Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadLange Commentary - Genesis 22:1 - 22:19
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The sacrifice of Isaac. The sealing of the faith of Abraham. The completion and sealing of the Divine Promise
Gen_22:1-19
3And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men [servants] with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. 4Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. 5And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come [may come] again to you ( ðָùׁåּëָä ). 6And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife: and they went both of them together. 7And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am [I hear], my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? 8And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went [further] both of them together. 9And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid [upon it] the wood in order; and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. 10And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. 11And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: 12and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know [I have perceived] that thou fearest God [literally: a God-fearer art thou], seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. 13And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked [spied, descried], and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. 14And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh [Jehovah will see]: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
15And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, 16And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: 17That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. 18And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed [shall bless themselves; Hithpael]; because thou hast obeyed my voice. 19So Abraham returned unto his young men; and they rose up, and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt [still longer] at Beer-sheba.
2. We have already discussed, in the introduction (p. 74. ff.), the peculiar idea in the history of the sacrifice of Isaac, which the traditional theological misunderstanding has transformed into a dark enigma, which lies as a grave difficulty or stumbling block in the history. In his “History of the Old Covenant” (2d ed. p. 205), Kurtz resumes with great zeal the discussion, with reference to Hengstenberg’s Beiträge, iii. p. 145; Lange: Leben Jesu, i. p. 120; “Positive Dogmatics,” p. 818, and other works, and asserts directly that God demanded from Abraham the actual slaying of Isaac. It is no difficulty, in his view, that God, the true one, who is truth, commands at the beginning of the narrative, what he forbids at the close, as it was not difficult to him to hold that the assumed angels (Genesis 6) were created sexless, but had in some magical way themselves created for themselves the sexual power. [This is the difficulty which Kurtz overlooks. It is not the difficulty in reconciling this command with the prohibition of human sacrifices in the Mosaic law, but in reconciling the command with the prohibition in this history, if the killing of Isaac is referred to in both. Hengstenberg and those who argue with him, urge in favor of their view: 1. That the command relates only to the spiritual sacrifice of Isaac, here termed a burnt-offering because of the entire renunciation of Isaac as a son by nature, which he was to make, so that Isaac was to be dead to him, and then received back again from the dead, no longer in any sense a son of the flesh, but the son of promise and of grace; and then, 2. the numerous places in the Scripture in which these sacrificial terms are used in a spiritual sense (e.g., Hos_14:3; Psa_40:7-9; where the same term, burnt-offering, is used, and the Psalmist describes the entire yielding of his personality as the sacrifice which God required; Psa_51:19; Psa_119:108; Rom_12:1; Php_4:18; Heb_13:15, etc. See also the passage 1Sa_1:24-25); and finally 3. the force and usage of the word here rendered to tempt. But on the other hand it is urged with great force: 1. That the terms here used are such as to justify, if not require, the interpretation which Abraham put upon the command, i.e., that he was required literally to slay his son as a sacrifice; 2. that it is only as thus understood that we see the force of the temptation to which Abraham was subjected. It is obviously the design of the writer to present this temptation as the most severe and conclusive test. He was tried in the command to leave his home, in his long waiting for the promised seed, in the command to expel Ishmael. In all these his faith and obedience stood the test. It remained to be seen whether it would yield the son of promise also. This test, therefore, was applied. The temptation was not merely to part with his son, the only son of his love, but it was in the command to put him to death, of whom it was said, “in Isaac shall thy seed be called.” The command and the promise were apparently in direct conflict. If he obeys the command he would seem to frustrate the promise; if he held fast to the promise and saved his son he would disobey the command. 3. That this interpretation best explains the whole transaction, as it related to Isaac as the channel of blessing to the world, and the type of Christ, who was the true human sacrifice—the man for men. 4. That there is no real moral difficulty, since God, who is the giver of life, has a right to require it, and since his command clearly expressed, both justified Abraham in this painful deed and made it binding upon him. 5. That this seems to be required by the words of the apostle, Heb_11:19, “accounting that God was able to raise him from the dead.” The weight of authority is greatly in favor of the latter interpretation, even among recent commentators, and it is clearly to be preferred. In regard to the difficulty which Hengstenberg and Lange urge, it may be said that the command of God is not always a revelation of his secret will. He did not intend that Abraham should actually slay his son, and there is therefore no change in his purpose or will. He did intend that Abraham should understand that he was to do this. It was his purpose now to apply the final test of his faith (a test needful to the patriarch himself, and to all believers), which could only be the surrender to the will of God of that which he held most dear; in this case his son, the son of promise, in whom his seed should be called. To apply the test, he commands the patriarch, as he had a perfect right to do, to go and offer his son a burnt-offering. When the act was performed in heart, and was about to be actually completed, the test was clear, the obedience of faith was manifest, the whole condition of things was changed, and there was therefore a corresponding change in the formal command, though no change in the divine purpose.