Abraham and Isaac
Tomorrow I’m preaching on the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. I’m still, after all these years, baffled by it. God tested Abraham by asking for a child sacrifice.
Here are the insightful questions of Eugene Peterson:
There is so much here that we cannot comprehend, so much that violates our pious sensibilities, so much that refuses to conform to our expectations. How can God command a murder? And not just murder in general but the murder of a beloved son? How can God go back on the miracle-promise fulfilled in the birth of Isaac? How can God, who our parents and pastors have taught us loves us from eternity, command this cold-blooded cruelty? How can God, who Jesus tells us has such a tender heart that he is moved even by the death of sparrows, command a father to kill his son, without so much as a hint of explanation? We Can’t handle this.
Scott,
Thanks for your response.
One has to ask why Abraham even tried killing Isaac.
The psyche wards are full of Abrahams that succeeded. Why is the voice they heard discounted?
It’s not. Abraham goes free and Joe Blow gets medication.
It just boils down to being in the Bible and having to justify it somehow.
Why is it so important to be people of the book? Why not just be people of the honest and decent realm. Atheist’s get it why don’t Christians. By the way I am not an atheist, probably more of a pantheist.
Thanks for acknowledging me Scott.
Here’s a Fred Craddock story related to Gen 22:
I had a student some years ago who, I’m sure, has since repented of his ways. First class in preaching, introduction to preaching, preaching in class, and I, that semester, allowed the students to choose their own texts. He chose Abraham offering Isaac. Well, first-year student, Abraham offering Isaac. I knew Martin Luther had said, “That text is too big, I can’t preach on it,” but my student, you know. So I called him into my office, and I said, “Are you sure you want to preach on this?”
“Oh yeah, I like that story. I want to preach on that.”
I said, “Okay, but I think you’ll discover this is a mountain too high, and you might not be able to climb it.”
“Oh, I think I can do it.”
“Okay.”
So he explained Abraham offering Isaac, and then he needed an analogy. What was that like, to raise the knife over one’s own son, in confidence that God will provide? So he said, “There are a lot of sacrifices we make, if we believe in God and want to serve God. I know when I came to school here, I arrived in early August to get settled, and my apartment wasn’t ready, so I was put in temporary housing. It was not a very nice apartment, but the thing about it is, it was not air conditioned. And there I was in August, in Atlanta, without air conditioning.”
So he knows what Abraham was all about.
Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, edited by Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001), p. 123.
“So he knows what Abraham was all about.”
Does he? Air condition = sacrificing son. Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch.
I love this account too. The book “Fear and Trembling” by Kierkegaard is the best book on this story.
http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org
In my humble opinion, the only way to approach the Akedah is through midrash. A straight up reading is too problematic.
Scott,
There needs to be the constant study of the will of God. And yes some of it is hard to understand and requires deep stody. However , it can be understood. My killing like a terrorist is not justified in the scriptures.
The Akedah in the Gen. 22 narrative was Abraham beieving in the promise of God. His belief that Isaac was the child of promise and therefore a faith in resurrection.
Ray B.
Our “dispensationalistic” view of scripture has made it too easy for you and me. It’s too easy to say that God spoke in direct ways to Abraham, but not in direct ways now. Now I have to follow what Jesus said in scripture (which is always loving) but if I were Abraham back in the day and God said “kill this person” then I’d just have to follow. I want to understand the nature of God that is unchangeable. I believe the NT writers claimed a great consistency in the God of Israel and the Word that became flesh. It’s too easy to say I’d never kill someone UNLESS I was living in a time when God could talk to me in a loud voice and tell me to directly.
I think if I heard that loud voice telling me to kill an innocent child, I’d assume it might be someone other than God– and NOT because I’d say “God doesn’t talk to us that way anymore” but because I’d know that killing innocents isn’t HIS nature.
BTW, you’re welcome Leland– I always look forward to your comments. Honestly!
Scott,
In the new covenant there is no reason to believe that God would ask you to kill an innocent child. Again, Abraham obeyed out of his deep experience of faith in God. In telling the servants that “we will come back to you” , speaks to his faith in resurrection.
I understand what you’re saying Ray B., but there are those who would justify killing during the “new covenant” based upon the killing allowed or commanded during the “old covenant” and it’s very difficult–as has been shown time and time again in discussions on this blog–to clearly delineate those “dispensations”. It’s so difficult, IMHO, that our “that was the old covenant and we’re in the new…” argument is just a villianously oversimplified way of short-circuiting the discernment process.
Was Isaac ever really in danger?
Great discussion. I’m with Amy & always think about it from Isaac’s point of view. Did they have have therapy back then?
