In our Torah portion for this week, parashat Vayera, we read the shocking account of how God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering (Gen. 22:1-18). In Jewish tradition, this drama is called the “Akedah” (i.e., “binding”), which is regarded as the supreme test of Abraham’s obedience and faith to God. Many of us are familiar with this great story, of course, though we can learn much if we take some time to reflect about the meaning of Abraham’s ordeal, instead of skipping over the journey and “flying to the top of the mountain” to behold the happy ending.
The Torah’s account of the test begins this way: “Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And he said, “Please take your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you” (Gen. 22:1-2). On the face of it, this dreadful request from God was mind-bendingly difficult to understand. Why would God ask Abraham for none other than his promised heir, the miracle child Isaac, to be literally sacrificed as a burnt offering? Was not Isaac specially chosen by God as the promised seed from whom all the nations would be blessed (Gen. 15:4-6)? It made no sense at all…. And why did God want the offering to be made in the “land of Moriah”? According to Rashi, the Hebrew word “Moriah” (מוֹרִיָּה) derives from the word “instruction” (הוֹרָאָה) and God (יהּ), suggesting the teaching of God, a synonym for Torah. According to the sages, Moriah But what sort of teaching is this, for Abraham to be asked to kill his beloved son?
It must have been a terribly sleepless night for Abraham as he agitated over God’s request for him to do the unthinkable act of sacrificing his promised son Isaac. Nevertheless, he wasted no time preparing himself for the journey ahead. At sunrise the very next day he arose, woke two of his servants and Isaac, prepared his donkey, cut wood for the burnt offering, and immediately set off to the place (הַמָּקוֹם) where God told him to go (Gen. 22:3). We have no idea if Abraham had told his wife Sarah of his plans…
We must try to understand and feel the great anxiety and distress of Abraham’s heart as he journeyed for three days, not knowing how to explain what he was doing to Isaac (or to his wife Sarah for that matter). There is terrible suspense in this story, not only in the cloud of unknowing surrounding the entire mission, but because the very thought of sacrificing his son, the sole heir of all that Abraham was promised, was the annihilation of all that he had believed, loved, and hoped. The starry sky of his vision counting the stars suddenly turned to black (Gen. 15:3). Abraham was later called the greatest of the patriarchs and “the father of the faithful,” because he bore the burden of trusting God in the midst of a dreadful contradiction. How could Abraham understand the Lord (יהוה) as the sole Creator and Sustainer of life, the sovereign King and righteous Judge, the one who led him from his homeland, the one who promised that he would be the father of a multitude of people, the covenant-making God who pledged land to his descendants after him into perpetuity; the one who said that Abraham would be “exceedingly fruitful” and from whom nations and kings would descend — how could Abraham understand this LORD to be capable of asking him to go and sacrifice his son as a burnt offering? Was this not a complete shock to all his theology? A temptation? A demonic idea? Did it not threaten the meaning of his visions? Did not God promise him a future and a hope? Had not the LORD renamed him from “Abram” (exalted father) to “Abraham” (father of a multitude) to signify his promise to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and sand on the shoreline?