—A. G.] The actual divine restraint, which even restrained the sacrifice of Isaac in the very act (p. 207), forms the reconciling middle-term between the command to Abraham and the prohibition to Abraham’s descendants. We cannot truly yield our assent to such reconciling middle-terms between the commands and prohibitions of God. The question, how could the assumed positive command, “Thou shalt slay Isaac,” become a ground of the certain faith of Abraham? which is the main difficulty in the ordinary view of the passage, Delitzsch dismisses with the remark (3d ed. p. 418), “the subjective criterion of a fact of revelation is not its agreement with the utterances of the so-called pious consciousness which exalts itself above the Scripture, etc., but it is the experience of the new-birth.” This accords entirely with the explanation of the Tridentine theologians. The subjective criterion of a fact of revelation is rather that clear, i.e., calm, because free from doubt, firm certainty of faith produced directly by the fact of revelation itself. And this is truly a consciousness of the pious, which does not indeed set itself above the Scripture, but with which, also, the different acts, words, and commands of Jehovah, who ever remains the same in his truth and veracity, cannot be in conflict. The agreement between the declarations of the eternal revelation, and the eternal declarations of the religious consciousness, is so far wanting here, that Delitzsch says: “Israel knew that God had once required from Abraham (the human sacrifice) in order to fix for it a prohibition for all time. The law therefore recognizes the human sacrifice only as an abomination of the Moloch-worship (Lev_18:21; Lev_20:1-5), and the case of Jephthah belongs to a time when the Israelitish and Canaanitish popular spirit and views were peculiarly intermingled.” Then the abomination of the Moloch-service in Israel rests purely upon the positive ground of the example in this history, an example which with the same extreme positiveness, might be understood to have just the contrary force, if it signifies, perhaps; we may omit the human sacrifice in all such cases, when Jehovah makes the same wonderful prohibition. As to the sacrifice of Jephthah, Delitzsch regards it as a sort of reconciling middle-term between the Moloch-worship of the Canaanites and the prohibition of a Moloch-worship in Israel, that a hero of the time of the Judges should have acted in a heathen (even Canaanitish!) rather than in an Israelitish manner. Jephthah, who with the most definite and triumphant consciousness distinguishes between the Moabitish and Ammonite God, Chemosh, to whom, probably, human sacrifices were offered (2Ki_3:27), and the God of Israel, Jehovah (Jdg_11:24); Jephthah, who made his vow of a sacrifice to Jehovah, after the spirit of Jehovah came upon him (Jdg_11:29), a vow which was connected with a prayer for victory over a Moloch-serving people; Jephthah, who was clearly conscious that he had made his vow to Jehovah that through him he might overcome the children of Ammon under their God Chemosh; offered indeed an abomination to Jehovah; and it is obvious what is meant when it is said, the daughters upon the mountains bewailed her virginity (not the lost, but the illegally fixed) and not her life, although the matter concerned her life; but it is not so evident when it is said that she never knew a man, after her father had put her to death (Jdg_11:39), and it must not surprise us, truly, that it became a custom for the daughters of Israel to spend four days yearly to commemorate and praise a virgin who was entirely in accordance with her father in the most hurtful and godless misunderstanding, and in the most abominable sacrifice. We have to observe three oppositions in this history: first, that between ðִñָּä åַéּàֹîֶø and åַéִּ÷ְøָà îִïÎäַùָּׁîַéִí , second, that between äָàֱìֹçִéí and éְäåָֹä , and third, that between äòìä of verse second and ùçè of verse tenth.—The key to the explanation of the whole history lies in the expression ðִñָּä . It denotes not simply to prove, or to put to the test (Knobel, Delitzsch), but to prove under circumstances which have originated from sin, and which increase the severity of the proof, and make it a temptation. And in so far as the union of the elements of the testing and of the tempting, i.e., the soliciting to evil, is under the providence of Jehovah, it denotes, he tempts, in much the same sense that he also punishes sin with sin. It is defined more closely thus: he leads or can lead into temptation (to do wrong) (Mat_6:13). But the closest analysis is this: the proving is from God, the temptation is from sin (Jam_1:13). Thus the promise at Marah (Exo_15:25-26) was in so far a temptation of the people as it had the inclination to misinterpret the same in a fleshly sense; the giving of the manna was a temptation so far as it was connected with the ordinance that the manna should not be gathered upon the Sabbath (Exo_16:4); the terrible revelation of God from Sinai (Exo_20:20) was a temptation of the people, since it could be the occasion for their falling into slavish fear, and flight from the presence of God (Exo_20:19); comp. Deu_8:2; Gen_22:16; especially Gen_13:4; Jdg_2:22. The demand of God from Abraham that he should sacrifice his son, became, through the remaining and overwhelming prejudices