Genesis 22:9-10

"And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son."

Abraham had built many altars, "at Sichem, Bethel, Hebron, and at Beersheba,"[19] but how heavy indeed were the stones that he brought together here!

"The wood in order ..." There was a regular order that Abraham followed in building an altar and offering sacrifice. It was done in a certain way, through long practice for many years; and that was noted here. The sacrifice was then placed "upon the wood." Is there any doubt that in all the other altars which Abraham had built that any such details were omitted? Absolutely NO!

"And bound Isaac ..." Every precious word here is loaded with eternal truth. The Son of God, his great Antitype, would also be bound and brought before the Sanhedrin, before Annas, before Caiphas, and before Pilate! We noted above that Isaac consented to this. Josephus' account of a conversation between Isaac and Abraham before this event has no Scriptural warrant, but it is included here as a Jewish tradition of what happened:

The patriarch said, "It was by God's will that I became thy father; and it is now by his will that I relinquish thee. O my son, bear this consecration to God with a generous mind; for I resign thee up to God who has thought fit now to require the testimony of this honor to himself, on account of the favors he has conferred upon me ... Accordingly, thou my son, will now die, not in any common way of going out of the world, but sent to God, the Father of all men, before hand, by thy own father, in the nature of a sacrifice.

Isaac said that he was not worthy to have been born at first, and that if he should reject the determination of God and his father, and should not readily resign himself up to their pleasure, it would have been unjust. So he went immediately to the altar.[20]

"And laid him on the altar, upon the wood ..." Was not Our Lord also laid "upon the wood," not only in the instance of his cradling in the manger of Bethlehem, but again upon Calvary when the soldiers stretched him there and affixed the savage nails in his hands and feet? The emotions are shocked and sucked dry by the contemplation of such things. And then like a stroke of lightening at midnight deliverance came!