Genesis 22

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:32utc

Genesis 22 is one of the great chapters of the Bible. It deals with the most fundamental issues of human life and the basic principles of our relationship with God. It also takes us to the mountaintop of faith and it contains a prophecy regarding the most important day in the history of our planet. Abraham demonstrates that he loves "the LORD [his] God with all [his] heart and with all [his] soul and with all [his] strength."(Deut.6:5) It is a deeply moving account in every respect.

The chapter starts out by saying that God put Abraham to the test. The KJV uses the expression "God did tempt Abraham," but the modern meaning of the word "tempt" as an attempt to make one fall in sin makes this word unacceptable. Here again we can say that the omniscient God did not need the proof of Abraham's faith. The test was not for God's benefit, but for Abraham's and for us.

There are at least two other Scripture references that mention the testing of Abraham. The first one is Heb 11:17-20 "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.' Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death."

The second we find in James 2:21-24 "Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,' and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone."

To start with the latter, James connects Abraham's testing with his justification when God counted Abraham's faith as righteousness. James' approach to the subject has caused a lot of controversy, and some people, like Luther, accused him of perverting the true faith. But what James did was only showing that Abraham's faith, which caused him to be justified before God, resulted in this sacrifice, which justified him before man. We find the words "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness" in Ch. 15:6, which describes an event that took place at least thirty years or more before the one we find in Ch. 22.

James' important contribution to the subject is that Abraham's act of surrender of that which is the most precious to him is based upon the work of grace that God had started in him years before. Abraham's faith was a living thing, which demonstrated itself in heroic acts of self-denial. It also brought Abraham in this unique relationship of personal friendship with God, which means that God took him into His confidence. We do not find the term "God's friend" in the account of the sacrifice. It is borrowed from Isaiah 41:8, where God says: "But you, O Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you descendants of Abraham my friend."

The writer to the Hebrews comments on Abraham's reasoning in bringing this sacrifice. The text emphasizes the paradox of the act. After all, there was God's promise that Isaac would be the father of many nations. It made no sense that God would demand that Abraham kill his son, and yet that was apparently the case. Abraham's solution to the problem was that God would have to raise him from the dead. We see that faith is connected to logic. The contradiction was on the surface, not in the core. Abraham's faith was not an "upper story" experience, to use the phrase that Francis Schaeffer made popular. Abraham's hope for the resurrection also saw him through the emotional turmoil of his three days' trip to Mount Moriah. But we are running ahead here.

There is no way of knowing when this event took place and how old Isaac was at this point. The only thing we are told is that it happened "some time later." The fact that Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice, as we read in vs.6, indicates that he would be a boy, strong enough to carry a load. He would at least have been a teenager. But that is the only firm conclusion we can draw. To make him 33 years old, just because the story foreshadows the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, is pure conjecture.

The dialogue of the first two verses is a startling one. God calls Abraham's name, and Abraham responds as a slave would to his master, ready to receive orders. The difference is that the order given is a highly personal one, such as no slave would ever be asked to perform. The first conclusion we must draw is that serving God involves all. We are called to serve God with everything we have and are. Our family and all the relationships of our human life are included in this.

The test does not come to Abraham as an academic question, such as "if you would be requested to do such and such, would you do it?" The devil often uses hypothetical cases to make us afraid. God does not do that. He demands obedience in well defined, specific cases. That is why we should not ask ourselves the question whether we would obey if we were asked to sacrifice one of our children. That would only cause unnecessary inner conflicts. It would also be immoral, because murder is sin.

The fact that Abraham was asked to perform an act that was actually against the will of God, (Exodus 20:13 says: "You shall not murder,") raises some difficult questions. Oswald Chambers thinks that Abraham thought he heard God's voice, but he did not hear it clearly. What he pursued was his idea of the will of God. Our text does not leave us that option. A more blasphemous idea I read years ago in a Dutch Sunday School lesson, where it was suggested that the Jehovah Abraham knew was still close to the Canaanite deities, that demanded child sacrifices. The concept of the God of Israel had not evolved yet at that time. Such a Darwinistic approach to the story is unacceptable.

