Chapter Twenty-Two
God gives Abraham the command to offer Isaac as a sacrifice
Genesis 22:1. And it came to pass after these things This is an ordinary, rather indefinite biblical indication — not so much of the actual time as of the sequence of events. From the subsequent context (Gen 22:6) it is in any case evident that the sacrifice of Isaac occurred when he had already grown enough to be able to carry the necessary amount of wood for the fire, and thus was at least 12–15 years old. God tested Abraham and said to him: Abraham! He said: Here I am. Metropolitan Philaret distinguishes two kinds of temptations: temptation to evil, or incitement to act upon evil inclinations hidden in man, and temptation in good, or direction given to the good beginning acting within him toward open warfare against evil or against obstacles in good, to achieve victory and glory; the first comes not from God, but is a consequence of God’s withdrawal (2 Chr 32:31); the second comes from God, and, to the measure of one’s spiritual strength, is sent as grace to those worthy to receive “grace upon grace” (John 1:16). “God did not tempt Abraham,” says the blessed Theodoret further, “to learn for himself what he did not know; but to teach those who do not know how justly the patriarch was beloved.” This view of temptation as a manifestation of divine love and as an occasion for the development and strengthening of virtue is carried through in many other places of Scripture (Exod 16:4; Deut 8:2; Ps 25:2; Jas 1:12; 1 Pet 1:7; 1 Cor 10:13 and others).
Genesis 22:2. God said: Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac; Isaac is called the “only” son of Abraham because he is the only son from Sarah, Abraham’s lawful wife, and even more because alone in him, as the son of promise, rested all the divine blessings concerning the future glorious destiny of Abraham’s descendants. And now this sole support of all the covenant hopes of the aged patriarch was threatened with sacrificial slaughter! Go into the land of Moriah and there offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. The word “Moriah” from the Hebrew translation means: “provision of Jehovah,” and we may suppose that in giving Abraham the command to go according to His divine inspiration, the Lord did not point to him any particular region already bearing at that time the name Moriah, but simply commanded him to go into the land where He would lead him — in other words, into the land of divine provision. Such a land proved to be, as it later turned out, one of the mountains lying from Beersheba at a distance of three days’ journey (Gen 22:4) and which, in memory of this event, received the name Mount Moriah. According to the testimony of the Book of Chronicles, later on this very mountain the temple of Solomon was built (2 Chr 3:1).
Abraham gives the strongest proof of his deep faith and complete obedience
Genesis 22:3. Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his ass, took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son, split wood for the burnt offering, and went to the place of which God had spoken to him. A hard night the patriarch Abraham passed after receiving the revelation about the sacrifice of his only, beloved son! But the strength of faith and obedience to God triumphed over all other feelings of Abraham: his mind was, as the Apostle Paul explains, illumined by the thought that God, who had miraculously granted Isaac life from aged parents, “is able even to raise him from the dead” (cf. Rom 4:17; Heb 11:19). And so as soon as dawn broke, Abraham hastened to fulfill the divine will!
Genesis 22:5. And Abraham said to his young men: Stay here with the ass, and I and my son will go there and worship, and come back to you. Fearing that Abraham’s servants, unaccustomed to human sacrifice, would hinder him from fulfilling the divine command, Abraham leaves them at the foot of the mountain and promises to return with his son soon. In this promise one cannot see a deception, even one made with a good purpose, but rather must understand it as proof of Abraham’s faith — that God would not allow Isaac to perish, but would restore him to life again.
Genesis 22:6. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac his son; A curious detail that further strengthens the typological resemblance of the sacrifice of Isaac to the great Golgotha sacrifice, in undertaking which our Lord Jesus Christ himself had to bear his cross (John 19:17).
Genesis 22:7–8. And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, and said: My father! He answered: Here I am, my son. He said: Behold the fire and the wood; where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said: God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. This entire dialogue between father and son is full of deep devotion to God. Concealing from Isaac that he himself is marked to serve as the victim, Abraham unwittingly prophesies, since he indicates that God will himself choose the sacrificial lamb, which indeed later proved true (Gen 22:13). In Abraham’s very words about the lamb lies a typological indication of the great Lamb slain from the foundation of the world — that is, of the Lord Jesus Christ, who offered himself as the redemptive sacrifice for all of us.
Genesis 22:9. And they came to the place of which God had spoken to him; and Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood This altar, in all probability, was a small heap of stones gathered there at the top of the mountain. and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar upon the wood. From all the details of this narrative it is clear that Isaac submitted entirely of his own accord and without protest to the divine command. Although he was already at an age when he could have resisted his aged father, he shows him the most touching obedience: the obedience of the son here equals the faith of the father, and both of them display great heroism of spirit. If Abraham still, as we see, found it necessary to bind Isaac beforehand, he does this either to prevent any involuntary movements on Isaac’s part at the sight of the raised knife, or, what is more likely, following the general custom of sacrifice.
