[Once again, prepare for a lonnnnggggg read—-parts of the TORAH need more explanation than others; and definitely this chapter is crucial to the understanding of what the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham was TRULY about and . . . sorry to have to keep correcting Christian teaching, but this is not a prefiguration of the sacrifice of the Son by the Father in the Trinitarian godhead; it has been made so only in Christian doctrine.
Listen for a change to the Jewish voice, after all this is in the first five books of their TNK. What is the “AKEDAH”? According to the jewishvirtuallibrary.org:
AKEDAH (ʿAqedah; Heb. הָדֵקֲע, lit. “binding (of Isaac)”), the Pentateuchal narrative (Gen. 22:1–19) describing God’s command to *Abraham to offer *Isaac, the son of his old age, as a sacrifice. Obedient to the command, Abraham takes Isaac to the place of sacrifice and binds him (va-ya’akod, Gen. 22:9, a word found nowhere else in the Bible in the active, conjugative form) on the altar. The angel of the Lord then bids Abraham to stay his hand and a ram is offered in Isaac’s stead. The Akedah became in Jewish thought the supreme example of self-sacrifice in obedience to God’s will and the symbol of Jewish martyrdom throughout the ages.
Unbracketed commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation is Everett Fox The Five Books of Moses with commentary indicated by “EF” while Robert Alter comments are “RA” —Admin1.]
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THE BINDING OF ISAAC (AKEDAH)
This Chapter is of great importance both in the life of Abraham and in the life of Israel.
The aged Patriarch, who had longed for a rightful heir (“O Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go hence childless?”), and who had had his longing fulfilled in the birth of Isaac, is now bidden offer up this child as a burnt offering unto the Lord. The purpose of the command was to apply a supreme test to Abraham’s faith, thus strengthening his faith by the heroic exercise of it.
The proofs of a man’s love of God are his willingness to serve Him with all his heart, all his soul and all his might; as well as his readiness to sacrifice unto Him what is even dearer than life. It was a test safe only in a Divine hand, capable of intervening as He did intervene, and as it was His purpose from the first to intervene, as soon as the spiritual end of the trial was accomplished.
So much for what may be called the positive lesson of the Akedah. We shall now examine another side, the great negative teaching of this trial of Abraham.
The story of the Binding of Isaac opens the age-long warfare of Israel against the abominations of child sacrifice, which was rife among the Semitic peoples, as well as their Egyptian and Aryan neighbours. In that age, it was astounding that Abraham’s God should have interposed to prevent the sacrifice, not that He should have asked for it.
A primary purpose of this command, therefore, was to demonstrate to Abraham and his descendants after him that God abhorred human sacrifice with an infinite abhorrence. Unlike the cruel heathen deities, it was the spiritual surrender alone that God required.
Moses warns his people not to serve God in the manner of the surrounding nations.
‘For every abomination to the LORD, which He hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters do they burn in the fire to their gods’ (Deuteronomy II,31).
All the Prophets alike shudder at this hideous aberration of man’s sense of worship, and they do not rest till all Israel shares their horror of this savage custom. It is due to the influence of their teaching that the name Ge-Hinnom, the valley where the wicked kings practised this horrible rite, became a synonym for ‘Hell’.
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A new meaning and influence begin for the Akedah, and its demand for man’s unconditional surrender to God’s will and the behests of God’s law, with the Maccabean revolt, when Jews were first called upon to die for their Faith.
Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his most sacred affections on the altar of his God evoked and developed a new ideal in Israel, the ideal of martyrdom.
The story of Hannah and her seven sons, immortalized in the Second Book of Maccabees, has come down to us in many forms. In one of these, the martyr mother says to her youngest child,
‘Go to Abraham our Father, and tell him that I have bettered his instruction. He offered one child to God; I offered seven. He merely bound the sacrifice; I performed it’ (Midrash).
As persecution deepened during later centuries, the Binding of Isaac was ever in the mind of men and women who might at any moment be given the dread alternative of apostasy or death.
Allusions to the Akedah early found their way into the Liturgy; and in time a whole cycle of synagogue hymns (piyyutim) grew round it. In the Middle Ages, it gave fathers and mothers the superhuman courage to immolate themselves and their children, rather than see them fall away to idolatry or baptism. English Jews need but think of the soul-stirring tragedy enacted at York Castle in the year 1190 to understand the lines of the modern Jewish poet:
“We have sacrificed all. We have given our wealth,
Our homes, our honours, our land, our health,
Our lives—like Hannah her children seven—
For the sake of the Torah that came from Heaven’ (J.L. Gordon).
