Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“They came to the place which God had told him of. Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, on the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to kill his son.”
(Genesis 22:9-10)

If Isaac had any doubts before this point, they were certainly put to rest here. The altar was built. The wood was laid out. And then a man over a hundred years old tied up a man who was at the least twenty-five and at the most thirty-nine. Isaac didn’t have to let him. He could have avoided it. He wasn’t a young child who could be overpowered. He could have run down the mountain. But Isaac submitted to it because he knew his father’s moral character. He knew that Abraham loved him. He knew that Abraham wanted the best for him. He trusted Abraham and submitted to his will. It looked bad. There was no promise given to Isaac. There was nothing for him to personally hold onto. There is no evidence that they had a long conversation and Abraham laid out all his hopes, dreams, and expectations. Isaac simply submitted to this unheard of thing because he trusted in the demonstrated moral character of his father over the years of his life. Isaac submitted to his father’s authority.

This wasn’t a tear-filled, ‘oh why Lord, why’ scene. This was calm. This was full of intent. This was methodical. Their trust in God was absolute. Their submission to authority (Isaac to Abraham and Abraham to God) was absolute. This is the life of the trust-filled believer. Obedience no matter what because of the certainty of who is in charge. Feelings weren’t making these decisions. Belief and trust were.

For any who take the idea that the Father forced Jesus to die, this story should set them right. There are so many parallels here. Isaac CHOSE to obey, submit, and offer himself. So did Jesus. Jesus WILLINGLY chose to die for us. He was in NO WAY forced (John 10:17-18).

Abraham wasn’t play acting. He was committed. He had been given an instruction by God and he was going through with it. It doesn’t matter what his expectations were. It doesn’t matter what he thought it was all about. It doesn’t matter what revelation knowledge he had about Messiah Jesus and what the future would hold. He had been given an instruction and he was carrying it out. Abraham believed God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19), but his motivation at this moment was OBEDIENCE. Abraham was choosing to obey God. Period.

The sage Chizkuni writes: ‘ויבן אברהם מזבח Avraham built an altar;” Yitzchok did not participate in that activity; the reason that he did not do so was not that he would not have been willing to do so, but his father had hidden him so that Satan would not be able to tempt him, as he had tried to tempt Avraham not to carry out G-d’s request by hurting him so that he would be unfit to serve as an offering. את המזבח, the altar. The Torah did not write: “altar” without the prefix letter ה which meant that it was an altar that had previously served for such a purpose. According to our tradition, Adam, Hevel, Noach and his sons, had all offered offerings to G-d on that same altar.’

The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 9. It is by no means usual for the offering to be killed on the altar. It seems that Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son in such a way that, once he had performed the great act, he would not have anything further to do, and so wished to sacrifice his son directly on the stack of wood so that the flames would at once consume the body of his child. — עקד the strong form of אגד to bind together.’

The Torah: A Women’s Commentary writes: ‘9–10. Abraham carries out his actions methodically, with no reported words or emotion—unlike when he lost Ishmael (21:11). Isaac, too, is silent.’