How Do You Know?

Robert Alter ~ Genesis: The Five Books of Moses -- page 108

The Hebrew syntactic chain is exquisitely forged to carry a dramatic burden, and the sundry attempts of English translators from the King James Version to the present to rearrange are misguided . The classical Midrash, followed by Rashi, beautifully catches the resonance of the order of terms... Although the human object of God's terrible imperative does not actually speak in the biblical text , the Midrashic dialogue demonstrates a fine responsiveness to how the tense stance of the addressee is intimated through the words of the addressee in a one-sided dialogue.

Sacrifice by Reverend Lawrence Boadt ~ page 107-109 in "Talking about Genesis: A Resource Guide"

All biblical stories carry a wealth of meaning. But no story perhaps has so gripped the imagination of readers over the centuries as the terrifying proposition of Genesis 22 that God would ask a faithful person to kill his own son to prove his love for God. Certainly no other person in the book of Genesis ever encounters such a poignant and heart-wrenching experience as this.

Scholars and spiritual writers have often suggested that the story was originally intended to explain how God forbade the practice of human sacrifice or how the mountain to which Abraham went was the same Mount Moriah on which the Temple later stood. The text focuses on a specific challenge : God wanted to see if Abraham would obey no matter what in order to reconfirm the promises and blessings for his descendants. But many other ways of reading are possible.

Note its simple narrative technique. The story wastes no words on background or even on the feelings of those involved. It is one of the most tautly written and emotionally charged masterpieces in world literature precisely because of what it doesn't say. It begins starkly: God will test Abraham. No reason is given and Abraham never asks for one. In earlier chapters, Abraham has always followed wherever God led him. Even now he stands ready: Three times, he simply says, "Here I am" (verses 1, 7, 11). the plot itself emphasizes traveling distances and the objects needed for a sacrifice. Spaced between these are four brief conversations. With just a few words per stage, the drama moves relentlessly forward. The reader must fill in the gaps both from the imagination and from information provided in the previous chapter.

As a result, suspense is created at every stage in the action of the plot but also in the reader's mind: Why does God test humans? Since the story opens with the clear claim that God is testing Abraham, what will the drama say about a God who does this? If Abraham has already proved faithful time and again, does God never allow a final "okay" to our human obedience? Is there an insight here to the mystery of the relationship between God and humanity that always remains ambivalent and difficult to comprehend? We live with ignorance, imperfection, evil, and morality, while God has usually been viewed without any ofthese limitations. Does the encounter underscore the impossibility of understanding God? Does it suggest that God is not fully aware or in control of our destinies? If God is still unsure of Abraham, does this become a story of hope for all of us for whom God sometimes seems alien or distant or silent?

What about God as Good? God not only asks for a test, but that test involves a sacrifice. Is there any difference between "sacrificing" your son and "murdering" him? Are we asked to do evil to please God?

If it is only a test, we should not get trapped by feelings of horror and dismay that God would order such a cruel act. Like children asking for the story of Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks and the Three Bears, every reader knows the outcome of the test before actually reading it. Many children learned it-- one of the best-known biblical stories-- at their mother's knee. They saw it as a game-- it is a test, only a test, whose outcome is certain.

But what if it is not intended as a test? Perhaps Abraham has been too successful, perhaps his obedience is the obedience that Satan accused Job of having: he obeys because he always received blessing as a result. God does say at the climax in verse 12, "Now I know you fear God" (New Revised Standard Version) [ "for now I know that thou art a God-fearing man" lit. in Hebrew כִּ֣י ׀ עַתָּ֣ה יָדַ֗עְתִּי כִּֽי־יְרֵ֤א אֱלֹהִים֙ אַ֔תָּה] or perhaps better, "Now I know that you stand in awe of god." Is this really a story about the difficulty of human submission to God at all costs?

Is there a positive message of trust? Since the "test" revolves around the fundamental question of fidelity-- God's as well as Abraham's -- we can also read the bottom line of the drama, with its favorable outcome and its renewed promise of blessing, as an affirmation in the face of despair or disaster of God, who is both present to us and "provides" for us (verse 8) what we need. God's goodness is manifest in ways beyond our comprehension, but in this dilemma, nothing is more important than trusting and holding faith with the God we have come to know through revelation and experience, just as Abraham had in the preceding stories.

At the end, the sacrifice of Isaac is both a story of how faith works and how our experience copes with good and evil in life. We find both blessing and testing in our relationship with God, but the divine/human dialogue never ceases.