The Story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22)

This blog is kind of a Part II to How Do Bible Stories ‘Teach’? I’d recommend reading that first, if you haven’t already, because we are going to apply the ideas that we looked at there. I suspect the rest won’t make as much sense without that.

The gist of that blog was that the majority of the Bible is narrative (‘stories’) rather than propositional truths (statements of doctrine, correct beliefs, facts and information about God, and divine commands). We may derive those from stories, but that necessarily requires some level of interpretation, which begs the question: Whose interpretation is authoritative, such that we can confidently say that Scripture is speaking authoritatively about something through a story? Can there be more than one authoritative interpretation?  

We noted an important interpretive principle, which is to allow the rest of Scripture (and especially, the ‘clearer’ parts) to help us with the ‘less-clear’ parts, which includes what we are to learn from stories (given their particular need for interpretation). We said that there is no need for us to feel compelled to identify only one meaning, or ‘point’, or ‘what it’s saying’ in a story; provided, that (a) that proposed reading is not incompatible with how its original audience could have understood it, and (b) it is not inconsistent with Scripture elsewhere.  

We don’t have space here to reproduce the entire story, which is found in Genesis 22:1–18, but you might like to look at it before reading the rest of the blog:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen%2022%3A1-18&version=NIV

The first thing we notice, in verse 1, is a clear interpretive pointer as to what the story is about: ‘God tested Abraham’. The subject of that testing (v.2) is taking his son, Isaac, and sacrificing him on a mountain in the Moriah region. Hold your assumptions about the nature of that testing …

God says nothing further in the narrative for several days, as Abraham and Isaac set out on their journey, and converse about where they’re going and what’s going to happen. This builds the dramatic tension, since we know what Isaac does not yet know. Not until Abraham has bound Isaac and laid him on the altar (v.9) does God reappear in the story and stop him committing the murder, through the Angel of the Lord ‘calling out to him from heaven’. Speaking now in the first person, God says, “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.”

The standard interpretation of this passage is to take it at face value: this was what God said to do, and the testing involved was whether Abraham would do it. And in fairness, in the New Testament, both the writer to the Hebrews (chapter 11) and James (chapter 2) bring that out: crediting Abraham with ‘righteousness’ through his obedience to God. So, too, Paul is probably alluding to the story in Romans 8:32 (the God who did not spare his Son). Evangelicals, certainly, tend to read it that way.    

But there are numerous problems with that simple perspective, sufficient to allow us to question it. To take the most obvious example, if God ‘didn’t really mean it’—if he was ‘just testing’ Abraham right up until the last minute to see whether he would do it or not—wasn’t that (a) playing a cruel trick on Abraham, and (b) traumatising Isaac (and no doubt Abraham, too) for no good reason other than for Abraham to ‘prove his loyalty’. Isn’t that something that gangland warlords ask of their lackies, rather than what the Christian God asks of his people?

My proposed alternative reading is to wonder whether what Abraham was ultimately credited for, in how the story ends, was actually a consolation prize. What if the original goal of the testing was something entirely different?

I want to suggest that ‘testing’ was God wanting Abraham to challenge him on what he thought he was being asked to do—in the exact same way that he had just respectfully challenged him at length in Genesis 18:24–32 concerning his apparent intentions to destroy Sodom (where Abraham’s nephew Lot and his household lived). The basis of Abraham’s argument was less to do with the precise number of ‘righteous people’ in the city (whose presence would spare it) than with an appeal to God’s nature and character. We could even say that Abraham was ‘testing’ that nature and character, or better put, testing whether he was learning the right understanding of that nature and character. 

Do remember that this is very early in the biblical narrative, when Abraham has only recently encountered God and is living in a very pagan context. We shouldn’t think of Abraham as ‘an early Christian’!

We see the framing of Abraham’s argument for Lot clearly set out in Genesis 18:25, where he boldly proposes: “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ This gives us a clue that Abraham is ‘beginning to get it’ in terms of the one, true God’s unique nature and character (compared to the other nations’ so-called gods) and encourages us that he can press on from there. 

I suggest the reason God is silent in the story between the apparent original command to sacrifice Isaac (v.2), and the very last minute before Abraham is about to carry it out (v.9), is because God is waiting (and hoping) to see whether Abraham will at some point come to his senses and say, “Hold on … this can’t be right … I must have misheard. Far be it from you, God, to do such a thing—to command a human sacrifice. Surely only the wicked, in the surrounding nations, do that, based on what they think their gods ask them to do. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

In other words, God wants Abraham to argue on the same basis that he argued over Lot and his family’s fate, such that, similarly to before, God can respond, “Well done, Abraham! Exactly! Of course I wouldn’t command something like that!” 

