Binding of Isaac

Today we continue in the beginning of the narrative arc of the Scriptures, moving from the stories of Creation to settle into the more up-close family drama of Abraham and Sarah. The cosmic God has moved closer to humanity.

There is a lot to explore in this upcoming reading and I’m going to do my best to hit some of the marks of traditional and modern scholarship, while also not bogging us down too much.

At the core of this story, I find questions: What is God like? Or, maybe better stated, “what are the gods like?” Is God good? Do the gods require sacrifices? What kinds of sacrifices are appropriate? Would God truly require the sacrifice of your only child, even after that child was promised to make a great nation?

This particular narrative has sparked much reflection through the generations. The great theologians of the Reformation wrestled with God’s instructions here, wondered at who is represented in the story, and formed their understanding of God’s grace with this text. 19th century philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling considered the absurdity of God’s instructions and what Abraham’s response would or should be.

I’ll admit this passage captivates my attention. I’ve wondered at the role of God in this text, wondered at why there are different names for God or gods used throughout.

I’ve read multiple works of fiction on this particular story. Frederick Beuchner’s Son of Laughter, a retelling of Isaac’s life, brings this story into intimate closeness, offering a sense for Abraham’s struggle. The spectre of family trauma lingers in Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, as the fear of God still grips the descendants of Abraham.

As well, just in the last couple of years, I became friends with a local scholar and author, Dr. Michael Chrzastowski, a neighbor here on the South Hill, who wrote this book about the Great Family. Keturah’s Wish is a fictional, yet textually attentive, attempt to tell the story of the third wife of Abraham, who according to Genesis 25, bears Abraham six more sons and more grandchildren.

All of this to say — this text deserves attentive reflection. Close readings. Pondering. Prayer.

Let’s pray as we approach this story of Abraham’s Binding of his son Isaac.

And now, on to our Scripture reading from Genesis chapter 22.

I’ve made a slight edit to the way the text will be heard. Instead of using the English translations of God and Lord which we are familiar with, I want to draw attention to the Hebrew words used for God or the gods. In particular, we hear of elohim and YHWH in this story. While these are sometimes considered interchangeable names for God, it’s also important to note the elohim, has more generic meaning, as many of the gods of the ancient near east had some kind use of the name “el.” Just chapters before, Hagar calls out to el Roi, the god who sees me. Other places, God is referred to as el shaddai, God of the mountain. It is my sense that the scribes of this text are noting different conventions and understandings of the gods and God, conceptions that we have to hold alongside each other as developments of the Israelite understanding of God. Is god a cultural, local, el God? Is God the High God, YHWH, above all gods? It’s fair to say that the stories are mixtures of certainty about who God is, alongside growing thoughts and development of a a Theology or Doctrine of God that fits with our modern understandings of monotheism. Etc. Etc. Etc. Don’t get bogged down in this, but for those have ears and curiosity about such things, may you hear them.

Our Genesis reading…

Genesis 21:1–3 NRSV

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.

Genesis 22:1–14 NRSV

After these things elohim tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I (elohim) shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that ha elohim, the God, had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “Elohim himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together. When they came to the place that ha elohim, the God, had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of YHWH called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear elohim, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord, will the YHWH provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Ok, the BIG IDEA that we commonly take from this passage: God requires acts of sacrifice to display the Abraham’s devotion. A shift from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice. (Though Isaac and Abraham both seem to have animal sacrifice in their minds and expect the lamb to be provided.)

One part of this passage that continues to intrigue me is the way Abraham names God. As we have heard, there are at least two different names for God or gods in this passage, which speaks to a differentiation between God and a more cultural god.

I know I may be speculating, but it is interesting me that

There may be a development of the concept of God since the Hagar story. Or maybe it is that the Hebrew scribes also want to set Hagar apart as non-Hebrew (she is, of course, Islam’s mother)? Much like the story of the Edomites, they have a common lineage, but there is differentiation between their “El” (god) and the Lord (YHWH).