Many today have no understanding of martyrdom. They fail to see that it represents the highest moral triumph of humanity—unwavering steadfastness to principle, even at the cost of life. They equally fail to see the lasting influence of such martyrdoms upon the life and character of the nation whose history they adorn. Those who are thus blind to unconquerable courage and endurance naturally display hostility to the whole idea of the Akedah and its place and associations in the Jewish thought. ‘Only a Moloch requires human sacrifices’ (Geiger), they exclaim. But in all human history, there is not a single noble cause, movement or achievement that did not call for sacrifice, nay sacrifice of life itself. Science, Liberty, Humanity, all took their toll of martyrs; and so did and does Judaism.
Israel is the classical people of martyrdom. No other people has made similar sacrifices to Truth, Conscience, Human Honour and Human Freedom (Martin Schreiner). Even in our own day, Jewish parents in Eastern and Central European lands have refused, and refuse, fortune and honours for the sake of conscience. What is far harder, they sacrifice the careers of their children, whenever these involve disloyalty to the God of their Fathers. Few chapters of the Bible have had a more potent and more lasting influence on the lives and souls of men than the Akedah.
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Genesis/Bereshith 22
Here I am.
prove. The Authorised Version has the older English ‘tempt’, i.e. test; a trial (in older English, ‘a temptation’) is that which puts to the test. A test is never employed for the purpose of injury, but to certify the power of resistance. All his other trials of faith were to be crowned by Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his dearest hope to the will of God. The Rabbis speak of it as the tenth and the greatest of the trials to which he was exposed.
and said unto him. From v. 3, we may deduce that God communicated with Abraham during the night, perhaps in a vision.
[EF] after these events: Others use “Some time afterward.” Here I am: A term frequently used to convey readiness, usually in relation to God’s command or address.
[RA] The abrupt beginning and stark, emotion-fraught development of this troubling story have led many critics to celebrate it as one of the peaks of ancient narrative. Among modern commentators, Gerhard von Rad, Claus Westermann, and E.A. Speiser have all offered sensitive observations on the details of the story, and the luminous first chapter of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, which compares this passage with one from the Odyssey, remains a landmark of twentieth-century criticism.
take now. The Heb. is peculiar: the imperative ‘take’ is followed by the Heb. particle which means, ‘I pray thee’—God was speaking to Abraham ‘as friend to friend’.
thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac. The repetition indicates the intense strain that was being placed upon Abraham’s faith, and the greatness of the sacrifice demanded.
the land of Moriah. Jewish Tradition identifies the locality with the Temple Mount (II Chron. III,1).
and offer him there. lit. ‘lift him up’ (upon the altar). God, in His command, did not use the word which signifies the slaying of the sacrificial victim. From the outset, therefore, there was no intention of accepting a human sacrifice, although Abraham was at first not aware of this.
[EF] Yitzhak: The name is left until the end of the phrase, to heighten tension. Similarly, see 27:32. Moriyya: Trad. English “Moriah.” The mountain here is later identified with the site of Solomon’s Temple.
[RA] your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac. The Hebrew syntactic chain is exquisitely forged to carry a dramatic burden, and the sundry attempts of English translators from the King James Version to the present to rearrange it are misguided. The classical Midrash, followed by Rashi, beautifully catches the resonance of the order of terms. Rashi’s concise version is as follows: “Your son. He said to Him, ‘I have two sons.’ He said to him, ‘Your only one.’ He said, ‘This one is an only one to his mother and this one is an only one to his mother.’ He said to him, ‘Whom you love.’ He said to him, ‘I love both of them.’ He said to him, Isaac.'” Although the human object of God’s terrible imperative does not actually speak in the biblical text this midrashic dialogue demonstrates a fine responsiveness to how the tense stance of the addressee is intimated through the words of the addresser in a one-sided dialogue.
your only one. Some scholars, bothered by the technical inaccuracy of the term, have followed an ancient reading of yadid, “favored one,” instead of the Masoretic yaid. This seriously misses the point that in regard to Abraham’s feelings, Isaac, this sole son by his legitimate wife, is his only one. The phrase “your son, your only one,” will return as a thematic refrain at the end of the story (verses 12,16).
