Part 4: All Is Not As It Seems

Middleton finally arrives at the Abraham/Isaac story, having reminded us via the Psalms and Job that "between the extremes of blessing God explicitly and cursing God, there is the viable option of honest, forthright challenge to God in prayer, which God both wants and expects of those made in the divine image."

            Armed with this interpretive lens, Middleton gets to work, employing a Sherlock Holmes set of eyes to the story. The three chapters Middleton devotes to the story are fun and playful, inviting the reader into a mystery needing solving. And yet, while Middleton works with the methodical precision of a Holmes, he isn't shy about owning his own biases in approaching the story. "I simply do not believe the God I have come to know would ever want me to sacrifice the life of another as proof of faithfulness, nor do I believe that this God values blind, unquestioning compliance."

            Some might think that with a line like that, Middleton has arrived at a verdict desperately needing evidence. But I appreciated him owning his starting point. And let's be honest, what is the alternative starting point? Besides, Middleton's verdict is not without warrant. Why is Abraham silent? Abraham's silence in the face of God's request bothers Middleton most. The Psalmists weren't silent. Job wasn't silent. So why is Abraham?

            In sorting through the story's details, it can be easy to lose track of our emotional weight in Genesis 22. God, it would seem, asks Abraham to sacrifice (kill) his son as a sort of litmus test for his trust in God. Sure, at the end of the story, God stops him, but his willingness to go ahead with the plan seems to be praised by God. Not only that, but it also seems this test was the evidence God needed to go ahead and bless Abraham as the father of a great nation.

            The story's humanity is hammered home, though, in verses 6-7. While Isaac is walking, unaware of his impending death, father and son have a little chat. Middleton reminds us it is "a poignant moment worth lingering over." Regarding how we read the story, the stakes are high. We witness a child innocently walking with his father when he notices something strange. Something is missing. They have the wood and the fire for the sacrifice but no sheep. Middleton notes that Isaac's tentativeness is lost to us in English translations. In Hebrew, the text reads, "Isaac said to his father, and he said . . . " Middleton remarks that it is as though Isaac initially began to speak but then hesitated. Perhaps Isaac even stumbles over his words as the suspicion that he may be the sacrifice enters his mind.

            Abraham responds that God would provide the sacrifice. This has often been seen as an expression of faith, but Middleton reminds us that Abraham's words are much more ambiguous. "God will see to the sheep for a burnt offering, my son," Abraham replies. What does that mean? Does it mean, "Isaac, don't worry; God will provide?" Or does it mean, "God will provide my son Isaac"? The ambiguity of this line is hilariously captured in this comic strip.

We can't ignore what is emotionally at stake in this story. Middleton doesn't invite us into his investigation as passive observers but as participants in a case of discovery. Bothered by Abraham's silence towards God in the face of this cruel test and knowing Job and the Psalms seem to contradict Abraham's posture, Middleton comes to the story "reading with wonder." He calls this "a way of abiding in the text while also bumping around within it, feeling the text's jagged contours, peering into its dark crevices, looking for anomalies and subtleties that raise eyebrows as well as, on occasion, the hair on the back of the neck."

            Middleton's findings are beyond what can be summarized here, but I wish to highlight five pieces of evidence he uncovers. Together with what we have found in the Psalms and Job, it convinces me that the story of Abraham/Isaac deserves a fresh reading. One, two, and five are the most compelling, while three and four add some circumstantial evidence weight.

1. Abraham Is No Stranger to Complaining

            That Abraham is silent in the face of God's request to sacrifice Isaac is entirely puzzling, considering that just four chapters earlier, Abraham does challenge God. In Genesis 18, we learn that a great cry has gone up to God about the evil happening in Sodom and Gomorrah. So great is the cry of injustice that God heads off to investigate. Presumably, having the great evils happening in these cities confirmed, God threatens to destroy them.

            Learning this, Abraham immediately challenges God. "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?. . far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked . . . far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

            Wow! That isn't just complaining. That is a full-on challenge of character and morality! Here we see the kind of exemplary boldness that Job and the Psalmists display! Abraham steps into the ring with God and lands some admirable combos here!

            Over the next half chapter, Abraham asks if God will save the city if merely 50 righteous people can be found in them. God agrees. Perhaps stunned that God would agree to the terms, Abraham returns with another request. "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?"

