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Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 22 (The Command to Sacrifice Isaac)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In Genesis 22 we read one of the most shocking passages in the entire Bible. In the preceding chapters, we learned that God had promised Abraham that he and Sarah would have a son, and through this son and his descendants, all people of the earth would be blessed. The descendants of this son would also receive the Promised Land as an inheritance from God. In Genesis 21, the son was born, and his name was Isaac.

As chapter 22 opens, the reader discovers that God is going to test Abraham. The fact that we are told that God is testing Abraham is a major clue that this passage is all about Abraham’s faith and obedience. We are stunned when we see what the test is: God tells Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Abraham certainly remembers the covenant that God made with him. He knows that Isaac is the child through whom the promises will be fulfilled, so what does he do? The text says simply, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac.”

In verses 3-5, Abraham travels to Moriah with Isaac and some of his servants. Once he arrives in the vicinity, he instructs his servants to stay behind. Notice what he tells his servants, “We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham assures the servants that both he and Isaac will return. This is a clue that Abraham is confident that God will somehow spare Isaac.

As Abraham and Isaac travel to the mountain, Isaac speaks up and asks where the lamb for the burnt offering is. Abraham answers that God will provide. Again, the reader sees a clue that Abraham knows that God will not break the covenant He made with Him.

The climax of the passage occurs when Abraham has bound up Isaac. Just as Abraham reaches for the knife, the angel of the Lord calls out to him, “Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught in a thicket. He sacrifices the ram instead of Isaac, and then names the place “The Lord will provide,” because He indeed did provide.

In verses 15-19, God reiterates the covenant He has made with Abraham. He reassures him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, that his descendants will take possession of the land promised to them, and that through his offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.

We would be remiss if we did not point out the foreshadowing in this story of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Many scholars believe that the mountain where Isaac was to be sacrificed is located where the temple would be built in the city of Jerusalem. This is where Jesus would be sentenced to die some 2000 years later. Just as Abraham did not withhold his one and only son, neither did God withhold his one and only son, Jesus.

Difficult Bible Passages, Jesus Christ

How Does Jesus Help Us Understand the Binding of Isaac?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

The story, in Genesis 22, of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac has always been perplexing to readers. However, this story takes on special significance to Christians, for it foreshadows the sacrifice of God’s Son for mankind.

David Baggett and Jerry Walls, in Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, bring this significance to light. Before doing so, they chide readers of this text who fail to take into account the theological context of the story:

Kierkegaard is famous for taking the passage as paradigmatic of the “teleological suspension of the ethical,” according to which obedience to God trumps morality itself. He no doubt has pushed many readers to personalize the narrative of the binding of Isaac and ask themselves what they would personally do if they thought God commanded something like this.

But of course the story thus construed has been shorn of nearly all its unique theological and historical significance. The quest to derive universal principles from a story like this is at cross-purposes with the particularistic, gradualist, and narrative-driven character of many portions of scripture, particularly in the Old Testament.

How should one approach the interpretation of Genesis 22?

One who wishes to read [it] with a genuine openness to [its] wisdom and revelatory nature would be well advised not to so recklessly and spuriously traverse the hermeneutical gap. Genesis clearly states that God was testing Abraham, so that the reader knows in advance that it is not really the will of God for Abraham to do this. Abraham, of course, does not know it, and so the point of the test is to see the extent of Abraham’s obedience.

For the reader, the dramatic tension is not the content of the command, but whether Abraham will fully trust God, and what God will do to stop it. Including Abraham’s story in the history of revelation was a much more powerful way to show that God does not, in fact, want child sacrifice than just to say so.

So how does Jesus figure into the Christian understanding of Genesis 22?

Christian readers, however, have always seen in this story a profound fore-shadowing of another scenario in which the Father actually allowed his Son to be sacrificed. Rather than being spared by a ram caught in the thickets, the Son was himself the lamb of God who died to take away the sin of the world. And he went to his death not as a helpless child, but as a perfect man who willingly offered his full obedience to his Father in a fallen world bent on killing him.

While the story of Jesus is even more surprising than the story of Isaac, perhaps in another sense it is not. Is the face of Jesus surprising when omnibenevolence takes human form? It is worth emphasizing here that the book of Hebrews, which reflects at length on the sacrifice of Christ, describes him as one “who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

The sacrifice of Christ was not a sacrifice into oblivion, but a sacrifice with the prospect of resurrection and exaltation as its final outcome. In view of this, perhaps it is not surprising that the author of Hebrews explains that Abraham obeyed God when called to sacrifice Isaac because he reasoned that God can raise the dead, and must have been planning to do so if he were to fulfill his promises through Isaac, as he had promised. God’s ultimate ability to rectify things as shown in the resurrection provides ways to square even difficult commands with his perfect love and goodness that are simply out of reach if death is the last word.