of the heathen, to whom to sacrifice was identical with to slay, a temptation to Abraham actually “to lay his hands upon the lad.” The command of God stands sure, but he did not understand its import fully, viz., that he should, in and under the completion of an animal sacrifice, consecrate and inwardly yield his son to Jehovah, and thus purify his heart from all new fleshly and slavish attachment to him. But it was the ordination of God, that in his conflict with the elements of the temptation, he should come to the point, when he could reveal to him the pure and full sense of his command. Hence also the first revelation was darker than the second. This fact is distorted when Schelling finds here in the Elohim the ungodly principle, which appears in opposition to the Maleach Jehovah as the true God (Delitzsch, p. 417). Even the distinction between a night and dream-voice, and a clear and loud tone at the perfect day (Ewald), decides nothing, although generally the dream-vision is the more imperfect form. But the distinction between an imperfect, vague, and general, and the perfect, definite revelation, is here truly of decisive importance. The history of the prophets (as of Jonah) and of the apostles (as of Peter) confirms abundantly that a true divine revelation can be obscured through an erroneous understanding of the revelation (as indeed the unerring voice of conscience may be obscured through an erroneous judgment of the conscience). This same fact appears and continues in the development of faith. “The flame purifies itself from the smoke.” We thus hold here, as earlier, with Hengstenberg and Bertheau, that the divine command to Abraham was subject to a misunderstanding in him, through the inner Asiatic sinful tradition of human sacrifice, but a misunderstanding providentially appointed to be finally salutary to Abraham. With this contrast between the imperfect and perfect revelation now referred to, corresponds fully the contrast between hælohim, Elohim on the one side, and Maleach-Jehovah, and Jehovah on the other side. God, as the God of all Gods, whose name breaks through all the impure conceptions of him, gave the first command, which Abraham, in his traditional and Elohistic ideas, with an admixture of some misconception, has yet correctly but vaguely understood, but the God of revelation corrects his misunderstanding, when he seals and confirms his understanding, that he should sacrifice his son to God in his heart. But the third opposition, between the expression to sacrifice and to slay ( äòìä and ùçè ), is very important. It is a fact that the Israelitish consciousness from the beginning has distinguished between the spiritual yielding, consecration (especially of the first-born), and the external symbolical slaying of a sacrificial animal for the representation and confirmation of that inward consecration; and thus also between the sacrifice and the killing in a literal sense. This fact was also divinely grounded, through the sacrifice of Isaac. It served, through the divine providence, for the rejection of all heathenish abominations, and for the founding of the consecrated typical nature of the sacrifices of the Israelites.
3. According to De Wette, Schumann, von Bohlen and others, this narrative is a pure myth. Knobel is doubtful whether there is not a fact lying at its basis, but which he explains in a rationalistic manner (p. 189). He gives correctly the ideas of the history, the removing of human sacrifice, and the sanctifying of a place for sacrifice at Jerusalem. But the main, idea, the spiritual sacrifice of the son, as well as the unity of the idea and the historical fact escapes him. For the untenableness of mythical interpretations in the Old Testament, see the Introduction.
2. The mountain and place of the sacrifice. (Gen_22:4-10.)—Then on the third day.—He had now entire certainty as to the place. It is barely intimated how significant, sacred and fearful the place of sacrifice was to him.—Abide ye here with the ass.—The young men or servants, or young slaves, destined to this service, must not go with him to the sacred mountain, nor be present at the fearful sacrifice.—And I and the lad.—They could easily see from the wood of the burnt-offering, and the fire, and the knife, that he went not merely to worship, but to sacrifice; but to him the sacrifice was the main thing.—And will worship, and come again to you.—Knobel remarks: “The author appears not to have believed that Abraham would be presented in a bad light, through such false utterances (comp. Gen_12:13; Gen_20:12).” We have already seen what are the elements of truth, in the places referred to, here the sense of the word of Abraham is determined through the utterance of the wish in ðùéá , which, according to the form åðùåáä , might be translated: and may we return again—would that we might. It is the design of the ambiguous term to assure them as to his intention or purpose. [It is rather the utterance of his faith that God was able to raise him from the dead. See Heb_11:19.—A. G.]—And laid it upon Isaac.—From the three days’ journey of Isaac, and the service which he here performs, we may conclude that he had grown to a strong youth, like Ishmael, perhaps, at the time of his expulsion (the age at which we confirm).—The fire.—“A glimmering ember or tinder wood.” Knobel.—But where is the lamb?—Isaac knew that a sacrificial animal belonged to the sacrifice. The evasive answer of the father, trembling anew at the question of his beloved child, appears to intimate that he held the entrance of a new revelation at the decisive moment to be possible. Until this occurs he must truly obey according to his previous view and purpose.—The terms of the address: My father! my son!—The few weighty and richly significant words mark the difficulty of the whole course for Abraham, and present in so much clearer a light, the unwavering steadfastness of his readiness to make the offering.—And took the knife.—The very highest expression of his readiness. Nothing is said of any agitation, of any resistance, or complaint on the part of Isaac. It is clear that he is thus described as the willing sacrificial lamb.
