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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 22:9 - 22:14
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The Interference of God
v. 9. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. The detailed narrative again calls attention to the strict obedience of Abraham: the building of the altar, the laying in order of the proper amount of wood for consuming the offering, the binding of Isaac, who is here again designated as his son, and the placing of him on the altar.
v. 10. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. This is the climax, the most dramatic moment of the story: Isaac as a patient sacrifice, knowing himself to be the burnt offering which the Lord had provided, and the father ready to slaughter his son.
v. 11. And the Angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham! And he said, Here am I.
v. 12. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me. The Angel of the Lord in the special sense of the word, the Son of God, is here again in evidence, interfering just in time to save the life of Isaac. God had now, by the most severe test which could have been devised, obtained evidence, made manifest by evident proof, discovered by actual experiment, that fearing God Abraham was, that this was the attitude of his mind and heart, since he had not spared even his only son for the sake of his obedience to God. Here also the type of Isaac as foreshadowing the greater sacrifice of the New Testament is emphasized, Rom_8:32.
v. 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 him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. God here directed the attention of Abraham to the ram in the background, overlooked by him till now, caught in the thicket on the mountainside with his long, crooked horns. Acting upon the suggestion, he made the ram the sacrificial animal in the stead of his son Isaac, the ram thus, as in many of the later sacrifices, being the symbolical representation, taking the place of him who was destined to die. That fact also gave the great value to the sacrifice of Christ, for it was made for us, in our stead.
v. 14. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh, as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. As Abraham applied to the place of his sacrifice a name which means "the Lord will see or provide," so men afterward had a proverbial saying based upon this happening, "on the hill where Jehovah is manifested, or revealed," from which the name Moriah originated.