In preparation for our upcoming small-group, I’ve been skimming through the Old Testament this week. My goal was to get a birds’ eye view of the broad narrative without spending too much time on individual details, but I’m already failing. I couldn’t make it past Genesis 22 without pausing for one of my favorite Old Testament stories: the sacrifice of Isaac.
As a parent, it’s impossible not to get a knot in your stomach when you read God’s demand for Abraham to sacrifice his son. As if to cement his seeming heartlesness, God even rubs it in: “Yeah, I’m talking about your only son. The one you love.” I’m trying to imagine being as cruel as God is acting. Maybe taking my son’s very most favorite toy, and dangling it over the garbage disposal. “This is your only Millennium Falcon, isn’t it? The one Mommy & Daddy gave you, the one you love? It’s going into the sewer, but not before it’s chopped into a million pieces!”
The gods of Abraham’s Philistine neighbors would often demand sacrifices of livestock, grain, and even children to ensure continued fertility. But Abraham’s God… he’s different. Not arbitrary and impulsive like the others. He’s the one who supernaturally gave Isaac as a gift to his father. He’s the one who promised Abraham an infinite number of descendents through this kid. He wouldn’t just… just change his mind, would he?
That’s what seems to be happening. And what’s most amazing to me about this story is how Abraham responds to God’s bizarre command, acting in a way that goes completely against his character: he simply obeys!
As far as we know, God isn’t giving Abraham a deadline to carry out this horrible act. And from what he’s shown us so far, we would expect Abraham to stall and negotiate with God. To try to find his own way out of the bad situation he finds himself in. That’s what he did when God told him that Sodom would be destroyed: “Oh God, what if there are 50 good people there? What about 45? 30? 10?” When God didn’t provide him a son as fast as he wanted, he went with plan B: the pretty young Egyptian girl living in the maid’s quarters. Whenever he was forced to move into foreign lands, his usual tactic was to tell people his wife was his sister, and give her away as a concubine to the local ruler.
Abraham was a weasel! He was willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to get out of a predicament and get what he wanted. So why would Abraham be happily going along with these sadistic demands of God? There might be a clue in the instructions he leaves for his servants when they get to the mountain where Isaac will be killed. “Dwell for yourselves here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there and we will bow down and we will return to you” (literal translation).
Did you catch that? “We’ll go worship, and then we’ll come back to you.” He’s on his way to offer Isaac as a burnt sacrifice, but somehow Abraham expects to return to his servants with his son by his side. What does he mean by that? There are at least three possibilities:
- He’s lying to keep the sacrifice of Isaac a secret.
- He doesn’t even intend to kill Isaac after all (maybe that’s why he’s using such vague words: “We’ll go over there and bow down”).
- He has complete faith that God’s promise to establish an everlasting covenant with Isaac’s descendents will somehow still be fulfilled.
From the tone of his voice, I think option 3 is the most likely. He has clear resolve, and he expects to return with his son Isaac. Alive. He won’t be dragging a dead body back down the mountain: after a burnt sacrifice, there wouldn’t be much to carry. He intends to fully obey God, and at the same time he believes that he and his son will both be walking back from this experience on their own two feet.
I was supposed to be in Judges by tomorrow, but I think I’ll stick around in Genesis 22 for a little longer. Stay tuned.