So here’s the important question. Do we have the scope to see this as a legitimate way of reading the story? Not necessarily replacing that traditional reading, but at least offering a plausible alternative reading? An alternative midrash, if you will (in Jewish terms). If so, it would need to meet the criteria we spoke about in the How Do Bible Stories ‘Teach’? blog (summarised here at the beginning).

Nothing I’ve said so far is adequate alone to achieve that. So let’s supplement it with some thoughts in the ‘allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture’ category—what the Bible says elsewhere.

Firstly, the Ten Commandments include, ‘You shall not murder’. Are we supposed to see a distinction between ‘a murder’ and ‘a sacrifice’? I don’t think so, since human sacrifice was expressly forbidden in Torah. Leviticus 18:21: ‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed’. Sacrificing a child to a god is condemned in Deuteronomy 12:31 as ‘a detestable thing’—similarly, Deuteronomy 18:10. 

I don’t think it works to say, “Well, some say that Isaac was an adult, who was able to consent to being sacrificed” (that may well have been the case, but it’s still murder, it’s still traumatising, and it’s still a cruel trick to play: God saying, ‘I was only kidding, Abraham!’). Surely, only the fact that the story is ‘in the Bible’ stops us from observing these things right away. 

Nor does it work to say, “Well, God the Father sacrificed his Son.” That is an entirely different thing, for all manner of reasons. 

And nor does it work to say, “Ah yes, but Torah (the commandments) hadn’t been given yet—this was happening well before that.” It can potentially engender some sympathy for Abraham, in terms of his ‘mishearing’ God in that early context, but not in the sense that God would command one thing in Torah, yet command things that directly violate Torah up until that point in time. God’s nature and character are unchanging through eternity. Jesus himself (our perfect ‘lens’ for what God is like and has always been like) expressly affirmed ‘Do not murder’ in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21).   

Furthermore, there is a direct contradiction between God’s promise in Scripture (that through Isaac, Abraham would be the father of many nations) and God’s apparent command here in Scripture. Both Luther and Calvin drew attention to that strange contradiction, which in itself suggests the traditional reading of the story may be missing something (given that Scripture does not contradict itself). While this can perhaps be reconciled, the main basis offered for doing so is usually along the lines that “God can do whatever he pleases” (the Calvinist perspective) or, surely less plausibly, that Abraham must have believed God would resurrect Isaac after he had sacrificed him, such was his amazing level of faith (the writer to the Hebrews’ midrash on the story in Hebrews 11:19 suggests that).          

So this comes down to us being faced with a choice. We need not necessarily throw out entirely the traditional reading that commends Abraham for his willingness to be obedient to God (it could be both/and, rather than either/or). Nor need we deny Paul’s likely allusion to the story in Romans 8:32—the God ‘who did not spare his Son’ at Calvary yet spared Abraham’s son at Mount Moriah—though keep in mind that Paul here is offering an additional reflection on the story rather than the principal meaning of the story. But is there a basis for a better reading? I wonder whether Abraham's failing to pick up on what he was really being tested about was a case of missing 'first prize’, with the angel’s commendation in v. 15–18 (which became the standard reading) being a consolation prize. 

It boils down to which of two approaches to how to read the Bible we decide to prioritise.

One approach is to take every single thing that Scripture says literally, come what may (many Christians assume that a literal interpretation must always be the most faithful interpretation, unless that seems impossible, and even then, many feel they should still give it a try). Certainly, it is important to take all Scripture seriously, but the most faithful approach to how to read it (how to interpret it) is not a literal approach; it’s the approach that best reflects the writer’s intentions, the genre, and the context. ‘Literal’ does not equal ‘biblical’ if it sidesteps those, only if it passes through those and still conforms to those.

The alternative approach is to read Scripture in the light of the nature and character of God (as revealed in Jesus) and the light of the rest of Scripture. Concerning the latter, some might point to the Old Testament’s genocide texts (where God appears to have commanded the Canaanites’ annihilation, including women and children).* But rather than these texts validating God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, I suggest they’re offering another example of what we’ve been talking about. Another ‘misreading’ of the nature and character of God, in the ups and downs of the biblical story’s progressive revelation, this time by early Israel, that we’re invited to call out and to challenge for the very same reasons. We are allowed to ask (in the light of Jesus) whether, in prior understandings of what God is like (and what he asks of people), our predecessors were getting God right at times, but also getting him wrong at times. (Reflect on Hebrews 1:1–3). A midrashic approach allows us to do that. Taking the storied content of Scripture seriously encourages us to do that.   

The question is, to which of those two approaches are we going to give priority? Where do we feel, on balance, the evidence takes us? 

*For one of my talks on those passages, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0fTYhasUJg.