3. The first call from heaven (Gen_22:11-14).—Abraham, Abraham!—As the call of the Angel of Jehovah stands in contrast with that of Elohim, so, also, the repetition of the name here, to its single use (Gen_22:1). A clearer, wider, more definite, and further leading revelation is thus described. The repeated call: Abraham! designates also the urgency of the interruption, the decided rejection of the human sacrifice. For the Angel of the Lord, see Genesis 12.—Now I know that thou fearest God.—Abraham has stood the test. The knowledge of God reflects itself as a new experimental knowledge in the consciousness of Abraham. [I know, in the sense of use, declare my knowledge—have made it manifest by evident proof. Wordsworth, p. 100. “An eventual knowing, a discovering by actual experiment.” Murphy, p. 341.—A. G.]—Behind him a ram.— àַçַø for àָçåֹã behind, backwards is not used elsewhere in the Old Testament, and from this has arisen the conjectural reading àֶçָã , and also numerous constructions (see Knobel, p. 175). Gesenius explains the word in the background; but we should observe well that it is said that Abraham looked around him, and thus perceived the same behind his back. Unseen, God mysteriously prepares his gifts for his own. He does not receive a positive command to sacrifice the ram instead of his son, although he recognizes in the fact that the ram with his long, crooked horns was caught in the thicket, the divine suggestion. Knobel: “In a like way, through a divine providence, a goat is presented as a sacrificial animal for Iphigenia, whom her father, Agamemnon, would sacrifice to Venus at Aulis (Eurip. Iphig. Aulid. 1591 ff.).”—In the stead of his son.—This expression is of deciding importance for the whole theory of sacrifice. The sacrificial animal designates the symbolical representation of the person who presents the sacrifice; but this representation in the later ritual of the sacrifices, must be interpreted differently, according to the different sacrifices.—And Abraham called the name of that place.—Delitzsch and Keil explain the word éִøְàֶä , Jehovah observes, or takes care, but reject the explanation of the Niphal, éֵøָàֶä etc., upon the mount of the Lord it shall be seen, chosen, i.e., be provided, or cared for. They lay aside this signification of the Niphal, and Delitzsch translates: he appears upon the mount of Jehovah. But the Niphal must here certainly correspond with the Kal, although we could point to no other proof for it. The explanation also, upon the mount where Jehovah appears, is far too general, since Jehovah does not appear only upon Moriah. The expression: “it will be chosen, provided,” does not mean he will care for, but he will himself choose, and hence the Niphal also must be: The mount of Jehovah is the mountain where he himself selects and provides his sacrifice. Moriah is, therefore, indeed, not the mount of the becoming visible, of the revelation of God (Delitzsch), but the mount of being seen, the mount of selection, the mount of the choice of the sacrifice of God—inclusive of the sacrifices of God. [And thus of the sacrifice.—A. G.] For Moriah and Zion, compare the Bible Dictionaries and the topography of Jerusalem.
4. The second call from heaven (Gen_22:15-19). The subject of the first call was preëminently negative, a prohibition of the human sacrifice, connected with a recognition of the spiritual sacrifice, ascertained, and confirmed through this suggestion of the typical nature of the sacrifice. The second call of the Maleach Jehovah is throughout positive.—By myself have I sworn.—The oath of Jehovah (Gen_24:7; Gen_26:3; Gen_50:24; Exo_13:5; Exo_11:33) is described here as a swearing by himself, also, Exo_32:13; Isa_45:23; Heb_6:13 ff. The swearing of God by himself, is an anthropomorphic expression, for the irrevocable, certain promise of Jehovah, for which he, so to speak, pledges the consciousness of his own personality, the promise as it imprints itself in the perfect sealing of the assurance of the faith of the believing patriarchs. Abraham can only be certain of the oath of God, through its eternal echo in his own heart. Hence this oath is supposed also where the perfection of the assurance of the faith is supposed. Hence, also, Jehovah declares that he had sworn unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and it is not altogether correct, although Keil yields his assent, when Luther says with reference to Psa_89:36; Psa_110:4; Psa_132:11, “As the promise of the seed of Abraham descends in the seed of David, so the sacred scriptures transfer the oath given to Abraham, to the person of David.” Although “there is nothing said in the promise, 2 Samuel 7, and 1 Chronicles 17 upon which these psalms rest, of an oath of God.” Knobel. The oath of God reveals itself even in the sealing of the faith, leaving out of view the fact that the promise given to David was much more particular and definite than that which Abraham received.—Saith the Lord (the saying of Jehovah).—[Compare the rendering of the Sept., thou hast not withheld thy son, with the terms of the apostle, Rom_8:32. The resemblance is striking, and is One of the catch-words of which Wordsworth speaks.—A. G.] A solemn statement of the promise, pointing down to the time of the prophets. ðְàֻí éְäåָֹä , address of the Lord, occurs elsewhere in the Pentateuch only (Num_14:28), and without Jehovah in the words of Balaam (Num_24:3-15). In addition to the comparison of the number of the stars of heaven (Gen_15:5), we have that of the sand upon the sea-shore, the strong figure for an innumerable mass (Genesis 32, 13; Jos_11:4).—Shall possess the gate of his enemies.—The most obvious sense is this: Israel should overcome his enemies, and capture their cities, since he should seize and occupy their gates. But the gate here points to a deeper meaning. The hostile world has a gate or gates in its susceptibilities, through which the believing Israel should enter it (Psa_24:7-9). The following words prove that this is the sense of the words here.—And shall be blessed (shall bless themselves).