The purpose of this story is threefold: to establish Abraham as a model for obedience and faith; to demonstrate that God keeps his promises to Israel; and to dramatise the difference between the “old” religion of Abraham’s ancestors and the henceforth “new” religion of Abraham’s descendants.
Abraham’s ancestors had “served other gods,” (Joshua 24:2) such service often including child sacrifice, so there would be an understandable conflict in his mind. Was the voice of ancestral custom, the voice that now told him to sacrifice Isaac, the same voice that had promised “through Isaac will all the nations be blessed?”
Abraham demonstrates obedience to the voice of his ancestral gods by setting off to perform the sacrifice. The journey towards the place of sacrifice symbolises progressive revelation of the one, true God e.g. the God who called Abraham to Canaan would not renege on his promises; both he and Isaac would return; God would provide the lamb; even if death were required, his God could raise from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19.
So Abraham’s faith in the power of God is established and his absolute obedience extolled and rewarded, even though the particular act of obedience is explicitly repudiated, both then (by the angel of YHVH) and later (by Micah and Jeremiah).
Ray B,
“Scott,
In the new covenant there is no reason to believe that God would ask you to kill an innocent child. ”
Unless your Joshua.
Vynette,
You said…
“The purpose of this story is threefold: to establish Abraham as a model for obedience and faith; to demonstrate that God keeps his promises to Israel; and to dramatise the difference between the “old” religion of Abraham’s ancestors and the henceforth “new” religion of Abraham’s descendants.”
… and then went on to detail a very clear interpretation of the story.
I think some of us have a problem with exactly HOW we are to read this. What I mean is this: If I were to talk academically about the meaning of, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh (an ancient Sumerian / Babylonian / Assyrian myth) then I might take the same tone… ie: “The purpose of this story is to show…”
Do we read this as a “mythic” story with deep significance? Or, do we read this as a documentation of what a God-follower thousands of years ago actually said and did? OR… do we somehow read it as BOTH?
I have no problem seeing the mystical, theological significance of the story– it’s packed full of that like nothing else in the Bible! But when I place myself in the story… like it was something that might have happened last week, or last year, or 500 years ago… or 3000 years ago… then things get tricky. It’s suddenly lifted out of the realm of archetypes and into the realm of reality.
“There was this young boy once whose father heard a voice and believed it with all his heart. So the father took his boy and tied him up and placed him on a rock and began to slice his throat…”
Difficult, very difficult outside of the realm of symbolism.
The Genesis 22 narrative is history. It tells of Abraham who believed and obeyed God. Abraham fully trusted in the promise of God. He knew God could and would raise the dead.
Heb. 11 : 17 – 19.
Ray B,
Still
“In the new covenant there is no reason to believe that God would ask you to kill an innocent child. ”
Unless your Joshua.
A few years back I read in a volume, Eye for Eye-Old Testament Ethics for Today, by Christopher J.H.Wright (I think that’s his name)–that the meaning of this story was God would never ask his followers for child sacrifice–He would provide the lamb.
That has been a very satisfying interpretation to me.
Thanks Beverly– that is helpful. But isn’t this a story in which God DOES ask for child scrifice, but then HE provides the child? (in Jesus of course, as we extend the metaphor)
I can understand that, but it means for me, literally today, that I may be asked to do something that SEEMS wrong, but God will actually step in with the solution at the last minute. In ancient Greek plays they called that “deus ex machina” or “god out of the machine” in which an impossible situation was solved by a “god” who came in at the last moment. Usually, the Greeks used a big mechanical crane device to accomplish this–hence the name.
I don’t believe God works this way… I see it nowhere else in scripture (I mean allowing us to believe we are supposed to do something wrong… and then saving us from ourselves at the last minute). I think God’s ways are God’s ways, and I’m okay not understanding them, but I do believe that God doesn’t lie, that he doesn’t deceive, that he isn’t a “trickster” (to borrow from other pagan archetypes). I’m just still grappling with what this story DOES teach about my practical living and relationship with God.
Perhaps the “grappling” part is the point. We aren’t given clear, easy do-it-yourself sorts of answers. We must grapple with God in order to follow him seriously.
Thanks for your helpful comment!
God revealed himself in a diversity of ways in the pagan world of Abraham’s time. In a world of child sacrifice this might have been an effective way to give a very specific message.
Beverly,
“In a world of child sacrifice this might have been an effective way to give a very specific message.”
What kind of God controls this world you speak of? If you hurt the least of these…..? And Jesus according to yall represents the father. Seems like theological smoke and mirrors.