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The TorahRefers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, also called the Five Books of Moses, Pentateuch or the Hebrew equivalent, Humash. This is also called the Written Torah. The term may also refer to teachings that expound on Jewish tradition. tells us a troubling story—a watershed story that shakes us to our core—the Binding of Isaac, which we read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
How might we understand the power of this story, what it signifies, and how we, as modern Jews, might engage with these verses?
For many reasons, this is a troubling story, but its introduction (“God put Abraham to the test, …” Gen. 22:1) softens it and makes it more palatable: it is a test. Yet even this should raise eyebrows. Why would God need to test Abraham? Doesn’t God know everything? How could we read this story without this helpful introduction and framing of a test?
If by telling Abraham, “lekh lekha, go forth,” God was asking Abraham to leave his past behind, God is now asking Abraham to give up his future, given that Ishmael was already sent away. This flies in the face of God’s promises to Abraham in the previous encounter at the Covenant Between the Parts (Genesis 15). Ask any parent who has lost a child, regardless of the age of the child or parent; the parent will tell you about the chasm that that loss opened in their lives.
Just before this “test,” Abraham stood before God, demanding, “Won’t the Judge of the whole earth do justice?” He was asking God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorra from destruction if just ten people were found there.
This is the same Abraham who was brave enough to get embroiled in the war of the Five Kings against the Four to save one person, his nephew, Lot. And yet it is this Abraham who is completely silent in the face of a demand that should make anyone run for the hills: sacrifice your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac.
Sacrificing your child – any child! – is an abhorrent act. What kind of God asks that?
Let us make it clear: the rest of TanakhAn acronym for the name of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim. makes explicit that the killing of an innocent is unacceptable in moral and ethical terms. In the Second Book of Kings, a Moabite king can stop the Israelites mid-war by sacrificing his son in front of them (see II Kings 3:21-27). His sacrifice calls out to the Israelites that the king has no limits. He is brutal. Israel cannot stand in the face of this.
Yet our text does not show Abraham thinking or saying anything at all: Abraham is all action. His silence thunders to us, the reader. In Genesis 22:3, we read five different verbs: saddles, takes, splits, gets up and goes. And should you have any doubt about what Abraham believes he needs to do, notice that he “splits the wood for the Olah sacrifice.” An Olah sacrifice is a technical term used later in the Torah regarding sacrifices completely burnt on the altar. So, we are talking about a lot of wood.
Initially, the words uttered by Abraham to his companions affirm that he and Isaac will go just over there, bow down, and will return. Is he lying?
Some commentators say that he is, while others defend Abraham as having the ultimate faith that all will be well.
Reading the text of this story at its most simple level, we receive no indication of Isaac’s age. Christians read Isaac as a child, and many illustrations and paintings bear this out. Jews, for several reasons, see Isaac as an adult – 37 years old. This is because it is assumed that Sarah died just after this event because the next story in the Torah is about her death. The Torah explains that she died at age 127, and since we know she was 90 when she gave birth to Isaac and Abraham was 100 (Genesis 17:17), we can calculate Isaac’s age.
This is a very significant detail.
If the son is a child, we must add an ethical layer, which is the question of autonomy. The center of such a story, involving a child and an adult, is inevitably about the adult and his choices.
The Deists in England during the 18th century thought Abraham was immoral for his willingness to sacrifice his son. In his book “Fear and Trembling,” Kierkegaard transformed Abraham into “the knight of faith,” suspending ethical demands for actions in faith. It is no wonder that the story is called “the Sacrifice of Isaac” in Christian circles, while Judaism prefers “the Binding of Isaac” or, in Hebrew, Akedat Itzchak.
If Abraham received this demand from God, and accepted it — or at least did not protest — what can be said of Isaac, an adult who could easily overpower his 137-year-old father? Understanding Isaac as an autonomous and equally silent participant, the Jewish view, prompts a different set of questions.
During the three-day journey, Isaac opens his mouth only to ask about the conspicuous absence of the animal to be sacrificed. There are debates on how to understand the answer (And Abraham said, “It is God who will see to the sheep for this burnt offering, my son.” Gen 22:8a) — but ultimately, Isaac is seen in the Jewish tradition as willing to go through the ordeal just as Abraham, is willing to sacrifice himself for the Vision of God.
They are both looking for vision. This is subtly expressed in a midrash that gives several different explanations for the name of the mountain, Moriah: vision, awe, and instruction—all those are parts of what both father and son seek in this place.
Isaac, as a completely willing, autonomous participant, is reinforced in a few midrashimThis word is used in two ways, as both a concept and a literature. As a concept, midrash is the expansive interpretation of biblical texts. The term is used to describe the practice of rabbinic interpretation. As a text, it refers to specific collections of interpretations, particularly from the third to ninth centuries in the Land of Israel and Babylonia. Plural: Midrashim
. One portrays Isaac worried that his sacrifice will not be perfect if he moves, asking his father to tie him very well so he won’t move. Another midrash shows Isaac willing to go through with being the sacrifice but worried about the effect the news will have on Sarah, instructing Abraham to deliver the news when she is not near a well or on the top of a building – so she won’t throw herself to her death. This Isaac is parenting his mother from afar.
Maybe surprisingly, or not, perhaps unsettling on its own, is the fact that this story was used during the Middle Ages as a blueprint for the response of the Jews to the wholesale slaughter that accompanied the Crusades. The loss of family and the loss of children, for the single reason of not bowing down to the pressures of conversion, is recast as a reliving of this incredible story.
What can we make of this?
One of my favorite midrashic answers is that Abraham did not understand what God wanted. In that midrash (Genesis Rabbah 56:8), God says to Abraham that God had just asked Abraham to raise his son and not to slaughter him. Abraham confused “raise him up for Me” with “offer him up as a sacrifice.”
This is my favorite explanation; it reminds us that we are all imperfect in our understanding of God and what God asks of us. We should pause before acting. In times when many are so sure about what God is asking, our tradition presents a voice of doubting your own understanding – after all, we are all finite beings, invited to understand that which is infinite.