This also, to me, explains the differentiation between elohim and YHWH that occurs in Genesis 22.

Abraham names the place — Place named YHWH-Yireh — which means “the Lord sees.” — Jehovah Jirah

Here’s a bit more scholarly background. There are thought to be multiple traditions that serve as original source narratives that have been combined into what we now understand to be the modern Pentateuch, the first 5 books (Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, Deut).

There’s the Elohist tradition, which refers to more focused narratives, the idea of the fear of God, God’s covenant with humanity, and prophetic (called) leaders. It is argued that the Elohist tradition begins with the calling of Abraham.

And there’s the Yahwist tradition, which is hypothesized, has a more global or cosmic sense to it, beginning with the narrative of Creation (which we heard last week).

For instance, the Creation narrative we heard last week, from Genesis 1 is contrasted with Genesis 2’s second creation narrative, which differ in the first saying “elohim” as the name for God and the second story including “Lord God”, yhwh elohim.

Here’s the big thing I find important in the text: It gives us a glimpse of the early Hebrew conceptions of God and how humanity interacts with God. Is this God just like all the other cultural gods of the region? Can we simply make a wood statute to represent this god and put it up on our mantle? Is this one god among all the other gods, just our particular flavor? Or is this the High God, the God above all gods, that we’re talking about. In our 21st century perspective, we have been raised to consider this the “one God” the Only God. But that’s not always how people perceived God nor is it what is potentially going on this text.

Abraham has been called by God to leave his home (Ur of the Caldeans) and instructed to go make a new nation in the land of Canaan. Between this calling story and our narrative today, Abraham has traveled, spent time with his cousin Lot, dealt with a local tribal king who ends up blessing him, had a son with his wife’s servant, Hagar, and received the promise of a son to his wife, Sarah, late in life. Now that son is born and Abraham has been instructed, by elohim, to take his son to be sacrificed in the mountains of Moriah.

In our English translations, we hear that God, elohim, instructs Abraham to take this journey with Isaac. Elohim has shown Abraham the mountain, giving him sight and clarity of purpose. Elohim is the one Abraham thinks will provide the lamb, as he tells Isaac in vs. 8.

In the final moments, right as Abraham lifts the knife to sacrifice his only son, we have a shift. Vs. 11 says,

Genesis 22:11 NRSV

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”

The scene changes. All of a sudden, it is no longer Abraham and Isaac alone on the mountaintop. An angel of the Lord, or a least the voice of an angel of the Lord, calls out to stop the ordeal.

I find this interesting on many levels. First, we are no longer dealing with a generic, cultural god. Many people groups from ancient Mesopatamia referred to their gods with some form of the word “el” — just chapters before, we have an easy example of this. In the story of how God saves Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness, we hear Hagar call God “El-Roi” — “the god who sees me.” El, the God. Roi, who sees me. So el is a common name for God. Like how we say “God” instead of YHWH or elohim, or adonai, etc.

Second, it’s fascinating to me that we have a messanger from YHWH, the angel, and not YHWH themselves. This plays into our understanding of God as distant or above all things — not so much immanent, but very transcendent. This is the same God that is revealed to Moses in the Exodus narrative, distinct again from the cultural gods. But this is fascinating because it also supposes that there are other divine or divinely appointed beings that work at the High God’s direction. This is a motif that will continue on throughout the Scriptures and ultimately translate into how Christians begin to consider angels, demons, and even the saints of the church.

Finally, this is important because it highlights the evolution of our human understanding of God. Who is God? Where is God? And what is God’s character? I suppose I would say that what’s going on here is a confusion or at least a melding of multiple concepts of who or where or what God is. Are we dealing with regional conceptions of God? Is this one of the lesser gods, maybe like Mercury or Janus? Is this Zeus or Jupiter? You see what I’m getting at? And the historical critical reading of the Old Testament understands this confusion, in the sense that we have years of scholarly research that argues for multiple oral traditions being written down and combined/redacted/retold to construct the narrative of the first five books. You see, there have been different ways we’ve conceived of who wrote these books. Was it Moses? Or was it a school of people who wanted to communicate the stories of the Israelites? Was this part of the narrative that was told by the whole of the people, or was this something of the narrative told by the Northern Kingdom of Israel? Did this have to do with the exile in Babylon at any level or was this story told before that period of history? How did that period of history change this story?

