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, ‘God 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 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 the Lord 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 God, 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 provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” (Genesis 22:1–18)
Much has been made of Abraham’s obedience to God’s command: “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love . . . and offer him there as a burnt-offering.” Much is made of his obedience to God. A model of faithfulness, people have said, a role model in the life of faith.
And why not? After all, not only was it a terrible command that he was ready to obey—“ready” being perhaps a better translation of the Hebrew word hinneni than the more common rendering, “Here I am.” Not only was it a violent command that he was ready to obey—violent, yes, toward Isaac but also toward the promise God had been making to Abraham all along, that he and Sarah, in spite of barrenness and old age, would become the parents of a great people, a promise whose fulfillment had been dubious and delayed and laughable even. No, not only was it a terrible and violent command, it was also cruel, worded in such a way as if not merely to test Abraham but to terrorize him. Why else belabor the identity of the one whom Abraham was to take to a mountain that God would show him: “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”? Why else but to bring it closer and closer to home, closer and closer to Abraham’s heart: “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”?
This overemphasis comes in contrast to the otherwise spare story, which spares no detail. Plodding and suspenseful, it notes that Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young men with him and, of course, his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved. He cut wood for the burnt offering, which Isaac would soon enough carry—bound to him before he was bound to it. Methodical if mean, the story notes every fine act on Abraham’s part, every movement he makes toward Moriah and then, now alone with his son (his only son, Isaac, whom he loved), farther into the place that God had showed him.
Unswerving obedience, we might hear in it all—Abraham’s building an altar and binding Isaac to it, Abraham’s taking out his knife to kill his son. (And what of Isaac, he who was strong enough to carry his own wood and to hike for three days so was certainly strong enough to fight his old father off? What of him?) Faithful obedience: we marvel at it and we wonder of ourselves, Would we? Could we? I have, anyway. I wrote my senior thesis at divinity school in large part about this very question.
Would we? Could we?
Do we have to?
You know, I’m beginning to suspect that all this time I’ve been marveling at the wrong act of obedience. Really, I’m growing convinced that all this time we’ve been marveling at the wrong thing.
It is impossible to say how common a practice child sacrifice was in the ancient Near East. We have nearly no archeological evidence that it was prevalent. But, of course, a lack of evidence proves nothing. We have lots of narrative mention of it, but often that’s in reference to something other peoples do—and that’s always hard to interpret. Was it written as propaganda, in order to justify enmity of one people for another? Or was it written as fact, or perhaps even warning, in order to caution the members of one people away from another? It’s hard enough to know why people say what they say when they’re among the living and you can still ask them follow-up questions. It’s hard enough to know what motivates even the people closest to us. How much harder it is, then, to know the motivations of people long dead, of an utterly different time and place.
All that said, there is reason enough to believe, at least for our purpose today, that child sacrifice was a familiar practice if not a common one—something the Moabites did, something the Ammonites did, something that might well have been done in Ur, the land out of which God called Abraham in the first place. (And maybe this was one reason why.) Perhaps even the earliest Israelites did it.
Consider: the place called gehenna that Jesus spoke of, a word rendered in English as “hell,” was an ever-burning garbage dump that’s believed to have been a once-sacred site used for child sacrifice.
Consider: the lovely assurance the prophet Micah issues, that all the Lord requires of the people is for them “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Indeed, consider that this comes in direct response to this question posed: “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” which indicates that such a thing was a possibility, a possible requirement for getting right with God.
Consider: Abraham, though loving of Isaac, yet perhaps doubted that God’s promise to him would be fulfilled through Isaac because, of course, the call would come for Abraham to give Isaac back. The call would come, that common call to slaughter your own child for righteousness’ sake. And Abraham would do it, the common, culturally dictated thing to do. And Isaac would comply, having perhaps lived his whole short life under the shadow of this dark question: Will I be allowed to live or will I be chosen to die?
Consider (if you can) all the things you do because it’s what we do in this culture. Militarism. Consumerism. Racism—the unshakeable idea that there are different races within the human race and that these reveal essential value and capability and character. The eating of animals that have been brutalized and enslaved. The burning of fossil fuels over which wars are waged and by which whole ecosystems are devastated while the many climates of the whole world wobble and warm.
Consider (if such a thing is even possible) all the things you don’t even question doing because our cultural framing of reality doesn’t allow for such questioning. (The tricky thing about assumptions is that you don’t know what your assumptions are, you don’t even know you have them, until something radical—radically strange, radically other—comes along and reveals them to you, sometimes to your dismay, sometimes to our shame.)
Of course, Abraham would walk with Isaac to the land Moriah. Of course he would! The wondrous thing is that together they walked home.
Yes, of course! The marvelous act of obedience on Abraham’s part wasn’t when he obeyed the call of God to offer his beloved son, but was when he obeyed the call of the angel of the Lord not to lay a hand on him.
There’s a funny thing in this story that I can’t ever get past—the name of the deity changes midway through the narrative. See: that while it’s God who tested Abraham and it’s God who told him to take his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loves, to the land Moriah; while it’s God who showed him the mountain that these two would climb together and it’s God whom Abraham believed would provide the lamb for the burnt offering (a confession so ominous it’s chilling, said to Isaac, “God will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son”); yes, while it’s God whom Abraham was praised for fearing, and rightly so, for it’s God whose word is terrible and violent and cruel; it is yet the Lord whose angel calls from heaven to say, “Abraham, do not lay your hand on the