Moriah. Through traditional exegesis, supported by the reference to the Mount of the LORD at the end of the tale, identifies this as Jerusalem, the actual location remains in doubt. In any case, there is an assonance between “Moriah” and yir’eh, “he sees,” the thematic key word of the resolution of the story.
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and Abraham rose early in the morning. There is no response in words on the part of Abraham. His answer is in deeds. He lost no time in obeying the will of God.
cleaved the wood. This task, usually left to a servant to perform, he now did himself.
[RA] and Isaac his son. The crucial item is left tot he very end. The narrator does not miss a chance in the story to refer to Isaac as “his son” and Abraham as “his father,” thus sharpening the edge of anguish that runs through the tale.
and he split wood. In a narrative famous for its rigorous economy in reporting physical details, this act of Abraham, wielding an axe and cutting things apart, is ominously singled out for attention.
5 Avraham said to his lads:
You stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad wish to go yonder,we wish to bow down and then return to you.
abide ye here. Desiring to be alone with Isaac at the dread moment of sacrifice.
and come back. Was there an undercurrent of conviction that God would not exact His demand of him? The Rabbis declare that at the moment the Spirit of Prophecy entered into him, and he spoke more truly than he knew.
[EF] bow down: Worship.
the fire. i.e. the vessel containing glowing embers, by means of which the wood on the altar was to be kindled.
[EF] 6,8 Thus the two of them went together: Between these two statements is Avraham’s successful deflection of Yitzchak’s question, and perhaps the hint of a happy ending.
[RA] the cleaver. E.A. Speiser notes, quite rightly, that the Hebrew term here is not the usual biblical term for knife, and makes a good argument that it is a cleaver. Other terms from butchering, rather than sacrifice, are used: to slaughter (verse 10) and to bind (verse 9–a verb occurring only here but used in rabbinic Hebrew for trussing up the legs of animals).
Here are the fire and the wood,
but where is the lamb for the offering-up?
the lamb for a burnt offering. This simple expression of boyish curiosity heightens the intense pathos of the situation.
[EF] fire: i.e. a torch or brand.
[RA] Father! The Hebrew is literally “My father,” but that noun with the possessive ending is the form of intimate address in biblical Hebrew, like Abba in postbiblical Hebrew.
the fire and the wood. A moment earlier, we saw the boy loaded with the firewood, the father carrying the fire and the butcher knife. As Gerhard von Rad aptly remarks, “He himself carries the dangerous objects with which the boy could hurt himself, the torch and the knife.” But now, as Isaac questions his father, he passes in silence over the one object that would have seemed scariest to him, however unwitting he may have been of his father’s intention—the sharp-edged butcher knife.
so they went both of them together. This phrase is repeated from v. 6. Abraham’s answer caused the truth to dawn upon Isaac’s mind that he was to be the offering.
[EF] see-for-himself: Or “select.” See the name of the mountain in verse 14. “YHWH Sees.” offering-up/my son: One might read it with a dash instead of a comma, to preserve what may be an ironic answer.
[RA] God will see to. Literally, “see for himself.” The idiomatic force is “provide,” but God’s seeing lines up with Abraham’s seeing the place from afar, his seeing the ram, and the seeing in the Mount of the LORD. Beyond the tunnel vision of a trajectory toward child slaughter is a promise of true vision.
And the two of them went togehter. The impassive economy of this refrainlike repeated clause is haunting: two people, father and son, together for what threatens to be the last time, together “in one purpose” (Rashi), the father to sacrifice the son.
bound. Tied together the limbs.
[RA] In contrast to the breathless pace of the narrative as a whole, this sequence inscribes a kind of slow motion: buildng the altar, laying out the wood, binding the child on top of the wood, reaching out the hand with the butcher knife—until the voice calls out from the heavens.
[EF] slay: A verb used to describe animal sacrifice; the throat is slit.
11 But YHVH’S messenger called to him from heaven and said: Avraham! Avraham! He said:Here I am.
Abraham, Abraham. This exclamation (Abraham, Abraham!) shows the anxiety of the angel of the Lord to hold Abraham back at the very last moment.
