Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [39]
PLOT SUMMARY: THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC
Having waited until he was one hundred years old for the son and heir who would fulfill God’s promise, Abraham is told by God to take the boy and offer him as a burnt sacrifice. Abraham never questions this directive in the Scriptures. He simply does as he is told, offering blind obedience to a God who would make him kill his beloved child. Even when the boy asks his father where the sacrificial lamb is, Abraham answers only, “God himself will provide the lamb.”
Only as Abraham binds the boy, lays him on the altar, and holds the knife over him, does an angel stop him. Abraham is told that he has passed the test—he “fears” God. A ram is substituted for the young boy on the altar.
Would Abraham really have done it?
The story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac is a central moment in the Bible. But it raises a number of disturbing questions. Is that kind of devotion or obedience to a divine call acceptable? Would Abraham actually have gone through with it? And what kind of God would ask a parent to do this, even as a test? To many people, it has always seemed an unnecessarily cruel test of faith.
There is nothing that Abraham does in the story to suggest that he had any second thoughts about this divine request. He doesn’t make the same kinds of arguments for his own son that he made for the citizens of Sodom—complete strangers. Sarah is also silent in this episode. Did she try to stop her husband? Did she know what he was up to? Would a mother have done what Abraham did? Nor do we ever get Isaac’s inner thoughts about lying there with a knife poised over his body. All interesting questions, but they lie in the realm of speculation.
Of course, whether this event actually happened is also purely speculation, just like the very existence of Abraham as a real person, rather than a mythic character. Maybe this episode was another legend designed to demonstrate what unshakable faith means and that God had done well in selecting Abraham to be the founder of the “Chosen People.”
But there is another angle to this story, not usually discussed in Sunday school. In some cults and religions of the ancient Near East, human sacrifice was still practiced at that time. In fact, Hebrew Law even states that the firstborn offspring of humans and animals were to be offered to God. The aborted sacrifice of Isaac has been interpreted as a symbolic moment in which human sacrifice was rejected by God. Unfortunately, the practice didn’t stop with Abraham. As the later history of ancient Israel shows, human sacrifice continued in Jerusalem for centuries.
Another question is raised by the episode. When God stays Abraham’s hand, the passage says that Abraham “fears” God. What is the “fear of God,” an expression still commonly used today, as it was meant in the Bible? The Hebrew verb for “fear” can be understood two ways. Occasionally it meant fear as we commonly think of it—the distressing psychological sense of being afraid. But very often the biblical “fear” meant awe or reverence for someone of exalted position. In other words, Abraham was not necessarily “afraid” of God, as he was holding him in profound respect.
BIBLICAL VOICES
Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years; and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but will go to my country, and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac.” (Gen. 24:1-5)
PLOT SUMMARY: ISAAC AND REBEKAH
After Sarah dies at age 127, Abraham buries her in a cave in Hebron. Significantly, he purchases the burial land from the local people, the Hittites, and the verses elaborately explain the great measures Abraham took to stake