Genesis 22

THE OFFERING OF ISAAC, Genesis 22:1-19.

We now come to the seventh and great test of Abraham’s faith. See note on Genesis 18:1. Here the spiritual life of the honoured patriarch attains its climax . Native land and kindred have long ago been left behind; revelation after revelation has lifted him into a lofty friendship with God; he has sacrificed his natural yearning for Ishmael, who for years had seemed to him the heir of promise, and has submitted to send him and his mother away into the wilderness . Now all his hope for the after time hung on his only son, his Isaac, whom he loved, (Genesis 22:2,) and, as the utmost trial and test of his confidence in God’s word, he is commanded to go forth and sacrifice even that child of miracle . So must the will of the flesh be subjected to the word of God . And so must all Abraham’s spiritual seed, the true children of faith, attain to that lofty elevation . So also Abraham’s greater Son, who in the fulness of time gave his life a ransom for many, declares: “He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;… and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it . ” Matthew 10:37; Matthew 10:39. Herein is shown the faith of Abraham .

A peculiar interpretation has been put upon this chapter by Hengstenberg and Lange, who maintain that Abraham misunderstood the divine command. They deem it absurd to suppose that God should forbid in one part of the transaction what he commands in another, or that he should at all command a human sacrifice, a thing declared so abominable in the law. They understand the command of Genesis 22:2 to mean that Abraham should offer his son in spiritual consecration to God; not slay him for a literal burnt offering. Thus God would teach his friend both the distinction and the connexion between sacrificing and killing. The principle and methods of this interpretation are like those by which it is attempted to show that Jephthah did not offer his daughter as a burnt offering, but devoted her to perpetual virginity. It explains away the natural meaning of the language, and foists in a spiritualizing process of thought, transcendental in nature and tendency, and calculated to confuse and mislead rather than help the student of the Scripture. “The Hebrew cultus,” says Lange, “distinguishes between the spiritual consecration of man as a sacrifice, and the visible slaughter of an animal. Thus, for example, according to 1 Samuel 1:24-25, the boy Samuel was brought by his parents to Eli the priest, and consecrated at the tabernacle, since the three bullocks were slain there as burnt offerings.” Com. on Genesis, p. 79. But will Lange maintain that the three bullocks were slain as a substitute for Samuel’s life? or that Samuel’s consecration at the tabernacle was equivalent to the act of Abraham in not withholding Isaac? or that Samuel’s parents, in that consecration, offered up their son in any proper sense as a burnt offering to the Lord? The cases are not parallel at all, and to put them thus together is to confound things that are different. Those passages in which the spiritual significance of offerings is presented (Psalms 40:6-9; Psalms 51:17; Psalms 119:108; Hosea 14:2) have no essential relevancy to this narrative of Abraham, and in the passage most frequently cited, (Psalms 51:16-17,) a contrite heart and a burnt offering so far from being synonymous, are put in direct opposition to one another. God’s command to Abraham was plain and positive. The patriarch’s mind was not confused with the metaphysical subtleties of German critics, and when God said: “Take Isaac and go to Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering;” it was impossible for him to understand any thing else than to go and do exactly what God commanded. He probably knew of no law against human sacrifice, and to him, God’s word, spoken at sundry times and in divers manners, was the supreme law.

We must particularly observe, that this whole procedure was a testing, a temptation, ( נסה ,) of Abraham . For the purpose of such trial it was perfectly proper for God to command the offering up in sacrifice of the life which he had himself given, and had the right and the power to take again . It was equally proper for him to countermand the order when he saw its purpose was accomplished . Genesis 22:12. In all this there was no conflict, as some writers have supposed, between the revealed and the secret will of God, as if the Holy One had two wills acting in opposite directions at the same time . When God commanded Abraham to go and offer up Isaac, he meant exactly what he said; and when Abraham had shown implicit faith and obedience, God spoke again and commanded him to offer the ram for a burnt offering instead of his son . Genesis 22:13. Here is no conflict between a revealed and a secret will of God. It is simply and solely his revealed will countermanding, for stated reasons, what his revealed will had before commanded. And thus we are told, with a beauty and tenderness unsurpassed in literature, the process and the outcome of the trial of Abraham’s faith.