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So, after this, God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 And he said, “Take now your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains, which I will show you. 3 And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, also Isaac his son. He cut the wood for the burnt-offering, and he got up, and he went to the place God had told him about. 

     4 On the third day Abraham looked up, and he saw the place a way off. 5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Wait here with the ass. The lad and I are going up there. There we will worship; then we’ll come back to you. 6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and loaded it on Isaac’s shoulders; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife; and they went up together. 7 And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, and said, “Father.” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Look. Here is the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?” 8 And Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my so.” So, they went on together.

     9 And they came to the place which God had told him about; and Abraham built the altar there, and he laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son, and he laid him on the wood. 10 And Abraham reached out, and took the knife to slay his son. 11 And the angel of the Lord called to him out of heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham.” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 And he said, “Don’t lay a hand on the lad; don’t do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, there, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. And Abraham took the ram, and he offered it up for a burnt-offering in place of his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.” 

     15 And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said, “‘By myself have I sworn,’ says the Lord, ‘because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will truly bless you. I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand on the sea-shore; and they shall possess the gate of their enemies; 18 and in your descendants shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.’” 

     19 So Abraham returned to his young men, and they left and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba.

God decides to test Abraham even if, if he really is God, he must know how it’s all going to turn out.

            “Abraham!”

            “Yes?”

            “Isaac, Isaac whom you love – take him to Moriah. There’s a hilltop there – I’ll show you when you get closer. There you’re going to offer him as a sacrifice to me.”

            Abraham is struck dumb, the same Abraham that negotiated for the deliverance of strangers in Sodom and Gomorrah, when it comes to the life of his son – struck dumb.

     Without a word then, he goes to bed, he gets up, he cuts wood for the fire, and he loads his donkey. He gets Isaac out of bed, and he calls two servants to go with them. They set out. It’s three days journey – in complete silence. The third day Abraham sees where he’s going. Voice rusty, he squeaks to the servants he’s brought apparently only for this one task: “Watch the donkey,” he says. “Watch the donkey, while Isaac and I go over there. Up there.

            “We’ll be back,” Abraham says, which can’t be true if he’s going to go through with this thing God has commanded. He’ll be back, but Isaac will not.

            He loads the wood for the sacrifice on Isaac’s back. He has the knife and what he needs to start a fire. They’re climbing the hill.

            Isaac says, “Dad.”

            “Yes?”

            “We have the wood and the starter and the knife to slit its throat, but we don’t have the lamb to kill.”

            “Well,” “Dad” thinks a minute. “God will provide.”  And they keep climbing.

            Until they come to the right place, the place where Abraham will build his altar, stack his wood on it, and sacrifice his son.

Sorry. There’s no help for it: This is genuinely fornifreckulated. God wants to test Abraham, whom he must know is faithful; and the test is . . . human fornifreckulating sacrifice. “Put your son – you know, the one I promised you – on a pile of wood, slit his throat so the blood runs out, and burn what’s left. Oyez, oyez.”  What’s he thinking?  What’s God thinking?  What’s Abraham thinking?  What’s Isaac thinking, as his father ties him up and puts him on the wood?  I mean, “Jesus!” who incidentally said more than once, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

            Sorry. This is like a footnote. And you know the footnotes in your Bible aren’t part of the Bible itself. Some donkey like your author decided to add in his two-cents’ worth at the bottom of the page.

            But back to the story –

Abraham builds the altar, rocks and mounded earth, and he arranges the wood on it so it will burn. Then he grabs the wood-bearer, Isaac, his son, and he ties him up and puts him on top of the pile of wood on top of the altar to God. And he picks up his knife to slit his son’s throat. And he does, and that’s going to prove that he’ll do whatever God says.

            No, right?  Instead, an angel calls out from heaven, “Abraham!”

            “Yes?”

            “Wait.”

            And Abraham drops the knife.

            “Wait,” the angel reads from his script. “The test is over. We know now that you love God, because you’d kill your son if he said so.”

            “Yes?” Abraham agrees.

Again, sorry. It can’t be helped. Surely he knows, the angel, and if he doesn’t, the God that knows everything must: It is one thing to pick up a knife. It is quite another thing to slit a throat with it. And if “they” or we and Abraham don’t see it through to the bloody, fiery end . . . it’s not a real test, is it?  Not like Jephthah and his daughter. Jeph proves he’ll really do what he says he’s going to do. Why, incidentally, doesn’t someone – capital S – stop that one?  Sorry. Another footnote. You can ignore it. Not like Jephthah and his daughter; not like Pilate and Jesus either. Why doesn’t Someone (capital-S) . . . ?  Sorry. Back to this story –

Abraham looks around and where he couldn’t see one before there’s a ram, caught in a bush. He untangles it, he ties it up, he gets Isaac down atop the altar, and he makes the swap. He slits the ram’s throat, he lets the ram pee his pants, he lets ram’s blood run out, and he burns it all as a pleasing smell to God.

            He and Isaac go back down the hill, as he told the servants they would: “We’ll be back.”  And they all go home.

Questions and Conclusions

Sorry.

     Whatever your Sunday School teacher told you, Abraham is not a type of God the father, nor is Isaac or the lamb/ram a type of Christ. Note that Jesus never called himself a lamb - that was John the Baptist. About sacrifice he only said that he desired mercy instead. It was the Apopsicle Paul that called him “our paschal lamb [that] has been sacrificed,” and it was whoever-the-hell wrote Hebrews that figured out he was somehow both sacrifice and priest. Sorry: with all due respect, talk about mixed metaphors.

02.10.20

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 * The cover of Church’s paperback is The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by the 19th-century British painter, John Martin. For other Rantrage titles with “read-inside” links, click here.