—The blessing of the nations (Genesis 12) in which they appear still in a passive attitude, becomes, in its result, the cause of their freely blessing themselves in the seed of Abraham, i.e., wishing blessedness, and calling themselves blessed.—Because thou hast obeyed my voice (comp. Gen_22:16).—The great promise of Jehovah is no blind, arbitrary, form, but stands in relation to the tried and believing obedience of Abraham (see Jam_2:23). [The closing remarks of Keil on this passage, are as follows: This glorious issue of the temptation so triumphantly endured by Abraham, not only authenticates the historical character of this event, but shows, in the clearest manner, that the temptation was necessary to the faith of the patriarch, and of fundamental importance to his position in the history of salvation. The doubt whether the true God could demand a human sacrifice, is removed by the fact that God himself prevents the completion of the sacrifice, and the opinion that God, at least apparently, comes into conflict with himself, when he demands a sacrifice, and then actually forbids and prevents its completion, is met by the very significant change in the names of God, since God who commands Abraham to offer Isaac, is called çָàֶìֹäִåí , but the actual completion of the sacrifice is prevented by éäåä , who is identical with the îַìְàַêְ éְäåָֹä . Neither éäåä , the God of salvation, or the God of the covenant, who gave to Abraham the only son as the heir of the promise, demands the sacrifice of the promised and given heir, nor àìäéí , God the creator, who has the power to give and take away life, but äàìäéí , the true God, whom Abraham knew and worshipped as his personal God, with whom he had entered into a personal relation. The command (coming from the true God, whom Abraham served) to yield up his only and beloved son, could have no other object than to purify and sanctify the state of the heart of the patriarch towards his son, and towards his God; an object corresponding to the very goal of his calling. It was to purify his love to the son of his body from all the dross of fleshly self-love, and natural self-seeking which still clave to it, and so to glorify it through love to God, who had given him his son, that he should no more love his beloved son as his flesh and blood, but solely and only as the gracious gift and possession of God, as a good entrusted to him by God, and which he was to be ready to render back to him at any and every moment. As Abraham had left his country, kindred, father’s house, at the call of God, so he must, in his walk before God, willingly bring his only son, the goal of his desires, the hope of his life, the joy of his old age, an offering. And more than this even. He had not only loved Isaac as the heir of his possessions (Gen_15:2,) but upon Isaac rested all the promises of God, in Isaac should his seed be called (Gen_21:12). The command to offer to God this only son of his wife Sarah, in whom his seed should become a multitude of nations (Gen_17:4; Gen_17:6; Gen_17:16), appeared to destroy the divine promise itself; to frustrate not only the wish of his heart, but even the repeated promises of his God. At this command should his faith perfect itself to unconditional confidence upon God, to the firm assurance that God could reawaken him from the dead. But this temptation has not only the import for Abraham, that he should, through the overcoming of flesh and blood, be fitted to be the father of believers, the ancestor of the Christ of God; through it, also, Isaac must be prepared and consecrated for his calling in the history of salvation. As he suffered himself, without resistance, to be bound and laid upon the altar, he gave his natural life to death, that he might, through the grace of God, rise to newness of life. Upon the altar he was sanctified to God, consecrated to be the beginner of the holy Church of God, and thus “the later legal consecration of the first-born was completed in him” (Delitzsch). As the divine command, therefore, shows in all its weight and earnestness the claim of God upon his own, to sacrifice all to him, even the most dear (comp. Mat_10:37, and Luk_14:26), penetrating even to the very heart, so the issue of the temptation teaches that the true God does not demand from his worshippers a bodily human sacrifice, but the spiritual sacrifice, the unconditional yielding up of the natural life, even unto death. Since through the divine providence Abraham offered a ram for a burnt-offering, instead of his son, the animal sacrifice was not only offered as a substitute for the human sacrifice, and sanctioned as a symbol of the spiritual sacrifice of the person himself, well pleasing to God, but the offering of human sacrifices by the heathen, is marked as an ungodly ἐèåëïèñçóêåßá , judged and condemned. And this comes to pass through Jehovah, the God of salvation, who restrains the completion of the external sacrifice. Hence, this event, viewed with respect to the divine preparation of salvation, wins for the church of the Lord prophetic significance, which is pointed out with peculiar distinctness in the place of this sacrifice, the mount Moriah, upon which, under the legal economy, all the typical sacrifices were brought to Jehovah, upon which, also, in the fulness of time, God the Father, gave his only-begotten Son an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, in order, through this one true sacrifice, to raise the shadowing image of the typical animal sacrifice to its truth and real nature. If, therefore, the destination of Moriah, as the place for the offering of Isaac, with the actual offering of the ram in his stead, should be only at first typical, with reference to the significance and object of the Old Testament sacrifice, still this type already, also, points down to that in the future appearing antitype, when the eternal love of the Heavenly Father, itself, did what it demanded here from Abraham, namely, spared not his only-begotten son, but gave him, for us all, up to that death actually, which Isaac only endured in spirit, that we might die with Christ spiritually, and with him rise to eternal life (Rom_8:32; Rom_6:5, etc.), pp. 177–17.—A. G.]
