Tag Archives: Abraham

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.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 15 (Abrahamic Covenant)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In verses 1-6 in Genesis 15, Abraham has an incredibly important conversation with God. First, in verse 1 God reassures Abraham that he should not be afraid, that God is his reward. In verses 2-3, however, Abraham questions God about the promise God made to Abraham previously. Recall that God promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation in Genesis 12.

Abraham complains to God that because he has no children, his only heir will be one of his servants, Eliezer of Damascus. How can God’s promise be fulfilled if Abraham has no children? He and his wife are very old and his wife is barren.

In verses 4-5, God reassures Abraham that a biological son would be his heir. In fact, God lets Abraham know that his descendants will be numbered like the stars in heaven. What is Abraham’s response to God’s promise?

In verse 6, we see one of the most important sentences in the Bible.  “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” It could be argued that the entire narrative of God’s redemptive plan for mankind revolves around this verse. Because Abraham believed God, he was known as righteous. Abraham’s obedience flowed from his belief, and this is why the person who believes will also obey. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

After God reiterated to Abraham that he would have natural descendants that would be numbered like the stars, God also reminded Abraham that he would receive the land promised to him in Genesis 12. When Abraham asks God how he will know that he will receive the land, God instructs Abraham to get a “heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

The heifer, goat, and ram were cut in two, but not the birds.  In verses 12-21, God makes a covenant with Abraham with an amazing pyrotechnical display. “A smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” In the ancient world, parties to a covenant would sometimes walk between slaughtered animals as part of the ceremony. In this case, God is the only one passing through the animals, because he is making the promise on his own.

This covenant is an unconditional promise to Abraham that his descendants will be given the land of Canaan, land that is bordered by the Nile River and the Euphrates River. Notice that these borders are coincident with the borders around the Garden of Eden. God would return his people to a land of paradise.

Before all of this would happen, though, Abrahams’ descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land for 400 years. This, of course, foreshadows the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt for 400 years. Remember that the book of Genesis is being written to the Israelites prior to their entering the Promised Land. This covenant of God made with Abraham would be especially poignant to them as they wondered whether they would ever see the Promised Land. Moses, by recording God’s promise to Abraham, reassures them that they will.

God’s promises are always kept, but they may take longer than we like. Abraham would not receive the land immediately, but only after centuries would pass. Yet, we see that Abraham still believed.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 11-12 (Call of Abraham)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

The calling of Abraham (his name would be changed from Abram to Abraham in Genesis 17) in Genesis 12 is one of the first biblical events that historians can date with any kind of precision.  Many scholars believe that Abraham moved to Canaan around 2100 BC, or 2100 years before the birth of Christ.

Ur of the Chaldeans, where Abraham’s family originated, is thought to be located southwest of  the ancient city of Babylon, located in what is now Iraq, near the modern town of Hilla, and on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river.  Babylon was founded near the end of the 3rd millennium BC, and lasted through the 2nd century AD.

On to the verses….

In chapter 11, verses 27-30 introduce the reader to Abram’s family (his name would later be changed to Abraham by God).  We learn that Abraham’s father is named Terah and that Abraham has brothers named Nahor and Haran.  Abraham’s wife is named Sarah (her name is changed from Sarai to Sarah in Genesis 17) and Nahor’s wife is named Milcah.

Then in verse 30, out of the blue, we read that Sarah cannot conceive children.  In the ancient near east, for a woman to be unable to conceive a child was devastating to her and her husband.  The author of Genesis 11 is letting the reader know that if Abraham is going to have any children with Sarah, God must intervene.  The need for God to intervene will strike the reader as we read the first verses of chapter 12, where Abraham’s descendants are promised blessings.  How can Abraham have any descendants if his wife is barren?

In verses 31-32, we learn that Terah actually had left Ur and made it as far as the city of Haran (not to be confused with Abrahams’ brother). See this link to a map showing Abraham’s journeys.

As we come to chapter 12, we read some of the most important verses in the entire Bible.  Here the author of Genesis tells us about God’s plan to bless mankind after the disasters that had occurred at the Fall, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel.  We learn how God will create for himself a people who acknowledge him as the one true God, and who have as their homeland a place called the Lord’s Land.

