Genesis 22: Abraham and Isaac
The Test?
The story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac has long been read by Christians as a tale of testing and faithful response -- that is, God �tests� Abraham by demanding he sacrifice his long-awaited son, and Abraham faithfully responds, without question. Once Abraham knows that he is completely faithful, God intervenes to keep the child from death. But notice the twist: God knew all along, Christians typically assert, that Abraham would be faithful (God is, after all, omniscient). The real �test� must have been for Abraham�s benefit.
Rabbinic readings have played with this text in a much different manner. For instance, the medieval rabbis saw the opening commandment as evidence of an argument. When God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go," the four clauses were God�s side of the argument.1 Between them were Abraham�s attempts to offset the demand:
God: Take your son.
Abraham: Which son?
God: Your only son.
Abraham: No, I have two sons, Isaac and Ishmael.
God: The son you love.
Abraham: What man loves only one son? I love them both.
God: Isaac.
The idea that Abraham could simply obey without question was hardly a Jewish idea. Let's follow the story...
The Narrative Context
If we are going to understand this story in any way that might have made sense to either the writer or the original audience, we will have to take into consideration its place in the Genesis narrative. Abraham�s story actually begins in Genesis 12, where YHWH2 first promises Abraham (known as �Abram� at that point�) many progeny. The story of Abraham includes four more explicit statements of the same promise to Abraham. The last is in chapter 18, where God has come to Abraham�s tent in the wilderness (Abraham was a bedouin). There, after a shared meal of barbecue, cheese, milk and bread, God announced to Abraham his intention to destroy Sodom, as their sin was �very grave.� But Abraham objects that innocent people might die as well -- and how could God do such a thing as kill innocent with guilty. YHWH agrees that fifty innocent people would forestall his plan. Abraham presses on: what if there are forty-five? God again agrees to cancel the destruction if there are forty-five innocent people. Abraham continues to challenge: what if there are forty? thirty? twenty? ten? In each case, God agrees to cancel if that many innocents are in town.
There are not that many. The only "innocents" appear to have been Lot, his wife, and two daughters and God simply takes these four out (although his wife disobeys God on the way out and is reduced to a pile of salt, and the daughters get their father drunk on successive nights so they can use him sexually and become pregnant).
But the dynamic stands. Abraham knows he can argue with YHWH for the innocent, and actually have an impact.
The story of YHWH�s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is the last narrative piece of Abraham�s life. He has had a son (when Abraham was 101 years old), and now that son is a teen.
The Silence
The boldness with which Abraham spoke for Sodom's innocent makes the silence in chapter 22 thunderous. After YHWH's command, Abraham says exactly nothing. He simply returns home, gets the donkey ready, and sets out with the boy and two servants. He never spoke to Sarah, which would seem to have been the basic minimum, as this child is explicitly the child of Abraham AND Sarah (see chapter 17). Along the way, he speaks not a word for three days. His first words are to the servants: "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." (v. 5 NIV). A peculiar statement for a man who is about to slaughter his son.
As Isaac and Abraham go up the mountain -- "the two of them together" -- Isaac speaks his first words in the story: "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the animal for the burnt offering?� (v. 7).3 His father�s response is ambiguous: �YHWH will provide for himself a sacrifice my son� (v. 8). I left out the punctuation (biblical Hebrew had none), so as to allow the same ambiguity. The line could be read with something of a dash: "a sacrifice -- my son." This is after all, what YHWH has commanded. But the line could also be read with a comma, implying a separation of "my son" from the previous clause. The implication then would be "YHWH will have to provide a sacrifice himself. You are my son."
No further words are spoken. The two simply finish the journey -- "the two of them together." That clause is repeated. Why?
At last, Abraham has bound his son, and he raises the knife to slaughter him. But YHWH speaks from heaven (why is the location specified?), �Abraham! Abraham. Don�t do it. For now I know that you fear God, for you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.� There are several points here. First, Why does God continue to insist that Isaac is Abraham�s only son? He has, after all, blessed Abraham�s older son, Ishmael. Second, why does God speak from heaven? He has sat at the table with Abraham. He walked in the desert. But now, from heaven? What are we being told? But most importantly of all, YHWH said, "Now I know..." The words make sense only if he did NOT know before. The test was not for Abraham�s sake, but for YHWH�s. Without this, that line says, YHWH would not have known. This fits the Genesis portrait of YHWH. He had to ask where the man was in the garden, and why he was hiding, and who told him he was �arum. He had to ask Cain where Abel was. He had to come down out of heaven to see what was going on in the tower-building of Babel. The god of Genesis is not portrayed as all-knowing.