2. The sacrifice of Isaac has an inward connection with the expulsion of Ishmael, which will appear more clearly if we recollect that the age of both at the time of these events must have been nearly the same. Thus must Abraham repent in the history of Isaac, the human guilt which lay in his relation to Ishmael. But as he had surely doubted a long time as to the choice of Ishmael, so also a doubt intrudes itself as to the literal external sense of the divine command in regard to Isaac; a doubt which can no more prejudice or limit the divine revelation than perhaps the doubting thought of Paul upon the way to Damascus, but rather serves to introduce the new revelation. [The narrative of Paul’s conversion will not bear out this comparison. He does not seem to have been in any doubt, but was, as he himself says, conscientious. He verily thought that he ought to persecute the Church of God.—A. G.]
3. The distinction between the divine revealed command and Abraham’s misconception of it, is similar to the distinction between the infallible conscience and the fallible judgment in regard to conscience, which has not been sufficiently noticed in theology. Thus also Peter, on his way from Joppa to Cæsarea, with the divine commission to convert Cornelius, might have connected with it the misconception that he must first circumcise him, but the further revelation tears away the misconception. The stripping away of the erroneous and unessential ideas of the time, belongs also to a sound development of faith.
4. The burnt-offering of Abraham appears here as the foundation and central point of all the typical sacrifices in Israel. Its fundamental thought is the spiritual yielding of the life, not the taking of the bodily life. It receives its wider form in the Passover lamb, in which the division of the offerings is already intimated, viz., the thank or peace-offering and the consecrated killing on the one hand, and the sin-and guilt- (trespass) offering and the imprecatory offering on the other, The peculiar atonement offering is a higher centralization and completion, in which the whole system of offerings points to that which is beyond and above itself.
5. The mountain of Jerusalem receives, through the offering of Abraham, its preconsecration to its future destination as the later mount Moriah upon which the temple stood, the preconsecration of the historical faith in God, which transcends the unhistorical faith in God of Melchizedec.
6. The Angel of the Lord gives the more accurate and particular definition of that which Elohim has pointed out in the more general way.
7. The obedience of faith which Abraham renders in the sacrifice of Isaac, marks the historical perfection of his faith, in a decisive test. It marks the stage of the New Testament äïêéìÞ , or sealing (see the Biblework upon James).
8. The typical significance of the sacrifice of Isaac is so comprehensive that we may view it, in some measure, as embracing all Old Testament types, just as the sacrifice of Abraham itself may be regarded as including the whole Mosaic system of sacrifices. The sacrifice itself is the type of the sacrificial death of Christ, and indeed, just as truly, in reference to the interest of God, as to the interest of the world in this fact. The self-denial of Abraham is a copy, a symbol (not perhaps a type) of the love of God, who gave his only-begotten Son for the salvation of the world (Joh_3:16 : Rom_8:32). The sacrificial act of Abraham, as also the enduring silence of Isaac, is typical in reference to the two sides of the suffering obedience of Christ, as he is priest and sacrifice at the same time. Isaac received again from the altar is now, in reference to Abraham, a God-given, consecrated child of the Spirit and of promise: in reference to Christ, a type of the resurrection, and therefore, also a type of the new resurrection life of believers.