            This second request on Abraham's part is gold. Not only do we have the most explicit ties to Job here (the boldness of his request along with it coming from "dust and ashes"), but Abraham is in fine form negotiating here. He doesn't ask for 45; he asks if God would be so petty as to destroy the cities for only lack of finding five people. It works. God agrees to 45.

            Emboldened, Abraham asks for 40. Then 30. Then 20. Then 10. God agrees to it all. Abraham stops at this point, but it isn't clear to the reader that Abraham couldn't have kept going to even one person or none. To this point, God had shown no signs of resistance to Abraham's request.

            It would seem God knows that Abraham will protest injustice and defend the innocent. Yet, when it comes to his child, Abraham is silent. It makes no sense. This event is not some distant memory. It occurs a mere four chapters before the story in question. That Abraham will intercede for strangers, but not his son, should catch the reader's immediate attention and inform us that something is not right. Something is amiss. Terence Fretheim writes, "The narrator may intend that the reader, having learned from Abraham in chapter eighteen how to question God, is the one who is to ask questions here."

2. Is This YHWH?

       The second major clue that all is not as it should be comes from recognizing who is making this request of Abraham. Whenever God speaks to Abraham in the book of Genesis, YHWH addresses him (12:1, 7: 13:14; 15:1, 4, 7: 17:1; 18:13, 17, 20, 26, 33). The narrator consistently uses the covenant name of YHWH to introduce God speaking to Abraham. But in this story, that is not the case. In Genesis 22, it is not YHWH who speaks to Abraham. It is not YHWH who asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. Rather, it is ha Elohim.

            To be sure, Elohim is used as a name for God throughout the Old Testament. But ha'elohim is unique. Middleton writes, "While we don't know for certain what the purpose of this deviation is, the effect is striking, and, I might add, ominous." Thomas Romer suggests that ha'elohim was a term "used to denote a god that dwells far away from humans and appears to be incomprehensible."

            Well, this is suspicious. Is this even YHWH at work here? Is Abraham having trouble discerning the voice of God from impostors? Is it possible this story stands as an example of how difficult it can be to know God's voice honestly? Might Abraham believe that YHWH sounds like all the other gods of the time? Gods that often demanded child sacrifice?

3. A Test of Love?

            So much is lost in language and translation. Middleton states much is at stake in how this story is translated. While our English translations typically record verse 2 as reading, "Take your son, you're your only son, whom you love—Isaac", the Hebrew is more nuanced with a rhetorical edge. Middleton notes that you could take the phrase "whom you love" as having "the rhetorical force of, 'you love him, don't you? So, prove it by your response to the test.'" Could it be that, torn between two women (Hagar and Sarah) and two sons (Ishmael and Isaac), the test is meant to showcase whether Abraham truly does love his son?

4. Peculiar Behaviour

            Middleton also notes a handful of peculiarities in the story that should raise eyebrows. Why does Abraham rise early the next day to carry out the task? Is he trying to avoid Sarah? Where is Sarah in all of this?

            Why does Abraham saddle his donkey? Abraham is used to having servants do his domestic work. Seems strange. Is he trying to hide his wrong intentions?

            Why does he chop his wood, again, instead of a servant? And wouldn't it make more sense to chop wood and then saddle the donkey?

            Middleton notes, "Perhaps Abraham is under such stress and emotional turmoil that he is not thinking clearly; but then who would be in such a situation?"

            Why must Abraham travel three days to make the sacrifice? Couldn't this be done right where he is? Or even somewhere closer than a three-day journey? Could it be Abraham is trying to hide what he is about to do? Or is, as Middleton wonders, "God intentionally giving Abraham time to think about the command, to allow his feelings for Isaac to grow, that he might come to a decision to question the command or to intercede for Isaac?"

            For the keen observer, something strange and suspicious is at play here. As Middleton notes, "Throughout the first ten verses of the Aqidah [the Abraham/Isaac story], the narrator has skillfully conveyed a series of rhetorical signals that suggest tension, stress, and perhaps internal confusion on Abraham's part, while portraying a significant power differential between an active father and a passive son."

