And how can we reconcile any of this with the witness of the character of God through His Son? We’ve been taught for too long to just say that it’s all really okay and not to ask questions but this chapter of the Bible literally begs us to ask questions and to be unsatisfied with pat answers and platitudes. And because kids are going to ask questions, we need to handle those questions honestly and respectfully. Maybe we weren’t allowed to ask the hard questions, but that’s not a good legacy to pass down the generations if we want the Bible to be our children’s ally instead of their enemy. All kids are going to somewhat deconstruct what they have believed and accepted at some point and we want them to know that asking questions is a good thing, and not a bad thing. That’s the firmest foundation we can give them—not shutting them down when they are struggling for a place to plant their feet. It’s a tragic thing that has been done to us that we ought not to pass on like fraternity hazing rituals.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. However, now I am exclusively working to teach and make disciples of kids over at Context for Kids, so this portion of my ministry is currently devoted to teaching adults how to teach kids by making sure that we are supporting their growth and faith in the Messiah. I want you to be able to answer their hard questions about the text instead of feeling like you have to blow them off. Kids are our full-blown brothers and sisters in Christ. Let’s stop sidelining them with cute stories designed to make the people in the Bible look like perfect heroes and instead teach kids how to take Yeshua/Jesus seriously as the only true hero of the Bible and the greater Moses, greater Temple, and greater Prophet whom Matthew tells us He is. I still have a ton of more advanced teachings for grownups at theancientbridge.com and on my YouTube channel. I also have curriculum books and all that jazz available on Amazon. All Scripture this week is from the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible.
Genesis 22 takes place sometime “after these things” in chapter 21—namely the sending away of Ishmael and the covenant ceremony between Abimelech and Abraham. How long after? Well, quite a bit later as we see that Isaac can talk, walk great distances, carry firewood, and ask disturbing questions about suspicious situations when necessary. So, I am going to go out on a limb here and say older than three. Call me crazy if you want but I am willing to die on this particular hill. Oh man, I guess that’s an inappropriate expression to use when talking about this particular chapter. At the upper end, Genesis 23 begins with the death of Sarah at the age of 127, making Isaac around or at least forty years old by the time he finally gets married to his cousin Rebekah. So, we could safely say anywhere from a teenager to his thirties. We really have no clear indication despite the mental pictures from movies and picture books always putting him not only on the younger side but also too white for a nomadic shepherd without literally bathing in Sunblock 5000 or living in dark caves in Europe like my ancestors.
Yahweh summons Abraham with what could be either a command or a request. It could read, “Take your son,” or “Please take your son…” and which one you assume really changes the interpretation so we are going to talk about both options. God is either telling or asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his “only son” whom Abraham “loves” as an olah—usually translated into English as something like a whole burnt offering as would later be performed in the Tabernacle and Temple in the morning and in the evening—at around 9am and 3pm. These morning and “evening” offerings were presented on behalf of the nation by the priests in order to cleanse the holy space of impurity and to let God get a good whiff of barbeque, which almost always puts me in a good mood. In this way, God is “approached” which is what the word korban means as literally to “draw near,” and is translated as the much-misunderstood
word sacrifice. This particular sacrifice, unlike most others, was completely given all over to God with the exception of what was inside the entrails because, yuck. Not okay. But other than all the poop, which got washed out of the intestines, the whole critter got burned except for the blood which was drained and applied to the altar. The offering wasn’t consecrated, meaning a legit sacrifice, until the blood was applied to the altar. Every ancient Near Eastern nation understood and practiced blood manipulation rituals and so this wouldn’t have seemed strange to their neighbors. Abraham is told to perform this olah somewhere in the mountains of the land of Moriah and so again, Abraham is being directed to journey with the understanding that he will indeed be shown the final destination. Just like in Gen 12 when Abraham got his initial marching orders, literally. In a way this operates as a bookend in Abraham’s faith wanderings. We could even call it another blind journey, although he has more information this time around.