9. Since Abraham must have reconciled the promise, earlier connected with the person of Isaac, with the command to offer Isaac as he understood the command, he was necessarily driven to the hope of a new awakening, as this is admirably expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Gen_11:19). Luther remarked upon the obedience of faith: “Faith reconciles things which are contrary.” [Abraham’s faith rested not upon the conclusions of his understanding, but upon the word of God. The nature and strength of his faith appear in that he held to the promise while he went promptly to do what, to human view, seemed to prevent its fulfilment. He set to his seal that God was true. He believed that God would fulfil all that he had promised. How he did not stay to question. This is true faith. It takes the word of God as it is, in the face of all difficulties, and acts upon it.—A. G.] But this reconciliation of apparent contradictions does not happen in this method, that faith in blind passivity receives and holds the contradictions, or rather, suffers them to remain (as, e.g., universal grace and particular election), but that faith itself is brought, through the spirit of revelation, to a higher standpoint. [But is not this standpoint just that from which faith receives truths apparently contradictory, upon their own evidence in the word of God, and holds them, though it is not seen how they can be reconciled?—A.G.]—In the anticipating activity of his faith, Abraham gained the idea of the resurrection, but in the actual issue of the history of the sacrifice he gained the idea of the true sacrifice (Psa_51:18-19 : Heb_10:19 ff.), as also the fundamental form of the Old Testament sacrifice. [In the stead of his son. “The wonderful substitution in which God set forth, as in a figure, the plan of the Mosaic economy, for the offering of animal victims instead of human sacrifices—pointing forward to the only acceptable substitute whom they foreshadowed, who is God’s Lamb and not man’s—the Lamb of God’s providing and from his own bosom. His only-begotten and well-beloved Son, the man—the God-man.” Jacobus. And this great doctrine, running through the whole system of sacrifice, culminates in the sacrifice of Christ—the innocent in the stead of the guilty.—A. G.]
10. Delitzsch: “The concession unto death at the threshold of the preliminary history of the new-humanity is not completed, but merely a prefiguration, for Isaac’s death would have been useless, but the concession unto death at the threshold of the history itself is completed, because the fulfilling and perfection of the death of Christ is the passing of himself, and with him of humanity, into life. Judaism believes differently. It sees in the sacrifice or binding of Isaac an act serviceable for all time, and bringing Israel into favour with God. Where the Church prays for the sake of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, the Synagogue prays for the sake of the binding of Isaac” (p. 418).
11. The oath of Jehovah. It is not merely the basis for the oaths of men, but: 1. The expression of the absolute self-determination, consciousness, and faithfulness of the personal God; 2. The expression of a corresponding unshaken certainty of faith in the hearts of believers; 3. The expression of the indissoluble union between the divine promise and the human assurance.
12. The name Moriah points out that as God himself perceives (selects) his sacrifice in the readiness of an obedient heart to make the sacrifice, man should wait in expectation, and not make an arbitrary and abominable sacrifice.
13. W. Hoffmann: “Until now we hear only of the bruiser of the serpent, of a conqueror, of a blessing of the nations, of a dominion; in short only the image of a great king and dominion, could present itself to human thought as the form in which the divine salvation should reach perfection. But now sorrow, concession, death, the rendering of self as a sacrifice, enter into the circle of the hope of salvation, and indeed so enter that the hope of salvation and the sacrifice belong together and are inseparable.”
14. The completion of the promise. As the whole history of the sacrifice of Isaac is typical, so also is the expression of the completed promise. It refers beyond Israel, to the innumerable children of Abraham by faith, and the conquest of the world, promised to them, appears both in the aspect of a contest, as in that of the solemn feasts of victory and blessing.
15. We cannot say directly that Abraham sacrificed Isaac as a natural son, that he might receive him again sanctified and as a spiritual son. For Isaac was given to him as the son of the promise from his birth. But he sacrificed him in his present corporeal nature, that he might receive him again as the type of a second, new, and higher life. Thus Israel must sacrifice its ideas of the present kingdom of God in order to gain the true kingdom of God which is not of this world. The want of this idea of sacrifice betrays the most of them into unbelief through Chiliastic dreams. It happens similarly to all who, in the sacrificial hour appointed by God, will not sacrifice their inherited ideas that they may gain a glorified form of faith. On the other hand, every arbitrary external sacrifice is regarded and judged as a self-chosen service of God.
16. The meaning of the ram in the sacrifice of Abraham is not to be lightly estimated. It designates figuratively the fact, that Christ also, in his sacrificial death, has not lost his own peculiar life, but, as the leading shepherd of his flock, has only sacrificed his old temporal form of a servant, in order that through his death he might redeem them from death, the fear of death, the bondage of sin and Satan, and introduce them into a higher, deathless life.
[In the person of Abraham is unfolded that spiritual process by which the soul is drawn to God. He hears the call of God, and comes to the decisive act of trusting in the revealed God of mercy and truth, on the ground of which act he is accounted as righteous. He then rises to the successive acts of walking with God, covenanting with him, communing and interceding with him, and at length withholding nothing that he has or holds dear from him. In all this we discern certain primary and essential characteristics of the man who is saved through acceptance of the mercy of God proclaimed to him in a primeval gospel. Faith in God (Genesis 15), repentance towards him (Genesis 16), and fellowship with him (Genesis 18), are the three great turning-points of the soul’s returning life. They are built upon the effectual call of God (Genesis 12), and culminate in unreserved resignation to him (Genesis 22). With wonderful facility has the sacred record descended in this pattern of spiritual biography, from the rational and accountable race to the individual and immortal soul, and traced the footsteps of its path to God. Murphy p. 342.—A. G.]
