The Story of Isaac

One of the most troubling passages in the Bible is the story of the binding of Isaac: Abraham setting off up Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son.

Traditionally, in Christianity, Abraham is portrayed here as passing a test of faith: obeying God’s command no matter what. This is because it is explained in this way, as evidence of Abraham’s great faith, in the New Testament: Hebrews 11: 17-19.

But this does not seem to make sense on its face. How, after all, did Abraham know it was God’s voice speaking to him? We are advised to “test the spirits,” and calling on him to do an immoral act should have been proof positive that the voice he heard was not God, but the Devil. God, being all-good, cannot command an immoral act. 

I, on a close reading, conclude that Abraham must have understood from the beginning that there was no chance Isaac was actually going to be sacrificed, that God had told him so. It was all done for show, in the context of a surrounding society that practiced child sacrifice, and would expect such a thing.

But then, the question arises; why is child sacrifice or infanticide so much a feature of so many cultures?

Jewish commentators find the passage similarly disturbing; and are less inclined than Christian commentators to give Abraham a pass.

Leonard Cohen wrote a song about it, “The Story of Isaac,” in which he accuses Abraham of simple malice towards his son:

A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.

In doing so, Cohen suggests that Abraham represents and is acting out an eternal urge: the parent’s feelings toward their child are always ambivalent. The child, after all represents the parent’s own mortality. The child will gather strength as the parent’s strength wanes, and one day will supplant them. The child looks like a dangerous rival. At least, to a narcissistic parent.

When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must
I will kill you if I can.

Cohen seems to see this in his own childhood. He makes Isaac nine years old—the same age he was when his father died. He speaks then from Isaac’s perspective. He explains, in an interview, that at that point in his own life it seemed to him that it was “either him or me.” If his father had not died, he would have.

This seems to say Cohen was abused in his early childhood. This might explain, in turn, his lifelong struggles with depression.

Cohen, writing the song during the Vietnam War, suggests such an impulse to kill the young may be behind the urge to war: the old men send off the young to die.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.

.. have mercy on this uniform,
Man of peace or man of war.

"It has fathers and sons in it and sacrifice and slaughter, and an extremely honest statement at the end. It does say something about fathers and sons and that curious place, generally over the slaughtering block where generations meet and have their intercourse. I think probably that I did feel [when I wrote it] that one of the reasons that we have wars was so the older men can kill off the younger ones, so there’s no competition for the women. Also, completely remove the competition in terms of their own institutional positions."

Cohen’s take may shock, but is in fact confirmed by fairy tale after fairy tale: it is the underlying theme, for example, of Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast, or Cinderella, or Hansel and Gretel, or Rapunzel.

We pretend it is not there, we are in denial as a civilization, as we abort our young in vast numbers, but it is inevitably there.

The Story of Isaac

The door it opened slowly,
My father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision
And you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.  - The Story of Isaac, Leonard Cohen

Atheists always bring up the story of Abraham and Isaac. What kind of God is that?

And they are absolutely right to do so. The story presents a serious moral puzzle.

How could Abraham have known it was God speaking to him? The Bible itself warns us that there are evil spirits. When we think we hear something from a spiritual entity, we are told we must always “test the spirits.”

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4)

What test? Here the passage in John is not obviously helpful. It goes on,

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This could not have applied to Abraham, living before Christ. But elsewhere, too, we are told how to recognize “false prophets”: “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” Which seems to obviously mean a moral test, although it might also be a test of beauty: if the spirit advocates anything obviously immoral, it cannot be God. And Jesus, aside from the particular incarnation, is eternally the way, the truth, and the life. Accordingly, for Abraham, the test is: did the spirit advocate what is morally good, did it tell the truth, and was it on the side of life?

The spirit he hears seems to have failed all three tests.

To begin with, it is obviously immoral to kill his son. And the spirit wants death, not life.

And another thing. God had promised Abraham that he would have many descendants, and that he would have them through Isaac. Now God wants him to kill Isaac, making this impossible. That would mean, if this voice is from God, that God is a liar. Bingo—voice cannot be God. Abraham should not have listened.

And speaking of lies, Abraham is described as lying to his retainers on the way to the sacrifice. He tells then all to wait, they will be right back:

He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Then he lies to Isaac:

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

If he really believes he is about to sacrifice Isaac, that is, he is lying. Now, what would be the sense of telling lies in aid of doing something out of piety? Disobeying God in order to obey God?