The problem is that God is very specific in His demand. It is impossible to misunderstand who God wanted and what God wanted to be done to him. Verse 2 says: "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." The only less defined part of the order was the place of sacrifice.

The only satisfactory explanation can be given if we see the whole story in a prophetic perspective. God did not want Abraham to murder his son, but He wanted to share with Abraham the feeling of a Father Whose Son would be murdered. Abraham was God's friend, as James correctly states. And friendship consists in the sharing of joy and sorrow. God had the death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary in mind when He asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

We may object that Abraham could not have understood the lesson. But the fact that Abraham calls the place Jehovah-jireh indicates that he understood more than we would presume. In verse 14 we read: "And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen." (KJV)

Another amazing detail in God's command is that the sacrifice is specified as a "burnt offering." In Leviticus, we read the stipulations for the burnt offering.[ 1 ] The sacrifice could be made of various kinds of animals, such as bulls, rams or doves. Unlike any of the other sacrifices it was to be burnt up completely. The priest was allowed to keep the hide of the animal, but no part of it could be eaten by anybody. Also it had no connection with any sin committed. It was the most important of all the five categories of sacrifices that are mentioned in Leviticus, because it was the first of the list. It was "an aroma pleasing to the LORD."

Like all sacrifices it portrayed the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. But the emphasis of this sacrifice was different from the other ones. In three of the five sacrifices there is the feature of forgiveness of sin. The "guilt offering," the "sin offering" and the "fellowship offering" were all connected with the havoc sin had caused in the relationship between God and man. In the "grain offering" the person who brought the sacrifice recognized God as his Creator and himself as the creature. It was the expression of an act of surrender of the human life that God had made. It said to God "You have the right to my life because You made me!" But the "burnt offering" has none of these features. It has nothing to do with any human sin or forgiveness of sin or with any human relationship. It is an expression of an act of surrender that is not of this earth. It is the seal of, what the epistle to the Hebrews calls, "the eternal covenant." In Heb.13:20 we read: "May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep." Before the world began, the Second Person of the Trinity surrendered to the First Person of the Trinity on the basis of eternal love. That is why Jesus is called "the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world." (Rev.13:8)

In asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, God drew Abraham into the mystery of the expression of "agape love" such as cannot be seen on earth. We grant that Abraham cannot have understood all of this, but there must have been something in the command that lifted his heart above all the reasoning of his head and carried him on a divine cloud those three days on the trail to the place where he saw the Lamb that God had prepared for him. If we leave this divine element out of the story, we are left with an immoral and inhuman trial of natural affections that would have led Abraham beyond the breaking point. God's demand would have been more cruel than the rituals performed for Moloch, and Abraham's obedience would have been an act of insanity.

God called Abraham by his new name "Abraham," which means "father of many nations." This adds another paradox to the call. Abraham is asked to put his new name on the altar. If Isaac were dead, this name would have become meaningless. This fact must also have been an indication to Abraham that God had more in mind than the killing of his son. That is where the writer to the Hebrews must have gotten the idea that Abraham reckoned on a resurrection. Heb.11:19 says: "Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death."

Abraham's obedience was immediate. He did not take a few days to think over God's command or to let it sink in; he leaves the next morning. It sounds as if Abraham personally performs all the preparations for the trip. He saddles the donkey and cuts the firewood. This could mean, though, that he gave the orders. Two servants accompany them the first two days. We do not read whether Sarah was informed about the purpose of the trip; probably not. It would have added to the agony if Abraham would have drawn Sarah into this, and her opposition would have made Abraham's obedience so much more difficult.