Gen_22:1. The testing or trying of Abraham, as full of temptation: 1. As a temptation; 2. as a testing. Or: 1. The sacrifice of God; 2. Abraham’s obedience of faith.
Gen_22:2. Abraham’s sacrifice: 1. The command of God; 2. the leading of God; 3. the decision of God; 4. the judgment of God.
Gen_22:3. Abraham’s obedience of faith: 1. Faith as the soul of obedience; 2. obedience as the full preservation of faith.—Abraham’s sealing.
Gen_22:16. The oath of God: 1. What it means; 2. as it perpetuates and generalizes itself in the sacraments; 3. to whose advantage it will be.—The silence of Isaac.
Gen_22:4. Abraham’s journey to Moriah an image of the way to all true sacrifice: 1. The journey thither; 2. the journey home.—Moriah, or the meeting of God with the sacrificing believer: 1. God sees; 2. he is seen, appears; 3. he cares for, provides; 4. he himself selects his sacrifice; 5. he gives to man in an eternal form what he has taken from him in a temporal form.
Starke: (Moses does not relate the peculiar time of this severe test of Abraham’s faith. Some place it in the thirteenth, others in the fifteenth, and still others in the thirty-fifth or thirty-seventh year of Isaac. Because in this whole transaction Isaac was a type of Christ, and he finished the work of redemption, through his death, in the thirty-third, or according to others the thirty-fourth, year of his age, it may well be thought that in this year also Isaac was led out as a sacrifice.—The existing incorrect use of the typology still runs through the misconceptions of Passavant and Schwenke. He is three and thirty years old, says Schwenke; and Passavant says he was grown up to be a mature man.)—Some reckon ten temptations wherein Abraham’s faith was put to the test, among which this was the last and most severe: 1. When he must leave his fatherland at the call of God (Gen_12:1), etc.
Gen_22:2. (Offer him there, put him to death with thine own hand, then burn the dead body to ashes, thus make him a burnt-offering.—Luther and others think that Adam, Cain and Abel, Noah also when he came from the ark, held their worship of God and sacrificed upon this mountain. Hence the Arabic and both the Chaldaic interpreters name it the land of the worship and service of God.—Various ancient utterances as to the mountain of Moriah and its meaning follow.)
Gen_22:4. God reveals the place where our Saviour should suffer and die, earlier than the city in which he should be born (we must distinguish, however, between verbal and typical prophecy).—The two servants of Abraham. It is scarcely, at least not seriously, to be conjectured even, as the Chaldaic interpreters suppose, that they were Ishmael and Eliezer.—Neither Sarah nor Isaac knew at the time the special object of the journey. Undoubtedly the mother would have placed many hindrances in the way, and would have sought to dissuade Abraham for entering it.—When it is said (Heb_11:19) that he had received him as a figure, we discern what Abraham knew through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. (At all events Abraham knew that the sacrifice of the first-born should henceforth be an ordinance of God, and that this should culminate in a closing sacrifice bringing salvation).—The three days of the journey.—Abraham must in his heart hold his son as dead, as long as Christ should lie in the grave.—But one must above all else guard against a self-chosen service of God.—Upon Gen_22:8. He stood at the time in the midst of the controversy between natural love and faith.—(The altar upon Moriah. The Jews think that it was the altar which Noah had built upon this mountain after the flood, which time had thrown into ruins, but was again rebuilt by Abraham.)—Upon Gen_22:13. The LXX render, in the thicket, Sabek. They regarded it as a proper name, which shows the ignorance of the Hebrew language in the Greek commentators, after the Babylonian captivity. Starke records the fact, that some “Papists” refer the expression of Christ upon the cross, lama sabacthani, to this bush Sabek, and that Athanasius says, Planta Sabek est venerand crux.—Comparison of the sacrifice of Isaac with the death and resurrection of Jesus (1Co_10:13).
Gen_22:10. Lange: God knows the right hour, indeed, the right moment, to give his help.—Bibl. Wirt.: If our obedience shall please God, it must be not merely according to examples without command, but in accordance with the express word of God.—Bibl. Tub.: Gen_22:11. When we cannot see on any side a way of escape, then God comes and often shows us a wonderful deliverance.—Hall: The true Christian motto through the whole of life is: The Lord sees me.
Gen_22:15. The last manifestation of God with which Abraham was directly honored, which appears in the Holy Scriptures.—The oath of God: just as if he had sworn by his name, or by his life. In place of this form of speech Christ uses very often the Verily.—Joh_16:20.—What one gives for God, and to him, is never lost. [Not only not lost, but received back again in its higher form an