According to the Zondervan NIV Study Bible,

In the ancient world of the OT, all the various gods that were worshiped and relied on were gods of a particular place and/or a particular people (a family, tribe, or nation—the choice of the gods to be venerated by the social unit resting in the hands of the communal leader[s]). The most effective way for the true God to break into such a religious world and gain world recognition was to establish a relationship with a patriarchal head of household and call him away from his idolatrous clan and from the place(s) with which its gods were linked and to establish that patriarch’s household as the beginnings of a people who acknowledged only him as their God, and then locate them in a place/land that he claimed as his own. That is the program that Yahweh initiated with his summons to Abram.

Note the seven parts of God’s promise to Abraham in verses 2-3 of chapter 12.  First, “I will make you into a great nation.”  Second, “I will bless you.”  Third, “I will make your name great.”  Fourth, “You will be a blessing.” (Some scholars read this fourth part as a command to Abraham, not a promise).  Fifth, “I will bless those who bless you.”  Sixth, “Whoever curses you I will curse.”  Seventh, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”  Because of the Hebrew literary style used in this section containing the promises, the original readers would have understood the first and seventh promises to be the most important, that God would make Abraham into a great nation, and that all peoples on earth would be blessed.

In verses 4-9, Abraham’s journey into Canaan is described.  We learn that Lot, who is Abraham’s nephew, accompanies him to Canaan.  Lot will be an important figure in the coming chapters of Genesis, and that is why the reader is alerted to his presence.

There are three particular places mentioned in Canaan that Abraham visits, all of which are later visited by Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, when Jacob returns to Canaan, and all of which are mentioned as sites occupied by Joshua in the conquest of Canaan some 700 years later.  These three sites are 1) Shechem, 2) a place between Bethel and Ai, and 3) the Negev. At Shechem, and between Bethel and Ai, Abraham builds altars to the Lord.  At Shechem, God appears to Abraham to reassure him that his offspring would have the land.

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.

Books of the Bible, Theology

Are There Things God Does Not Know?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Christians believe that God is omniscient, which means that God knows everything—past, present, and future.  In addition, he knows the actual and the possible; only the impossible (the contradictory) is unknown to God, as the logically contradictory is unknowable to anyone.

But there are passages in the Bible that seem to indicate that God is ignorant of certain facts and that he needs to discover them.  One of the best examples is in Gen. 18:20-33, where Abraham bargains with God to save people in Sodom.  God says that he “will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached [him]” (Gen. 18:21).  If this verse is taken in a strictly literal sense, it indicates that God does not know how bad is Sodom without first visiting himself.

So how do we deal with passages like this?  The answer is that we must always interpret any passage in light of all the other texts in the Bible.  They must all integrate together and they cannot contradict each other.

Reading the rest of the Bible, we discover a multitude of verses that speak of God’s unlimited knowledge.  Consider Job 37:16, which says,  “Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?”  In Ps. 139, David speaks of God’s knowing everything about him, even his words before he speaks them.  In Psalm 147, the writer proclaims that God’s “understanding has not limit.”

God announces things to men before they ever occur (Is. 42:9).  Jesus teaches that God knows every person’s needs before they ever ask (Matt. 6:8).  Every hair on your head is numbered (Matt. 10:30).  Paul proclaims the “depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33).  The writer of Hebrews reminds us that “nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight” (Heb. 4:13).

There is a strong theme of God’s unlimited knowledge running throughout the Bible.  So, if we understand the Genesis 18 passage to be teaching that God does not know what is happening in Sodom, we run head-long into contradiction.  How can the God who knows every hair on every person’s head not know what’s going on in Sodom?

The answer is fairly simple.  Students of the Bible have traditionally understood passages like Genesis 18 to be anthropomorphic in nature.  This means that the passage is written from a human perspective, rather than a divine perspective.  God already knows how many wicked people are in Sodom, but he wants to teach Abraham something about the wickedness of the people.  God must speak to human beings in terms they can understand, so he sometimes asks questions and expresses uncertainty to elicit appropriate human responses.

Recognizing anthropomorphisms in the Bible is extremely important.  The person who claims that passages like Genesis 18 must be taken literally is knocking an infinite God down to a finite creature.  In addition, once you deny the presence of anthropomorphic language in the Bible, you must admit that God has wings, arms, and eyes; that he repents and forgets things.  The list could go on.  The Bible, like any other literature, employs figurative and metaphorical language.  Failure to recognize this leads a reader into all kinds of serious problems.