Initially, God had only indicated the general region in which the place of sacrifice lay. By the third day Abraham must have received more precise instructions. One of the general principles in obeying the Word of God is that more light is given as obedience progresses. These three days on the trail remind us of another period of three days of death which ended in a resurrection. The whole picture if full of details that run parallel to the actual event that is portrayed here, that is the death and resurrection of Jesus.

On the morning of the third day Abraham leaves the two servants behind and sets out with Isaac alone. Evidently, the servants had not been told the purpose of the journey. And even now they are left in the dark as to what is really going to happen. Thus far only God and Abraham know the secret. Had the servants known, they would probably have prevented Abraham from carrying out what he intended to do. After all you do not just let an old man go when you know he is going to kill his son. We read in verse 5: "He said to his 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.'" These words can be perceived either as a statement of faith or as an outright lie. Abraham was justified later in the day by the facts, but at this point he had no proof that Isaac would return with him. Yet, because of his faith in God, he was sure. He knew that God is the God of the living, not of the dead; and that God would not kill His own promise.

I think of Jesus' words to His disciples on the eve of His death on the cross. In John 14:18,19 He says: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live." Yet Jesus had, humanly speaking, no more guarantee for His own resurrection than Abraham had for Isaac's. Both must have relied solely on the promise and character of God. Abraham's attitude is almost as victorious and Jesus.' We tend to think of Abraham as a poor old man, who is tested beyond endurance and for whom the three-day trip to Mount Moriah was sheer torture. Instead, we see a man who is radiant and confident, who proclaims victory over death.

The last stretch of the journey, which Abraham makes alone with Isaac, should have been the hardest; but here too we find the same joy and confidence as earlier on the trail. Isaac carries the firewood, Abraham the fire and the knife. Vs.7 and 8 give us one of the most heart piercing dialogues in the Bible. We read: "Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, 'Father?' 'Yes, my son?' Abraham replied. 'The fire and wood are here,' Isaac said, 'but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' Abraham answered, 'God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.' And the two of them went on together." Isaac asks "Where is the lamb?" Abraham does not answer at this point "You are the lamb!" But he points to God as the provider. We do not hear any further questions. The phrase "And the two of them went on together" sounds laden with tension, but it can also represent a picture of joyful expectation of a miracle. Here again we have to pause and say to ourselves that if we leave God and the provision He is going to make for Abraham, Isaac and mankind, out of the picture, we get bogged down in a situation that is too horrible and too immoral to imagine. The point of this story is not that Isaac has to die, but that God substitutes for him.

The climax is reached in vs.9 and 10, when they reach the summit. God told Abraham where to build the altar. The Islam tradition has it that the rock, which presently is inside the mosque, which is called the Dome of the Rock, is the place. The Koran says, however, that it was Ishmael who was to be sacrificed. The problem connected with this adjustment: that this "mistake" was discovered almost four centuries after the facts, is simply ignored by the faithful. The rock in question was the place where the brass altar stood outside the temple. A visit to this place is till an impressive experience. Other traditions have it that the place of Abraham's sacrifice was the exact spot where later the cross was planted; that is, the hill of Golgotha. That would be only a few hundred yards away from the Dome. Nobody knows, and every theory about the location is pure speculation.

At this point Abraham must have revealed to Isaac what was going to happen. We do not read that Isaac put up any resistance. It would be hard to believe that Abraham, who was then one hundred fifteen or twenty years old, would have been able to overpower a strong young lad who wanted to fight for his life. We may presume that Isaac offered himself willingly. The picture of Isaiah 53:7 come before our eyes: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth." We do not know what kind of person Isaac was. We do not read about any rebellion in his life or even that he performed any amazing deeds. The most eventful happening is an argument about some wells in Ch. 26. Isaac seems to have had nothing of the features of a wild donkey like his step brother Ishmael. He probably did not have the spunk of his mother, and in chapter 26 he demonstrates the same fear for his life as his father had. This kind of meekness may have played a role in his lack of resistance. But I rather think that it was more the glow of his father's faith than anything else that made him decide to give up his life on Mount Moriah. And so he became in more than one sense an image of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This description of the sacrifice are very graphic. The Bible paints the picture before our eyes, stroke by stroke. Verse 9 and 10 - "Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son." There must have been some nervousness, betrayed by the trembling of a hand. Abraham cannot have done this in cold blood.

