Genesis 22

Let’s imagine that John and I are back in Nairobi, Kenya. I ask John if I can use his phone to call Linda. Linda answers and I say, “Linda, John and I have been kidnapped by some angry sounding people. I think they might be Boka Horan or whatever they call themselves. Oh, got to go, bye.” John looks at me in amazement and asks, “What on earth was that all about?” I say to him, “Oh, I’m just testing Linda to see how she would handle this. I’m sure she’d be OK with this.” Three days later our garage door goes up and I walk into the house. Linda is shocked to see me and she asked, “What was that call all about? I have been frantic?” I say, “I was just testing you. I knew you’d be OK.” She then reaches for the largest frying pan she can hoist over her head and says, “This is a test of how much physical pain you can handle. I’m sure you can handle it.” Now wouldn’t that be a cruel thing to do to Linda? Getting her hopes up and then showing up again. Well, that’s the way I think about this story in Genesis 22. This is the story of Abraham being tested by God. It is a story that leaves me with many unanswered questions. Maybe you can answer some of them for me.

Here is a quick summary of the events. God commands Abraham to go to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham, Isaac and two servants make the three-day trek up the mountain. As Abraham is about to sacrifice his son, God intervenes to stop the test, saying in verse 12, “For now I KNOW that you fear God.” Gee, what would have happened if God had been distracted by a cell phone call right at the last moment? Poor Isaac.

Let’s take a closer look at the text. Verse 2, God says, “take now your son, your only son.” Didn’t he have another son, one a bit older? The one by the Egyptian servant? Wasn’t his name Ishmael? If you were Ishmael and you overheard this conversation, wouldn’t you feel a bit insulted? Yes, there were two sons, but Isaac was the ONLY son of “the promise”, you remember, the unconditional Abrahamic Covenant. He was the ONLY son of the covenant promise.

Some Rabbis (You knew I would bring up something about Jewish interpretation, didn’t you?) say that this passage gives evidence of an argument or discussion between God and Abraham. If you recall, Abraham and God had a discussion (Genesis 12) concerning the destruction of Sodom. “Would you kill all if there were 50 righteous people there?” Remember that?

This conversation/discussion, argument, may have sounded like this:

God: Take your son.

Abraham: Which son?

God: Your only son.

Abraham: No, I have two sons, Isaac, and Ishmael.

God: The son you love.

Abraham: What man loves only one son? I love them both.

God: Isaac

God tells Abraham to go and sacrifice Isaac. Later on, in Leviticus 18:21 and Deut. 18:10, human sacrifices were prohibited. If it was illegal to kill innocent people, wouldn’t it be wrong to do it in Abraham’s time? Don’t we study that God is a loving God and a just God? Where’s the justice in killing (murdering) an innocent person?

Abraham doesn’t argue with God. He gets up early, loads his donkey, takes two servants (tradition has them as Ishmael and Eliezar of Damascus), takes Isaac, loaded the wood and headed out. Before they arrived at their destination Abraham says to the servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then WE will come back to you.”

I’m not good with Math, but “I and the boy,” means TWO people. Two people are to go sacrifice and then he says, “we will come back to you.” Who are the “we”? Again, it’s just Abraham and Isaac. Did he say this to pacify the others? In the three days it took to arrive at this spot, Abraham had a lot of time to think about this. The “we” showed that Abraham had faith in God’s power in resurrection to fulfill His covenantal promises. If you look at Heb 11:17, it says, “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice, He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned (see Gen 21:12). Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead.”

As the two of them head up the mountain, Isaac asks, “Where’s the animal for the sacrifice?” Abraham replies, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Now in the Hebrew language, there are no vowels or punctuation marks. And you thought English was difficult. In this verse, there would be no comma between offering and my son. The line could be read with something of a dash: “a sacrifice-my son.” If he had said that, then Isaac’s facial expression would change quickly. Isaac might have run for his life. He wouldn’t have had to run very fast, just a bit faster than a 100 year-old plus man waving a knife over his head.

Verse 9, “He bound his son and laid him on the altar.” What kind of kid was Isaac? Was he a strong- willed kid who resisted Abraham? What if you left one of your grandchildren with “Pops” and he got a little crazy. Would he have complied with the old man’s demands? “Here Bobby, let’s play a little game. First, I will tie you up, then……”  Can imagine Isaac being chased by an old man and Isaac shouting, “You’re crazy.” Did Abraham have to knock him in the head before binding him? Was Isaac distracted by his smartphone when Abraham grabbed him? Did Isaac go willingly, thinking, “He won’t really do this to me.” In your mind, how old did you picture Isaac to be at this time? I always thought of him as a youngster. But he wasn’t. By this time, he was about 37 years old.