An angel appears to him and stays his hand
Genesis 22:10–11. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said: Abraham! Abraham! He said: Here I am. At the very moment when Abraham had already raised his hand for slaughter, he was suddenly stopped by a mysterious voice from heaven, coming from the Angel of the Lord, who had appeared to him repeatedly before (Gen 18:10) and in whom most likely we should see God himself, as is confirmed by the very context of speech (Gen 22:12).
Genesis 22:12. The Angel said: Do not lay your hand upon the boy and do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God An anthropomorphic expression — conveying the thought that now Abraham has given the most brilliant proof of his deep faith and his complete obedience, that is, he has attained that height of spiritual and moral perfection after which any change for the worse becomes psychologically impossible in him. and have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. An expression almost literally repeated by the Apostle Paul with respect to God the Father, who offered up for the sin of men his only-begotten Son (Rom 8:32).
Genesis 22:13. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked: and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went, and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. By special divine providence it happened that near the place of sacrifice there was a ram caught by its horns in a thicket of some mountain shrub, which our Slavic text calls “savek”; seeing in this unexpected coincidence a special divine indication, Abraham offers this ram as a sacrifice instead of his son Isaac.
The place of the sacrifice receives the name Jehovah-provides
Genesis 22:14. And Abraham called the name of that place: Jehovah provides ****. Therefore and now it is said: On the mount the Lord provides. The Slavic text gives a translation of the last two words: “The Lord saw.” Most commentators see here a repetition of what was said by Abraham earlier (verse 8, “God will provide for himself a lamb for a burnt offering” in the Slavic text) and which now so precisely was fulfilled. To rename one or another locality in memory of a known event that took place there was widespread in biblical antiquity (Gen 16:13-14 and others). But the fact that in the Hebrew text in two completely identical phrases of verses 8 and 14 different words are used to denote the Lord, Elohim and Jehovah, provides a strong objection to rationalist criticism of the biblical text. As for the second half of verse 14, they represent a kind of proverb formed on the basis of this fact and used in similar cases — that is, when all human means are exhausted and nothing remains but hope in miraculous divine help, like that which God showed to Abraham and Isaac at the most critical and decisive moment for them.
Abraham receives divine blessing
Genesis 22:15–16. And the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said: By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, that, because you have done this deed, and have not withheld your son, your only son, [for my sake,] The best explanation of these words is given in the epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, where the apostle carefully proves that this divine oath is an anthropomorphic expression of the thought of the absolute immutability of divine promises (Heb 6:16-18). Examples of similar oaths can be found in many other places of Scripture (Gen 24:7; Exod 13:5; Isa 45:23; Jer 44:26; Amos 4:2; Heb 6:13 and others).
Genesis 22:17–18. I will surely bless you and multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the shore of the sea; and your seed shall possess the cities of your enemies; and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in your seed, because you have obeyed my voice. This closing and final divine promise in Abraham’s life is distinguished by special solemnity and power. Just as Abraham by his readiness to offer Isaac as a sacrifice revealed the highest degree of obedience and devotion to God, so the Lord in reward for this gives him evidence of his highest favor, confirming and strengthening the earlier given promises of the multitude and glory of his descendants. Therein the word in verse 18 about the unique and exclusive seed through which all nations of the earth are to be blessed — most commentators, following the Apostle Paul, see a reference to the great Seed of the woman, destined to crush the head of the serpent, that is, to Christ, the Son of God (Gal 3:16).
A genealogy of the generations from Nahor to Rebekah
Genesis 22:20. After these things Abraham was told: Behold, Milcah also has borne children to Nahor, your brother: The purpose of this indication is to show the descent of Rebekah, the future wife of Isaac and thus the mother of the chosen descendants (Gen 24:15).
Genesis 22:21–24. Uz, his firstborn, and Buz, his brother, and Kemuel, the father of the Arameans, Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel; and Bethuel was the father of Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham’s brother; and his concubine, whose name was Reumah, also bore Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah. When, by divine command, Abraham once departed from Ur of the Chaldees and set out on the way to Haran and indeed to Syria and Palestine, he severed all connections and relations with the kinfolk remaining for him in his homeland. And then suddenly, almost at the end of his life, he receives unexpected news of his brother Nahor’s family, which has grown to twelve sons (8 from a lawful wife and 4 from a concubine). Of some of them, or more precisely of their descendants, some references can be found in Scripture itself: thus, the firstborn of Nahor — Uz, seemingly gave his name to the land of Uz, lying in northeastern Arabia, from which Job came (Job 1:1), the name Buz is mentioned as the name of one of the Arabian tribes living between Dedan and Teman (Jer 25:23) and in some proximity to the homeland of Job, for from there comes one of his friends — Elihu (Job 32:2). Under Chesed many, following Jerome, are inclined to see the ancestor of the “Chaldeans” (“kesed” or “kasdim”), living in northern Mesopotamia, near Susa and Agade, and finally some reference to Maacah is seen in the Maacathites, of whom, as one of the Canaanite tribes bordering on Mesopotamia, it is spoken in Deuteronomy and in the Book of Joshua (Deut 3:14, Josh 13:13). * * * Notes The Lord provides.