But then, as a flash of lightening comes the voice of the angel of the LORD. "Abraham! Abraham!" When we compare the call in verse 1 with the one in verse 11 we see the urgency of the moment in the repetition of the name. In verse 1 Abraham's name was called once and Abraham answered almost casually. He did not know what was coming. Here he expected the miracle, but the miracle came in quite a different way and shape than he anticipated. God never does what we think He will. In a certain way this was a let-down. There was no death and no resurrection. It was only the image of the real thing, not the thing itself. The writer to the Hebrews said: "Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death." (Heb.11:19) We see the figure of a resurrection. The real resurrection would have to wait another three centuries.

Yet, this was the day of Jesus Christ Abraham saw, according to Jesus' words in John 8:56 - "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."There was a death and a resurrection. It was not the death of Isaac, but of Abraham. Abraham had died when he showed his willingness to give up all he had. It had been a long process that started when God called him to give up his country, his people and his father's household to go to the land that God would show him. [ 2 ] There had been a great leap forward when he believed God and his faith was counted to him as righteousness.[ 3 ] It had found its expression in the death of Sarah's womb and in his own body. The laughter at Isaac's birth had been the joy of resurrection. But the final death blow had been this experience of giving up Isaac. It is so much harder to die and keep on living than to die and be dead. This first kind of death is in the identification of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says about this Gal.2:20 - "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." The only way to possess anything is to give it to the LORD and receive it back from His hand.

And there was the death and resurrection of Isaac. As we mentioned above, he did give himself up to be crucified with Christ; and for the rest of his life he lived this crucified life. As we will see later, it was not a life of perfection. Isaac did fall into the same sin as his father, at least at one point. And in his old days he had become indulgent to the point of using the powers of blessing that God had given him for his own satisfaction. But generally speaking, his was a life of peace, quietness and love. He learned the most important lesson a person can learn in his life when he was still young.

In vs.12 God's voice cancels the initial command for the sacrifice. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." No, Abraham had not misunderstood God's initial command. True, God had pushed Abraham to the edge of human endurance and beyond and in a spiritual sense the sacrifice had been made, although not physically consummated. The reason given for the cancellation was "Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." The phrase is pregnant with spiritual meaning.

The difference between a gift and a sacrifice lies in the totality. A gift may be a part of our possessions, a sacrifice is all of it, if not in quantity then in quality. A gift may include ulterior motives. A sacrifice is brought with a pure and single mind. The reason why Abraham did not give Isaac to God, but sacrificed him was that he feared God. This fear has no relationship with being afraid, but with being overwhelmed with a sense of awe and love. Abraham was at this moment the greatest realist in the world. He loved his son with his whole heart, he knew that his own place in world history would depend on what happened with his son, but he also knew that there were things beyond that which were of even greater significance than what he could see and touch. It is the fear of the Lord that gives meaning to our human existence. Our human love is based upon the love of God. Unless we love God more than anything else, we have no solid basis for our human love. If Abraham had loved Isaac more than God, he would have lost his son for eternity. In sacrificing him to the Lord, that is in recognizing the priority of God's love, he keeps him eternally.

Nobody in heaven will ever be able to better understand the depth of God's love in giving up His own Son than Abraham. He went through the agony himself. And yet in understanding, he only scratches the surface of God's love, because God's love is eternal. It is actually too bad that Abraham lived before Calvary, because this means that he did not fully understand what he was doing when he sacrificed Isaac. He looked forward to the lamb God would provide; we look back on the Lamb that was slain. Our difference in perspective should entail a difference in surrender. As C. T. Studd said: "If Jesus is God and gave Himself for me, than nothing I give to Him is too much."