What we don’t know is whether or not this was a request or a command. If it is a command, we wonder why Abraham wasn’t willing to plead with God over the life of Isaac when he freely did so on behalf of the people of Sodom. Isaac was clearly more worthy of the intervention, right? If it was a request, we wonder why he doesn’t just say, “Um, heck no. Am I being pranked? Lot, is that you throwing your voice? Not funny, man.” On the other hand, the two situations are very different as God merely mentioned his plans for Sodom to Abraham, inviting conversation, and this time it depends on Abraham’s actions bringing about the destruction of life. If Abraham is being commanded, then he has a really good track record of just following orders and falling way short only when left to his own best judgment as with Pharaoh and Abimelech. When that happens, Abraham takes an ‘every man for himself’ attitude and will lie to get out of potential trouble or to get what he wants. But that’s not what this is—God is telling Abraham exactly what to do and maybe Abraham thinks he has no choice in the matter. Despite the number of years Abraham has been a worshiper of Yahweh, he has no Bible to read or anyone else to confer with. The last maybe fifty years have been a real learning experience. How much is Yahweh like and unlike the gods of the Canaanites and the gods of his fathers in Babylonia? If it sounded instead like a request, Abraham could have been thinking any number of things—do you really say no even when a God asks super nicely? It’s hard for us to relate to understanding Yahweh apart from His personal revelation through Yeshua/Jesus. We are so totally spoiled to be living on this side of the Cross. We have seen God, or at least the disciples did, and we have their collective witness of how entirely different He was and is from the gods of the nations. Abraham didn’t have that and it seems clear that direct contact was the exception and not the rule. We benefit from his struggles and from seeing the consequences of his choices—which is why the author of II Timothy could rightly claim that all Scripture is useful and even when it only serves as a bad example. In the end, we don’t know if it was a command or a request but what we do know is shocking—Abraham seemingly says nothing for three whole days.
Yahweh is directing Abraham to sacrifice his “only” son whom he “loves,” but it has been clear all along that Abraham has more than one son and that other son, Ishmael, is very much loved and perhaps still even the favorite. He certainly was the favorite back in Genesis 17 when Abraham responded to the news of Sarah having a baby with an impassioned pleading for Ishmael to be his heir instead. In Genesis 21, Abraham is very upset “because of his son” who was about to be expelled and that son is Ishmael. In fact, when Abraham makes reference to his own son, that son has been Ishmael and not Isaac. So, is God acknowledging the replacement in Abraham’s heart of Isaac for Ishmael by calling him the only son whom Abraham loves or is He rather reminding Abraham that Isaac is his only heir and the one owed Abraham’s entire covenant loyalty? These words could go either way and are unsatisfyingly vague. It is my belief that we are being drawn into the turmoil of this entire situation with a narrative that gives us no easy answers to too many questions. But that’s how literature works, by skillfully evoking strong emotions that draw us into the truth of the text and sometimes that truth is upset and anguish instead of peace and safety. That’s why God didn’t simply have ancient authors write up the sort of bland histories we see as legitimate today. Instead, we are in the midst of a whirlwind of complicated possibilities and fears. Your kids still notice those things and that’s great. All too often, we have been taught to never admit such reactions to the Bible in our modernistic ideas about what the Bible should and should not be.
Right away, we are told that Elohim (as opposed to Yahweh) is only testing Abraham and so we are off the hook right away as far as fearing the worst. But we wonder why on earth the test is needful and why it has to be so incredibly cruel. But what exactly was the test? That’s what we aren’t clear on. Was it a test to see if Abraham would obey absolutely anything without question, or a test to see if Abraham trusted God enough to keep His promise somehow to give him descendants through Isaac, or a test to see if Abraham knew His character well enough to argue and protest (such as he did with the “far be it for you to do such a thing,” of Genesis 18), or if Abraham would jump at the chance to perhaps have Ishmael back as his heir. I know that last one is offensive but remember, this is a test of a man with a very complicated and heartbreaking family situation. We have no idea what we would have done in the place of Abraham and Sarah, we just wish we could think the very best of ourselves without being somewhat delusional. So yeah, I am hard on Abraham because the Bible is but I am also aware of my own tendency to be a huge mess.
So, we know that it is a test but we have no idea if Abraham knows it. The author of Hebrews interpreted this as Abraham simply believing the promise of descendants through Isaac and so, knowing it would be okay in the end, he went along with it knowing that it would all be okay in the end. It would certainly be a big step up from the decisions he made in Gen 12 and 21 where he sacrificed Sarah for his own life despite promises of children that wouldn’t be born if he was in any actual real danger of dying. I think we are all well acquainted with not trusting in things that are promised but cannot be seen and especially of trying to make things happen in our own power. Or maybe that’s just me, right?
