Genesis 22 and the binding of Isaac (often referred to as the “Akedah”) is one of the most well-known and beloved stories in the Bible. Or is it one of the cruelest and scariest?
Consider:
- Is God in favor of child abuse?
- Is God so arbitrary and capricious that he commands Abraham to do something that he later condemns the Canaanites for committing (child sacrifice)?
- Couldn’t a text like this create 9/11 hijackers, suicide bombers, and other delusional people who justify their violent acts by saying “God told me to do it”?
I want to ask a simple question. Does a proper interpretation of Genesis 22 lead to any of this?
At heart of this passage is the idea of a testing which leads to the fear of God. Testing and fear are the two key words in Genesis 22. The passage begins, “After these things God tested Abraham…” and climaxes with the declaration “For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
When you read Genesis 22 in the context of the Pentateuch (the first five books of Moses) something quite interesting emerges. Abraham heard a voice from heaven that tested him so he would fear God, and there is only one other place where the exact same thing happens. Israel heard God’s voice from heaven at Mount Sinai giving the ten commandments, and then Moses said, “God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you.” (Exodus 20:20)
The giving of the Law to Israel is set in the very same language as the command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. The result is that Abraham becomes the definitive picture of the kind of response that God wants from Israel when he gives them the Law. God wants undivided obedience that will relinquish everything and obey his voice (which, we should note, is now being written down for the people). Genesis 22 becomes a kind of commentary on how Israel should respond to God’s voice at Sinai.
Let me put it this way: you can’t say Genesis 22 encourages us to sacrifice our children or follow every voice inside our head because not even the Bible interprets Genesis 22 this way! The figuration in Genesis 22 opposes these kinds of crassly literal interpretations. Abraham is a type or model of an obedient Israel. (That Abraham’s test involves something that the Old Testament later clearly prohibits should alert us to the high likelihood that something deeper is going on here.)
Of course, God did ask Abraham to make a costly sacrifice. Isaac is not only Abraham’s beloved son but also the child of the promise. In sacrificing Isaac, Abraham would be sacrificing his own hopes for the future. Yet Abraham knew that God was good and powerful and capable of even raising the dead. And we still serve the God of Abraham who calls people in Jesus Christ to lay down their lives, relinquish their own hopes for the future, and follow his word in the confidence that God can bring life out of death.
Finally, we can’t think of God as being cold and uncaring when he puts Abraham through this test. God knows the costliness of the sacrifice Abraham is being asked to make. He knows the cost because it is the same cost he pays at the cross, when he gives his only-begotten son so that we can be forgiven. Paul Copan, in his book Is God a Moral Monster?, writes:
“The kind of demand that God made of Abraham was one the triune God was willing to carry out himself. So deep is God’s love for us (Rom 8:31-32) that the late Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance was willing to go so far as to say that “God loves us more than he loves himself.”