[RA] and the LORD’s messenger called out to him from the heavens. This is nearly identical with the calling-out to Hagar in 21:17. In fact. a whole configuration of parallels between the two stories is invoked. Each of Abraham’s sons is threatened with death in the wilderness, one in the presence of his mother, the other in the presence (and by the hand) of his father. In each case the angel intervenes at the critical moment, referring to the son fondly as na’ar, “lad.” At the center of the story, Abraham’s hand holds the knife, Hagar’s is enjoined to “hold her hand” (the literal meaning of the Hebrew) on the lad. In the end, each of the sons is promised to become progenitor of a great people, the threat to Abraham’s continuity having been averted.
Herelam. The third time Abraham pronounces this word—hineni—of readiness: first to God, then to Isaac, now to the divine messenger.
now I know. All that God desired was proof of Abraham’s willingness to obey His command; and the moral surrender had been complete.
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[EF] a ram caught behind: Some read “one ram caught.”
[RA] aram. The Masoretic Text reads “a ram behind [aar],” but scholarship is virtually unanimous in following numerous ancient versions in reading ead, “one,” a very similar grapheme in the Hebrew.
14 Avraham called the name of that place: YHVH Sees. As the saying is today: On YHVH’S mountain (it) is seen.to this day. i.e. it has become a proverbial expression.
where the LORD is seen. i.e. where He reveals himself—referring to the Temple, which was afterwards erected on this mount.
[14] sight. The place-name means “the LORD sees.” The phrase at the end means literally either “he sees” or “he will be seen,” depending on how the verb is vocalized, and this translation uses a noun instead to preserve the ambiguity. It is also not clear whether it is God or the person who comes to the Mount who sees/is seen.
15 Now YHVH’S messenger called to Avraham a second time from heaven16 and said:
By myself I swear —YHVH’S utterance— indeed, because you have done this thing, have not withheld your son, your only-one,
by Myself have I sworn. Moses referred to this oath when he pleaded for Israel; see Exod. XXXII,13. The expression is equivalent of, ‘as I live, saith the Lord,’ Num. XIV,28, and elsewhere.
[EF] YHWH’s utterance: A phrase often found in the Prophetic books. See note on 15:1.
[RA] because you have done this thing. The LORD’s invocation of causation thickens the ambiguities of the story. Abraham has already been promised an innumerable posterity (Chapters 15,17). Perhaps now he has proved himself fully worthy of the promise. One might note that here for the first time a future of military triumph is added to the promise.
as the sand which is upon the seashore. ‘As the sand has been placed as a boundary for the sea, and though the waves thereof roar and toss themselves, yet can they not prevail (Jer. V,22), so would multitudes of enemies strive in vain to destroy Abraham’s descendants; but thy seed shall possess, etc.’ (Malbim); XXXII,13.
possess the gate of his enemies. XXIV,60. The ‘gate’ of the city was its most important site (See XIX,1), and its capture gave one command of the city.
[EF] indeed, I will bless you: Avra-ham has received such blessings before, but never before “because you have hearkened to my voice” (v.18) inherit the gate: i.e. possess or take the city.
be blessed. See XII,2.
[EF] all the nations . . . .: See 12:3.
20-24. These verses are inserted to give the genealogy of Rebekah, whose life was to be linked with Isaac’s.
[EF] Avraham returned: The fact that Yitzhak is not mentioned here has given rise to speculation for centuries (see Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial). The omission may simply arise from the fact that Yitzhak as a personality is not important to the story, which is first and foremost a test of Avraham.
[RA] 20-24. The genealogical list inserted here, which reflects a Mesopotamian confederation of twelve tribes akin to the twelve tribes of Abraham’s descendants, is directed toward the introduction of Rebekah (verse 23), soon to join the Patriarchal narrative as a principal figure. The genealogy marks a kind of boundary in the larger narrative. Abraham has accomplished his chief actions; all that is really left to him is to acquire a suitable burial plot for Sarah, which will be his final gesture in laying claim to the land. At that point, even before Abraham’s death, the concerns of the next generation will take center stage (chapter 24).
Milcah and Nahor. See XI,29.
22 Aram, /and Cesed, Hazo, Pildash, Yidlaf, and Betuel.
Bethuel. Mentioned again in Chap. XXIV.
23 Now Betuel begot Rivka.— These eight Milca bore to Nahor, Avraham’s brother.
[EF] Rivka: Trad. English “Rebecca.”
24 And his concubine-her name was Re’uma-bore too: Tevah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maakha.