After God has spoken to him for the second time Abraham sees the ram that is caught in the thicket. He needs no divine revelation to understand that God wants him to sacrifice the lamb instead of his son. Probably the ram had been there all the time while Abraham was busy building the altar and getting things ready for the sacrifice of Isaac, but he never saw it. God's provision had been there all the time. For us, for whom this provision has been made before we ever came into this world, the same thing goes; we are often too busy to see it. It was only after God had spoken to me, that I realized that no sacrifice on my part was needed, because God had provided one already for me.

Vs.14 is open for various translations. In the NIV we read: "So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, 'On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.' "The KJV brings out better the different shades of meaning by saying: "And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen."

According to Adam Clarke the literal translation of "Jehovah-jireh" is "The Lord will see." But others translate the expression with "The Lord will be seen." Clarke says furthermore: "From this it appears that the sacrifice offered by Abraham was understood to be a representative one, and a tradition was kept up that Jehovah should be seen in a sacrificial way on this mount. And this renders the opinion on vs.1 more than probably, namely, that Abraham offered Isaac on that very mountain on which, in the fulness of time, Jesus suffered."

If the tradition of Islam is correct, at least as far as the location is concerned, the rock where Abraham offered his son Isaac, (not Ishmael) was the place where later the brass altar of the temple stood. It was the place where the shekinah glory appeared when the temple was built. When I say "tradition of Islam" it is understood, of course, that Mohammed adopted the existing traditions of his time.

Probably the best conclusion is that the word "jireh" expresses both the provision of the Lord and His presence. God provides by being there. That is implied in the Name "Immanuel" = "God with us" and in the fact that the Word became flesh.

In vs.15-18 we read that God speaks to Abraham for the second time that day to confirm the earlier promises of blessing. The blessing had never been based upon the obedience of Abraham, and even now this has not changed. God had promised the same things to Abraham, even before he left Ur. In Ch. 12:3 we read that God said: "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

And here in vs.17 and 18 - "I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, And through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." The image of the stars was used already in Ch. 15:5 - "[God] took him outside and said, 'Look up at the heavens and count the stars; if indeed you can count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' "The added part of the promise is the victory. "Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies." The KJV brings out the intent more clearly with the expression "and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." The gate was the central place of authority. The promise goes farther than the future occupation of the land of Canaan by the people of Israel, it is a promise of victory over every form of evil. Jesus uses the expression in Mt. 16:18 "upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (KJV)

As I said, Abraham's obedience does not change anything in the nature of the promise given, but it adds another dimension to it. From now on there is a relation of intimacy and friendship between God and Abraham. They went through the same painful experience together of giving up their son. A common bond of suffering melts hearts together, whether of man or God.

The story is almost too deep and wonderful to leave alone. It touches us in our deepest affections. We have to understand that it touches God in His deepest affections also. The closer we draw to our heavenly Father the more beautiful this episode in the life of Abraham will become for us. If we have discovered that nothing, nothing was too much for Him to give to us, then we will come to the point where we realize that there is nothing that is too much for us to give to Him. The Apostle Paul captures this in Rom.8:31-39 - "What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all; how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died; more than that, who was raised to life; is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." ENOUGH!

The last five verses of this chapter inform us and Abraham about the descendants of Nahor, Abraham's brother. The obvious intent is to show the link between this chapter and the story that is told in chapter 24, where Isaac marries Rebekah. Abraham must have heard the word from travelers between Mesopotamia and Egypt. This would indicate that Beersheba was located on or in the vicinity of the travel route. We do not get the impression, however, that Abraham received news frequently from his homeland. After all Nahor did not have his twelve children in the space of one or two years. In leaving Ur and later Haran, he had effectively left his land and his father's house behind him. He had become a stranger in a foreign land.

[ 1 ] See Lev.1:3-17; 6:9-13

[ 2 ] Gen.12:1

[ 3 ] Gen.15:6