But what Abraham does do, instead of protesting, is just as odd. We are very specifically told that Abraham gets up early the next morning (making this one-sided conversation with God either a dream or a nighttime vision) and does servant work—at his advanced age and despite his position of patriarch and a very wealthy man. First, he saddles his own donkey, then gets a couple of servants plus Isaac (whom the narrator calls his son), and then splits wood before setting off. This is very illogical and strange and seems to be the workings of a man who is currently not thinking straight. That’s my take on it. It’s like he is willing to go but is either scatterbrained about it or has too much on his mind to do things in an orderly manner or is stalling for time hoping that perhaps God will change His mind. Cut the wood, get the traveling companions on board, and then saddle up the donkey but cutting the wood last is just strange and for that matter, why cut the wood at the beginning instead of getting it closer to the destination? The land of Moriah was full of olive orchards in ancient times. Abraham would have known that. Again, we’re supposed to be off balance as we read this because things just aren’t okay. If we tell kids they are confused because this chapter really is confusing, we will be doing them a great service, as opposed to giving them easy answers that sweep the turmoil under the rug. That just makes them frustrated and leaves them feeling stupid for trusting us with their questions–you know, like we felt when we got shot down for asking such questions.
The trip takes three days on foot as such things are counted—it’s actually a two day trip but the phrase “on the third day” is often idiomatic for something threatening and ominous and/or suspenseful. On the third day, Dagon’s idol was completely ruined by the Ark of the Covenant having laid in the Temple over the course of three days and two nights. Christ lay in the tomb and rose “on the third day.” Jonah was ejected from the great fish after three days and three nights and his walk to Ninevah took three days. We see the term “on the third day” throughout the accounts of Jacob and his sons and at Mt Sinai. It very much reads as ominous background music like the Jaws theme. We know something is up, and it is not likely always a real marker of time any more than when we say, “Just the other day something happened.” Idioms are used for effect and not for accuracy. However, the journey to the land of Moriah from Beersheva really would have taken two full days of travel, putting their arrival sometime in the morning on the third day. As this is the first time we see this phrase in the Bible, we should pay attention to the context. And the context is creepy as heck because Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac. Imagine never having heard the story before. Imagine you don’t know the outcome. Imagine you haven’t grown bored with it from having heard it so many times. The story reads like a panic attack. Nothing is as it should be and everything is out of order.
Abraham looks up on the third day, two days since they have set off, and sees the mountain. Our hearts sink a little bit. I imagine most of us would be throwing up our breakfast if we had the ability to even eat anything. He tells the servants to stay with the donkey, takes Isaac (who is carrying the wood so he must have been a strong young man at the very least), and tells the servants they will return after they have worshiped. But he calls Isaac “the boy” using the Hebrew term na’ar, which is a legal term and not one of endearment. It refers to a male still under the authority of a superior—which could be either a father or a master. He doesn’t say, “Isaac and I” or “my son and I.” So far, he has only used the word son to refer to Ishmael in the Biblical account. Is he still disappointed? Is there resentment? There is certainly regret for how things ended with Ishmael. Abraham isn’t a fictional character or some sort of mindless, emotionless robot. Complicated situations engender complex emotions.
We do find out later in the Bible, in the account of David and the census, that the mountain in the Land of Moriah is Mt Zion on which is later located the Ark of the Covenant until the time of the construction of the first formal Temple by Solomon. We actually find this out in 2 Chron 3:1, and so it shouldn’t surprise us as we begin to see Messianic foreshadowing in this story. God calls for the sacrifice of the only beloved son on Mt Zion where Jerusalem will later be located. Isaac carries the wood for the sacrifice on his shoulder, and when asked is told that God will provide for the offering. I am not going to rehash that with you guys as this is common knowledge but I will talk to the kids about it as we go through it. I never assume they know stuff. That way, I won’t skip over anything important with them and the kids who do know it can get a review.
