The Abraham-Isaac sacrifice is a story is about God, not man

Genesis 22 is God's sales pitch: Be faithful to my ways, and your children will live. Rival gods could not say the same.

God puts us through tests so he can reveal himself.

So it was in Genesis 22 when God tested Abraham to offer “your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac,” as a burnt offering to God.

(Isaac was not Abraham’s only son, or even his firstborn. In his translation and commentary on Genesis, Robert Alter argues it was written that way because “in regard to Abraham’s feelings, Isaac, this sole son by his legitimate wife, is his only one.”)

What’s often portrayed as a story of a father’s extraordinary faith is really a story about a God who operates differently — and better — than his local rivals.

In the ancient Near East, there was nothing unusual about a parent “putting their son through the fire” to honor a deity. This was a pagan ritual, often associated with Molech.

As father and son walk to the site of the sacrifice, it’s Isaac who has to start the conversation. He asks his father what they’re going to sacrifice, as they haven’t brought a sheep with them.

“God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son,” Abraham says.

“And the two of them went together,” reads Genesis 22:8.

In his Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis, E.A. Speiser calls that moment, where Isaac realizes there is no animal to sacrifice, and he and his father walk on quietly, “perhaps the most poignant and eloquent silence in all literature.”

Isaac, too, knew the times.

They reach the sacrifice site and build an altar — and then Abraham straps Isaac down to it.

The story does not depict Isaac as being knocked out or unaware of what’s happening. Chances are he looked on in horror as his father tied him down, lifted a cleaver, and brought it toward him.

Only the voice of an angel saves Isaac’s life. Good news! It was only a test. Abraham passed, but Isaac had to feel like the real winner.

God doesn’t even made a liar out of Abraham. A ram appears at the site and is sacrificed, just as father told son.

The Bible remains silent on the biggest question: How did Abraham explain the cleaver, on the walk home?

The story of Abraham and Isaac and the near-sacrifice is not just a tale of fathers and sons, or of one man’s extraordinary faith. It’s not even primarily those things.

It’s a story of the Lord separating himself from other gods, a process that continues throughout the Old Testament.

Much like man is exhorted to take dominion over the Earth, as time goes on the Lord asserts dominion over other gods. He will not cotton to coexistence.

E.A. Speiser writes:

“The reader’s anxiety, to be sure, is allayed at the very outset by the underscored notice that this is to be only a test, however heroic the scale and the stakes. The suspense is thus shifted from viewers to actors…”

Speiser got halfway there. But the actor that matters in the story is not Abraham, or Isaac, or the scapegoat who takes Isaac’s place. It’s God.

The God whose angels spoke up, like an ancient-world emergency broadcast system: THIS WAS ONLY A TEST.

Had the Lord been a lesser deity, he would have demanded that Abraham kill his beloved son, to serve his own ego. Or at least let it happen. Many such cases.

But the Lord requires no such sacrifice. Isn’t God good? You get to love your kid, love God, and keep both in your life. God doesn’t make you choose.

God actually hates the practice of ritual child sacrifice, and his anger burns when Israel copies its neighbors in that practice.

Leviticus 18:21: “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.”

Imagine, saving Isaac from the fire, only for his parents to pass him through again, trying to keep up with the Canaanites.

God tested Abraham so he could reveal himself, God, as superior to other gods.

Isaac was never in danger.

It was only a test. God passed.