You see, the layers of the biblical text are complex and important to consider.

Do you and I need to have this all figured out? No.

But it is helpful for us to consider how people understood God and God’s word, especially when we’re dealing with such an intense directive as this — the call to kill your child. Or the call to sacrifice any human for that matter.

Through the generations, Jews and Christians have pointed to this story as a turning point, where God acts differently than we expect God to act. Some see this as a test that Abraham passes and therefore receives greater clarity of who God is. Others see a philosophical exercise here, wondering at what horrors or wonders the fear of God may put us up to.

For me, I find this story to be something of hope that God truly is good. That despite our expectations about God, God will surprise us with blessing and wonder when we expect oppression and order.

Of course, I look at this text through the lens of Jesus and his life and witness to us. What does Jesus’ life and death tell us about how God is? What God is like?

I think many Christians would be quick to argue that God demands sacrifice and Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, fulfills God’s sacrificial desires. This is a common atonement theory — how the death of Jesus sets us free from sin.

But besides the fact that penal substitutionary atonement is a problematic perspective (for so many reasons — ie: God is mighty, we are bad, and a scapegoat is needed to atone for our sins)…besides this, I don’t believe it lines up with what God, in this story, does. First, it is the small, cultural god that Abraham thinks is instructing him. But the High God, YHWH, is the one who intervenes. STOP! The High God, the One God, YHWH, intervenes in the death system that the ancient people were wrapped up in. God intervenes and says NO MORE to the death of our precious humanity. In the same way, Christ undoes the power of death by showing it’s fallacy, it’s ineffectiveness, it’s weakness. Light overcomes darkness. Life overpowers death.

What should we know about the narrative of Scripture from this text? How does this tie into the narrative of Creation we heard last week?

This text shows us an evolving, new understanding for what the gods are like. And particularly, that there is God who is above all gods, a God who intervenes in our lives, a God who calls us to greater purposes than the ongoing rituals of sacrifice and pain.

We still wonder about these things. These hopes that God is truly good and would make a way to bypass this sacrifice. The trust that God will provide, mixed in with the fear that the other shoe is finally going to drop. Does God provide? And at what cost?

Here’s where I sit with this text, upon yet another round of study and reflection: Trusting in his calling from God, Abraham is willing to walk this road all the way to the end. Not because he is willing to sacrifice Isaac without question or recourse. But because he believes in the deep calling God has placed upon his life and he’s willing to figure out how it’s going to work. Sometimes, faithfulness looks like simply following order. Other times, as I believe we see here, faithfulness looks like trusting in another way, a way yet to be revealed, that places absurd hope in the one who has promised to provide.

What do we take away? Well, I’m not always sure. Please don’t walk away from this text thinking God requires blind, unquestioning submission as faithfulness. Rather, I hope we can witness Abraham’s persistence and trust in the grander story.

You and I are a part of this grander story. And we must not get lost in cultural understandings of God that miss the grand movement of God, where God provides, sustains, and meets us in our struggle. Sadly, we have many cultural projections of what the gods are like. Christian nationalism continues to rise in the United States, for example. This is a cultural understanding of God (note, how we have the word “cult” coming from this idea of “culture.”) Do the gods require sacrifice, martyrdom, death?

Christian theology affirms an alternative — the overcoming of the power of death. God stays the knife, pausing the ordeal. And in Christ, death is undone, as it is once and for all experienced and overcome. See, here he comes, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Can we hear the offer of grace? Put down the knife. Release the need for sacrificing. See that God provides.