As they ascend the mountain, Isaac asks the obvious question, “Avi (my father),” and Abraham says, “Here I am b’nei (my son).” This is the first time we see Isaac referred to as son, and Isaac points out the elephant in the room—“we have everything we need, except the lamb for the whole burnt offering.” Abraham calls him b’nei again, my son, and promises that the Lord will be providing the lamb.” This of course, works either way as Isaac was a bonafide miracle born to a woman whose womb wasn’t only dead when she was young but even more so when she was elderly. Isaac was the son God Himself provided. What we cannot tell is the response of Isaac to this answer. Did he accept it or was he nervous? Certainly Abraham was anxious, who wouldn’t be even if they did believe that Yahweh could resurrect the boy? I don’t care how certain you are, or even if someone actually was looking forward to it for whatever reason, the tension would be suffocating. Abraham was a lot of things but we have no indication whatsoever that he was a murderer—far from it. He wasn’t even willing to stand quietly by and allow God to kill the citizens of the cities on the plain.
As they reach the top, Abraham builds an altar and almost certainly out of uncut stones found lying about. Israel is, if anything, full of stones. He arranged the wood on top and before we know it, Isaac is being tied up and is placed upon the altar. There is no way on earth that he could have fought back because there is no way that Abraham could hold his own against a strong, young man fighting for his life. Was Isaac that obedient? That terrified? Did Abraham assure Isaac that he would be raised from the dead? Was Isaac heartbroken that his father was willing to do this and too broken to resist? We just don’t know and perhaps our only three clues are, after God stops Abraham from offering Isaac up, that Isaac doesn’t return with his father to the servants, Sarah is no longer living with Abraham when she dies, Isaac is living far from his father in the tent of Sarah when Abraham’s servant brings him a wife, and Yahweh is described by Jacob as the God of Abraham but the Fear of Isaac, twice, in Gen 31. In addition, Abraham takes another wife and has many sons but there is zero interaction recorded between father and son until the funeral which is attended by both Ishmael and Isaac and boy howdy, I wonder what stories they were able to swap. Either experience would send all of us into a lifetime of intense therapy, right?
But I jumped ahead. Abraham, somehow, is raising his knife to sacrifice Isaac when he is stopped by the angel of the Lord who says, “Okay, Abraham, geez, cut it out. No, don’t cut anything—don’t lay a finger on that boy. I know now that you are willing to do anything for me, even kill your only son.” Notice the change in language from the original request—where Isaac was called not only “your only son” but also “your beloved son.” What was the test? Was it to simply see if Abraham would do whatever God asks or to see if Abraham really knew the character of God or if he actually loved his son as more than an heir or who he loved more, God or Isaac? Or Ishmael or Isaac? I wonder if there was more than one way to pass this test or if this test didn’t have so much a right or wrong answer but was designed to see what kind of man Abraham was or what kind of God Abraham imagined he served. We aren’t really clued in. We are only told what the test revealed. And Abraham definitely is described as obedient throughout the rest of the Bible. But, you know, Moses was more described as knowing Yahweh intimately and he was regularly challenging God on stuff. I mean, like from their very first encounter at the burning bush all the way until he was about to die and pleading to enter into the Land. I don’t believe it is unfair to Abraham to suggest that this is why it was said of Moses that God spoke with him face to face as one does with their friend. To be honest, their relationships were very different and with good reason. Moses was simply more intimate with God than Abraham was, because the history of his people with Yahweh was longer than fifty years and had already spanned many generations. Abraham was chosen, absolutely, but he was the beginning—the first in line, so to speak. He had to learn the hard way what later generations could take for granted. He had to learn that Yahweh doesn’t ask for the sacrifice of sons as some of the other gods did.
Wrapping the story up, Abraham is shown a ram caught in a thicket by its horns, which he uses as a substitute for Isaac. He calls the place Yahweh Yireh, which is often translated the Lord will provide but it literally means the Lord will see. And we see a later editorial note which claims, “so today it is said, “it will be provided on the Lord’s Mountain.” Obviously neither Abraham nor Moses wrote that, but it was added later as context for those who were familiar with Mt Zion. Notice that the focus here is on God’s provision (seeing) and not on Abraham’s obedience. The angel of the Lord, at this point, affirms every promise previously spoken to Abraham, giving us an almost final bookend to the story of Abraham’s journeys. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that we hear about Abraham settling in Beer-sheva, far from Sarah in Hebron, and without Isaac. With no real explanation given as to what happened. Rabbinic literature and Hellenistic literature give us quite a few theories because there is nothing like a good “what if” story when we aren’t given any closure. We get a short family update as to Nahor, the brother of Abraham, and his offspring—including Rebekah, whom we will see again soon. And this ends Torah Portion Lech Lecha on a note that is both a relief and yet very sad while looking forward to the next generation.
