The Sublime Climax: Genesis 22

“By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only begotten son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven …”                                                                 Genesis 22:16,17

The forth great pillar of the Abrahamic Covenant is chapter 22. Genesis 12 and 15 center on land; Genesis 17 and 22 focus on seed. On these four pillars the whole of redemptive history rests. No story can be more exquisite in plot and brevity than what we have before us; it is magnificent, it is sublime!

God tests Abraham. Where there is faith there is always testing; faith’s beauty can only be displayed by trial. God calls out “Abraham,” and he answers with the profoundly simple “hinnēnî” (“Here I am,” So Isaiah 6:8). God takes aim at the most precious thing to Abraham, his son of promise, beginning with the general “take your son” then to “your only son,” to “whom you love,” finally to the heart of his heart’s target, “Isaac.” God demands the unthinkable, the unreasonable, and the most terrible. Is his God just another manifestation of the pagan deities that demand human sacrifice? The narrative does not allow us into Abraham’s thoughts; there are no questions, only action. They begin the 3 day long journey with two servants and a donkey carrying the wood; three days of what we all know must have been filled with deep interior struggle, dark and frantic thoughts, solitude and silence. This is sublime!

Abraham leaves behind the two servants with the cryptic remark “I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you” (v. 5). He loads the wood on the boy’s back, the wood for his own sacrifice, and Abraham leads the way up the mountain with torch and knife. Isaac breaks the silence with “my father,” and Abraham he responds “hinnēnî.” Isaac is confused; where was the lamb? His father assures him that God would provide. Then the darkly beautiful phrase “So they went on both of them together.” This is sublime!  

The altar is set.  The “lad,” who must have been strong because he carried the wood, allows himself to be bound on the altar.   Thus bound upon the wood, the knife is lifted. There is no doubt, in spite of what Abraham told the servants and Isaac, that he was ready to plunge the knife into his son. The “angel of the Lord” (a Theophany?) watches this drama unfold, and at the last second cries out “Abraham, Abraham”! He responds with a third “hinnēnî” making a triple utterance in the narrative. God, who transcends time, knows all along Abraham’s heart and what he would do. However, God never allows his omniscience get in the way of His wonder; He experiences the sublimity of the moment with Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God …” A ram is provided, the sacrifice is made, and the story ends with the divine oath that Abraham’s seed will indeed be multiplied.

The narrator concludes this sublime drama with a critical statement “… as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided’” (v. 14). Whatever the ancient readers took from this story, they understood by this saying that this dramatic episode rises above a mere historical event to something higher. The land of Moriah (v.2) symbolizes Eden, the Mount of God. Abraham is a first man like Adam. However, unlike Adam, Abraham responded to his test with faith, that pre-fall, original attitude for which humanity was made to have to relate with God. This moment is a reversal of the fall. Through Abraham there will be a race that will fill the earth with persons with like faith; he succeeds where Adam failed.  God makes an oath, swears by Himself, the covenant is irrevocable. 

One might be repulsed at the fact that God would ask Abraham to do such a terrible thing. However, God never asks what He Himself is unwilling to do. It is Godlike to sacrifice that which is most precious. There can be no sublimity without sacrifice, and what would the world be without sublimity? God in fact is most sublime, for he performs Himself what he spared Abraham. The Jews identified the land of Moriah with its mount with the Zion, the Temple Mount (II Chron. 3:1). Christ came to judge the Temple establishment for failing to produce the seed of faith their ancestor Abraham displayed on that same mount. He in his own flesh becomes the New Cosmic Temple which in three days is destroyed yet resurrected, from which comes a whole new race of men and women with Abraham’s faith that spreads out over the earth like sand on the seashore. This is sublime!

The Hebrews call this sublime moment the ‘aqedâ, the “binding” of Isaac. True worship demands a sacrifice of ultimate value, that is, a human sacrifice, rather than something of comparative value, like an animal or precious objects. By providing a ram in Isaac’s place, God is sanctioning the sacrificial system of animal sacrifice for Israel, accepting them on the basis of Abraham’s faith.  Scott Hann quotes a Talmudic scholar:

It is the ‘Akedah which validates the sacrifices offered in the Temple to atone for sins; it is the ‘Akedah which merits the Passover; it is through the ‘Akedah that God remembers Israel, hears and answers their prayers, forgives their sins, and rescues them from afflictions. 

Thus human sacrifice, something that the Canaanites and other pagan peoples practiced, was strictly forbidden.  However, because God demanded it here indicates that the concept of human sacrifice is, in and of itself, legitimate, and even necessary, and fulfilled in Christ’s great sacrifice once and for all.  So, the sacrifice of God’s pure lamb, His only begotten Son Jesus, reaches back in time to this ‘aqedâ, ultimately legitimatizing all Israel’s sacrifices under the old covenants, and forward to every Mass ever said in the worship of the Church. 

Resources:

Hann, Scott.  Kinship by Covenant, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.  pp. 128, 403.