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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Hebrews 11:17 - 11:17
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
offered up - literally, “hath offered up,” as if the work and its praise were yet enduring [Alford]. As far as His intention was concerned, he did sacrifice Isaac; and in actual fact “he offered him,” as far as the presentation of him on the altar as an offering to God is concerned.
tried - Greek, “tempted,” as in Gen 22:1. Put to the proof of his faith. Not that God “tempts” to sin, but God “tempts” in the sense of proving or trying (Jam 1:13-15).
and - and so.
he that had received - rather as Greek, “accepted,” that is, welcomed and embraced by faith, not merely “had the promises,” as in Heb 7:6. This added to the difficulty in the way of his faith, that it was in Isaac’s posterity the promises were to be fulfilled; how then could they be fulfilled if Isaac were sacrificed?
offered up - rather as Greek, “was offering up”; he was in the act of offering.
his only-begotten son - Compare Gen 22:2, “Take now thy son, thine only son.” Eusebius [The Preparation of the Gospel, 1.10, and 4.16], has preserved a fragment of a Greek translation of Sanchoniatho, which mentions a mystical sacrifice of the Phoenicians, wherein a prince in royal robes was the offerer, and his only son was to be the victim: this evidently was a tradition derived from Abraham’s offering, and handed down through Esau or Edom, Isaac’s son. Isaac was Abraham’s “only-begotten son” in respect of Sarah and the promises: he sent away his other sons, by other wives (Gen 25:6). Abraham is a type of the Father not sparing His only-begotten Son to fulfil the divine purpose of love. God nowhere in the Mosaic law allowed human sacrifices, though He claimed the first-born of Israel as His.