But then again Abraham is not actually lying, either, is he? He is predicting exactly what does happen: God himself provides an animal or the sacrifice. He does return with Isaac safe and sound.

The only logical conclusion, so far as I can see, is that Abraham knew all along that he was not going to sacrifice Isaac, and further God must have told him so directly. He was not just guessing or hoping. He knew what was going to happen.

It was all a bit of performance art.

Why? Seems to me there is an obvious explanation. Child sacrifice, specifically the blood sacrifice of a firstborn son, was standard practice among the Canaanite religions thereabouts. If Abraham were advocating a monotheistic faith that rejected these pagan gods in the name of a greater one, observers might easily suspect this was all bogus, done in an attempt to avoid sacrificing his own son. So he needed to demonstrate that he was perfectly willing to sacrifice his own son, but that Yahweh God did not demand it.

You might object, as an atheist friend objected, that this interpretation seems to be a stretch based on what the Bible actually says. But that is exactly wrong: it in fact seems the only possible interpretation based on what the Bible actually says.

Granted, the Bible does not say it all clearly. It is more like a murder mystery.

So the Bible wants us to think, to ponder, to meditate. Is that so surprising? Reading the passage, it is we who are being tested, not Abraham.

Imnmorality in the Bible: Abraham and Isaac

The story of Abraham and Isaac: Ethiopian icon.

On the subject of immorality in the Bible, our next exhibit is quite a famous one: Abraham’s near-ritual sacrifice of Isaac.

Let’s give the whole story:

Genesis 22:

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “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.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Rembrandt's version.

This, the site religioustolerance.com presents as a “near child sacrifice.”

Fair enough. Nothing untoward actually happened; but that does not matter. Sin is in the intent, not in the act.

If, therefore, Abraham willfully intended to execute his son, he was guilty of a moral wrong.

But he did not. The passage itself indicates that the act was entirely against Abraham’s own will: God himself refers to “your only son, whom you love.” He was doing it in obedience to God, who of course has the right of life and death.

Moreover, it is not clear that Abraham actually believed he would have to kill Isaac. Note his answer when Isaac asks about the sacrifice: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.”

Is he, the righteous Abraham, lying? Odd, then, that his words turn out to be literally true. Did he actually anticipate that this would happen?

After all, God had already promised him that he would be the father of many nations, through his son Isaac. Killing Isaac presumably would make that impossible, meaning that God had broken his covenant with him. Yet God is supposed to be all-good.

St. Paul suggests this in the New Testament: that Abraham’s faith was that God, capable of any kind of miracle, was going to ensure that Isaac would not die:

Frederick James Shields' interpretation.

“By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” (Hebrews 11:17-19).

The incident was a severe test of Abraham’s faith, i.e., trust, in God; as we might trust a good friend to be acting morally towards us even if it appears he might be acting immorally. Abraham’s faith, then, was that God would somehow ensure that it all worked out well in the end.

If Abraham had not intended to kill Isaac, but God had, this too would have been immoral—on God’s part, not on Abraham’s. And it would not have been an injustice to Isaac, but to Abraham—he would have lost his only son, and his posterity, and God would have broken faith with him, and Abraham would have done nothing to deserve this. Isaac would be in heaven.

However, rather obviously, since he did not allow Isaac to be killed, God never intended to kill Isaac.

Hence, there is no immorality shown in the passage.

The passage is significant for another reason: we know that, later on, Yahweh is distinctive in the Middle East for being associated with the complete rejection of child sacrifice as an abomination. And we know that child sacrifice was the common practice in the Ancient Middle East. One important reason for the story, then, is surely to make the theological point that God has the right to demand child sacrifice in terms of his power and primacy, but that, as a moral and good God, he refuses this tribute. This is necessary, perhaps, because perverse human sentiment tends to imagine that the brutality of an idol or an authority is some kind of validation of its reality and power. See, for this, Aesop’s fable about the frogs who wanted a king.

Activist government.

Of course, for Christians, the story also has obvious significance as a precursor and model of the story of Jesus Christ: of God himself, like Abraham, sacrificing his only begotten son, and of the son being “resurrected from the dead” in the end. Pondering what Abraham must have felt gives us insight into the depths of God’s love for us.