Boxes in Boxes
What we make of this story depends on the context in which we read it. Isolated from the rest of Genesis, as a story that may stand on its own, the idea that Abraham was simply being faithful can make sense. But we could not escape the alternative reading that makes this god a tyrant -- putting a human being through psychological terror, only to demonstrate whether the human has adequate fear. Standing alone, there is no governing principle to move the reader one way or the other.
So we may read it in the context of the J writer -- that first layer of the Torah tradition. It has been argued seriously by Harold Bloom that J was a woman (an argument that is gaining more acceptance with time). If the context of her composition was the court of Solomon), as is typically asserted by scholars, the women with the time, education, and ability to be taken seriously would probably have been one of the Canaanite wives of the king4. Her point might welll be that males -- whether human or divine -- did not have all that was necessary to keep relationships alive. Whether Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Moses, each would need the balance of a woman to redeem them from folly or simple inaction. Is this narrative suggesting that Abraham jeopardized the future by trying to leave Sarah out of the loop? Or is it more profound yet: YHWH was jeopardizing things by ignoring the proper role of the woman -- Sarah, perhaps, or Asherah, the goddess who is often associated with YHWH in temple inscriptions in the northern cities during the 10th and 9th centuries B.C.E.
But we were not given the Book of J like that. We instead received Genesis and the full Torah as our text. Here, it is absurd to read the text with the assumptions we impart: God is all-knowing, and Abraham is acting as a symbol of faithfulness. We have the stories before and the Law after to remind us that the center of God's essence is justice, righteousness.
And so a rabbi read this text as a statement of Abraham's own challenge to YHWH. God demanded sacrifice, but Abraham knew that such a demand could never be allowed -- at least, not if YHWH were true to his core. Abraham had a long relationship with YHWH. He knew the sacrifice could not happen.
There was no need to talk to Sarah. Telling her what was going on in Abraham's mind would only trouble and worry her, and it would allow God a chance to discover Abraham's plan. Instead, he simply slips away, with every expectation of returning within the week with the boy.
Why speak on the road? To say goodbye? There would be no need. To let Isaac in on the plan? That would compromise it, by letting YHWH in on it too.
The statement to the servants was absolutely true. Yes, it may have simply been a hope. It could have been a lie, so the servants wouldn't follow. But it could also have been the truth.
When Isaac asks for the animal, Abraham gives an answer that YHWH could take to mean Abraham was following through. But at the same time, it expressed the real truth -- both as Abraham intended, and as the story bears out. "My son" would NOT be the sacrifice -- YHWH will have to find that for himself.
Finally, "Now I know..." is the line across which the divine could not pass -- lest he would cease being just, and therefore cease being God. YHWH HAD to stop the knife. But if it took seeing Abraham raise the knife for him to know, he still doesn't know. Only Abraham ever knew whether he would have brought the knife
Conclusion
Within the full context of Genesis, this story is the climax of the coming-of-age of the ultimate man. Abraham has grown through his relationship with YHWH, to the point that he knows YHWH's most basic identity -- he is a god of ethical demand. At the end, it would almost seem as though Abraham has learned that so well that he surpasses his god in his understanding of the ethical demand. He learns so well, that he pushes the divine to the brink of self-destruction (the result if God were ever to demand unethical behavior), and the divine one must back off. It is for this, above all, that Abraham is the "father" of all Jews. He, Jacob and Moses are the only three indispensable characters of the biblical tradition -- and all three discover in their own way that God can be -- and must be -- challenged. In that moment they encounter God in relationship, nose-to-nose the way that humanity was created.
Footnotes
1 The Revised Standard Version, King James Version, New International Version, New American Standard Bible, and the New Living Translation all change the order of the original Hebrew clauses, putting "Isaac" before "the one whom you love."
2 The divine name YHWH is normally rendered "LORD" (with small caps) in English translations, reflecting the Jewish practice of saying "My Lord" (adonai) wherever the divine name occurred, so as "not to take the name of YHWH your God in vain." See the discursus on the divine name,
2 The Hebrew word is not actually "lamb" (kebes) or even "ram" (ayil) but "animal from the flock" (seh)