As Abraham was about to kill his son, God says, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God.”

I have many questions about this whole story. First of all, why was there a test in the first place? Doesn’t God already know everything? Isn’t he omniscient? As A.W. Tozer wrote, “God knows all things perfectly. He never discovers anything, he is never surprised, never amazed.” For God to be sovereign over His creation of all things, whether visible or invisible, He has to be all-knowing. Doesn’t he know when a sparrow falls or when we lose a single hair on our heads (Matt 10:29). God knows everything (1 John 3:20). Not only does God know everything that will occur until the end of history itself (Isaiah 46:9-10), but He also knows our very thoughts, even before we speak forth (Psalm 139:4). He knows our hearts from afar; He even saw us in the womb (Psalm 139:1-3, 15-16). Solomon expresses this truth perfectly when he says, “For you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind” (1 Kings 8:39).

I give my students tests to prove to me what they understand. I have to do this because I am not omniscient. If God taught my class, He wouldn’t have to give tests. So, what was the purpose of the test if God is omniscient?

Perhaps, when God said, “Now I know,” it didn’t mean that He didn’t know beforehand. Didn’t he have to ask where Adam was in the Garden? Didn’t he ask Cain where Abel was? Didn’t he come down from heaven to see what was going on in the tower-building of Babel?” Perhaps, the “where are you?” question isn’t a question but a way of saying, “I’m coming to see you” in the case of Adam or an accusation in the case of Cain. The “Now I know” in this story might mean something other than gaining knowledge in this passage.

Was the test not so much for the benefit of God knowing, but for Abraham to know? If you recall, there were several times when Abraham believed, but he also had a dose of unbelief in him. He was not his most faithful when he told the Egyptian Pharaoh that Sara was his sister or when he had a child with Hagar. God had Abraham look up at the sky at night to reassure him that his descendants would be as many as the stars. Let me draw an analogy here. When a young civilian arrives at Basic Military Training School, he is scared to death. Over the weeks of training he gets in better physical shape, learns a lot about how to be a soldier and then undergoes the greatest challenge of the training, the obstacle course. Or, as they call it in the Air Force, the Confidence Course. As the soldier/airman moves from one obstacle to another and completes the course, he has proven to himself that he can do much more than he may have ever thought he could just a few weeks earlier. Come graduation from Basic Training, with graduates marching in step, flags waving, parents in the bleachers, you feel as if you can do anything that might be required of you. HUAH! Perhaps this sacrifice challenge was Abraham’s “Obstacle or Confidence Course.” 

What if Abraham refused to obey God? What if he had said, “No way! I went along with that circumcision thing, but this is too much!” God couldn’t revoke the covenant that He made with Abraham. That was an unconditional covenant. The contract was already in place. You can’t add to it any conditions. I guess He could have stricken Abraham dead since Isaac was already in place to continue the family line.

Preachers have used this story to show commonalities between Jesus and Isaac. Both were miraculously conceived. Both were beloved sons. Both carried wood for their sacrifices. The journey to Moriah took three days. The “journey to resurrection” took three days. OK, that last one might be a stretch. But you can see some parallels.

God then says to Abraham, in verse 16, “because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. . . .” But wasn’t this already part of the covenant already finalized?

What kind of conversation did the two of them have on the way down? “Hey dad, you weren’t REALLY going to kill me, were you?” Or, “What kind of crazy father are you? Social services will take me away and you are going to be put into a home, if not jail.” “What are we going to tell Mom about this?” Did Abraham say, “Isaac, let’s just keep this episode between the two of us.”

Was this a father-son bonding experience or was Isaac in therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the next decade. Later, did he write a book about his crazy family life?

The chapter ends with a somewhat odd insertion about the family line of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. He had eight kids with his wife and with his concubine he had four more. The first boy born was named Uz. Does this name ring a bell? It was the town that Job lived in. It is also mentioned in Jeremiah. The passage goes onto say that “Bethuel begat Rebekah.” Mentioning these people sets the stage for the events in Chapter 24. Bethuel is the father of Laban, who was Rebekah’s brother.

I told you ahead of time that there are more questions than answers with this story. Do you have any answers for me?