“God tested Abraham…. He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering….” This story is a shocking story for most of us. It is especially shocking for us who believe that God cares deeply for us. Called a “text of terror,” the story raises many unanswerable questions. To begin with, why would God ask anyone to kill his own son? Why especially would God make such a demand of a man to whom he had promised that, “I will make a great nation of you?” Why would Abraham actually agree, at least silently, to obey this seeming command, even to the point of actually raising the knife to kill his son? Why would Isaac meekly accept his fate instead of struggling and crying out? Did Abraham “pass” the test? Does the Bible sanction child abuse?
It’s a shocking story. And yet this story is venerated by Jewish tradition and even by many Christian texts. In Hebrew this story is known as the Abedah, the “binding” of Isaac. It has been an important story for rabbinic theology, interpretation, and meditation. It is even incorporated into the traditional daily liturgy, where the focus is not on Abraham but on God and Isaac, and where the worshippers express their confidence that God will intervene to save God’s people.
The gospel writers may well have had this text in mind when they depicted Jesus sending out his new disciples with the warning, as we heard in last week’s gospel reading, that, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me….” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, in his role call of the faithful, directly mentions Abraham’s near-sacrifice. “By faith,” we hear, “Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, ‘It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.’ He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead….” Similarly, the writer of the Letter of James, in arguing that the spiritual life requires both faith and works, turns to Abraham. “Was not our ancestor Abraham,” he declares, “justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God.” With their focus on Abraham, the evangelists and the writers of the letters to the Hebrews and of James clearly intend us to see Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as an example of unwavering faith in God. Perhaps too the crafters of the Revised Common Lectionary wanted us to see in this story a parallel with Jesus’ own willing self-sacrifice on the cross.
Nevertheless, this is a difficult text for many of us. Atheists point to it as an example of the barbarity of religion. The rabbis and many Christian teachers have struggled with it over the centuries. In his commentary on the text, Daniel Clendinen reminds us that the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote an entire book on the story.1 In grappling with the story Kierkegaard laid out four alternative scenarios. He suggested that perhaps Abraham decided to protect God by allowing himself to be seen as a monster by Isaac, the servants, and the rest of his family. Or, perhaps Isaac’s life was saved by the sheep caught in the bush, but Isaac was thereafter traumatized for the rest of his life. Or, Kierkegaard suggested, after the deed was done, Abraham prayed for forgiveness for killing his son. Or finally, perhaps Abraham lost his nerve, failed to act, and went back down the mountain defeated and broken. Actually, that last scenario might appeal to us, as we survey the violence committed by religious fanatics or in the name of religion through the centuries and right up to today.
Now, with texts as old as this one we clearly cannot probe too deeply into the motivations and actions of the characters. We cannot read these stories as we would a modern psychological novel. Nevertheless, I’d like to suggest yet another way of looking at the “binding of Isaac.”2 Contrary to the New Testament writers, I’d like to suggest that Abraham failed the test! Four chapters earlier in Genesis, when God had decided to destroy Sodom, Abraham vigorously bargained with God to save Sodom. He even rebuked God, saying, “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty….” In the end, Abraham persuaded God not to destroy Sodom if ten righteous men could be found in it. If Abraham was able to bargain so skillfully with God for Sodom, we might wonder, why he would not do so for Isaac? We might even wonder whether God expected Abraham to bargain. When he did not, God was forced to intervene through an angel, as God did for Hagar when Abraham sent her into the wilderness.
Did Abraham’s blind consent to sacrifice his son disappoint, even disgust, those closest to him? A modern commentator suggests that the “crucial silences” that follow the story suggest that it did. God and Abraham engaged in lively conversation before the Binding. However, after the angel’s intervention, God never speaks to Abraham again in the chapters that follow. Nor, it seems does Sarah. She too has been talkative, yet we hear nothing further from her. The very next chapter begins with her death in a different place from where Abraham has settled. Did the binding of Isaac cause her to leave Abraham? Finally, we hear nothing from Isaac. Was he, as Kierkegaard suggested, so traumatized by the event that he has lost his speech? In the chapters that follow, Isaac speaks very little, and, it seems, never spoke to his father again. At the end of his life, Isaac even allowed himself to be duped by Jacob, giving Jacob Esau’s birthright.
Even in the ancient world, where wives, children, and slaves were all regarded as the property of the family patriarch, Abraham’s willingness to show his faith by sacrificing his son would not be considered praiseworthy. Indeed, Abraham would have been condemned and convicted for trying to sacrifice a human being. Perhaps then we might admire the Hebrew Bible for showing us that our ancestors in faith, the kings, prophets, and leaders whose stories we share, were all, like us, flawed human beings. As one commentator reminds us, “Judaism does not sanitize its holy texts but presents the heroes as they are, so that we can learn from their deeds – both good and flawed – as well as from their teachings.”
I’m still left with a question about this text. Most of us moderns seem to prefer a religion that asks little of us. Even so, I wonder whether it is also possible to be too zealous in sacrifice, even self-sacrifice. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer in contemporary language we ask God to “save us from the time of trial.” Did Jesus have the story of the binding of Isaac in mind when he added this petition to his instruction on prayer?
And how about our own lives? Retired Methodist bishop Will Willimon tells of teaching this story with his wife to an inter-generational group. His wife asked the children if they knew what the word “sacrifice” means. One third-grader answered that both her parents were physicians who operate on people to help them. When Willimon’s wife asked how that was sacrifice, the girl answered, “And I go to the day care center after school. Sometimes on Saturdays too. Mommie and Daddy want to take me home, but they are busy helping sick people – so lots of times I stay at the center. Sometimes on Sunday mornings we have pancakes, though.” Everyone knew what the girl meant.3
I don’t tell this story to trash physicians. They are some of the hardest working people in our culture. Even so, this story and the story of the binding of Isaac make me wonder whether we sufficiently take into account the impact of our actions on the lives of others. Should we ponder whether the good we might do might adversely affect those near to us? Do we need to discern deeply and carefully what we hear God calling us to do? On the other hand, perhaps the story of the binding of Isaac reassures us, as it surely does faithful Jews. Perhaps it reassures us that God will intervene for us, or, at the very least, that God will stand with us in our darkest moments. The story of the binding of Isaac comes early in the Hebrew Bible. Its interpretation continues into the present. Perhaps it also reminds us that our conception of God and of what God might ask of us continues to grow and change.
In the end, we can’t answer our questions about this story, any more than we can truly understand why Jesus had to die. Ultimately, we are left with the mystery. As we live in that mystery, however, we need not despair. We can take to heart the words of the psalmist, “I put my trust in your mercy; my heart is joyful because of your saving help.”
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml for June 29, 2014
2. Following here Curt Leviant in Midstream (Summer 2010), as quoted in Synthesis, June 26, 2011
3. “On a Wild and Windy Mountain,” The Christian Century (3/16/83), 237-8, quoted in Synthesis, June 29, 2014.
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