5. The Family Is Missing

            For Middleton, the most critical feature of the story that supports an alternative understanding is that Isaac is missing at the conclusion. Verse 19 says, "Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba." Middleton observes, "Isaac is conspicuously absent. This is a very well-crafted narrative, in which every detail matters…after noting that Abraham returned to his servants, Abraham travels with others, but no longer with his family, no longer with his son. Abraham's life is marked by a series of separations. The Aqidah narrative concludes with the simple, even tragic, comment that Abraham lived at Beersheba, with no mention of Isaac or Sarah, for that matter. The loss of Abraham's son by the end of the Aqidah narrative raises the question of the significance of this datum. There is no evidence that Abraham and Isaac ever see or speak to each other again after Genesis 22. What son would go home with the father who tried to sacrifice him to his God? It looks like the text is intentionally making the point that Isaac did not return with his father.

            And what about Sarah? She is missing at the start of Genesis 22; she is also missing from Abraham's life for the rest of the Genesis account after 22. The next time Sarah is mentioned, we are told of her death. Did Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac also result in Sarah's alienation? Or were they separated even prior to chapter 22? We don't have clear answers to these questions. But we clearly have a broken family."

            And what is God's response in all of this? It is also noteworthy that it is an angel of the Lord, not YHWH himself, that does the intervening and speaking from this point on. Abraham is informed that God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12 remains. God will still bless Abraham and make him a great nation. That isn't new, though. Abraham is also told that God now knows that Abraham fears him. Clearly. But is that what God wanted from the test, if God authored the test at all? Fear?

             Isaac largely disappears from the larger narrative after this. The first eleven chapters of Genesis focus on an anthropological/theological account of the human dilemma. Then Abraham comes into the spotlight, followed by Jacob and then Joseph. As Middleton points out, "There is no comparable Isaac story. Apart from starring in Genesis 26, where God blesses his every effort to dig wells wherever he travels, Isaac appears only as a bit player in either Abraham's story or Jacob's story. He has no story of his own. Isaac, as a character, simply disappears from view. He has no significant actions that advance the narrative of Abraham's original promise."

            But Middleton is not done tracing the effects of this broken family. He wonders what Jacob learned about YHWH from his father, Isaac, and grandfather, Abraham. What faith legacy did Isaac leave behind for his sons? This is easy to miss for those not looking for it, but it is telling and tragic. In a conversation where Jacob makes an oath to Laban, Jacob speaks of YHWH and his father this way in 31:32. "The God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac." Wow. The Fear of Isaac. "This is what Isaac passed down to Jacob," Middleton writes, "by intent or otherwise; God is the Fear. That God is to be feared was Abraham's legacy to his son."

            This is the very thing God acknowledges after the Isaac ordeal. Abraham feared God. That was clear. But as Middleton concludes, "Abraham shows that he fears God, but in passing that test, he failed another one. We can say that Abraham genuinely, in the end, tried to obey the God he understood. Inadequate as that understanding might have been. But in refusing to intercede or protest on behalf of his son, as he had previously done before, Abraham failed the test."

            Middleton concludes by stating, "Abraham was being tested not for his unquestioning obedience, but rather for his discernment of God's character. He was being tested for his trust in God, to be sure. But genuine trust is not equivalent to blind faith, to do anything a voice from heaven tells you. Rather, trust in God requires knowledge or discernment of what sort of God this is. God gives Abraham a chance to learn more about divine mercy through the process of intercession. How will Abraham be able to distinguish this God he is coming to know from the gods of the nations? This sort of discernment will be necessary so that Abraham will be equipped to "charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice" (Genesis 18:19). Is the God of Abraham simply one of the pagan deities of Mesopotamia or Canaan who requires child sacrifices, a symbol of allegiance?...

            This is why Abraham's silence is so tragic. The Aqedah testifies to the Patriarch's missed opportunity for lament…But I continue to wonder: suppose Abraham had not been silent. Suppose he had been so sure of the mercy of God that he could wrestle with God, arguing back, challenging God—interceding for his son. Or suppose Abraham wasn't sure of God's mercy but took the risk to lament anyway. He might have come to know the compassion of this God, who hosted and affirmed Job's complaint, which brought Job comfort in the end.

            Yet despite Abraham's failure to lament, God was gracious and kept faith with Abraham, continuing to work through this fractured family, ultimately to bring redemption to the world. And the God of Abraham continues to welcome lament even today."

            So, in the end, what are we to make of this story? Middleton points out that it wasn't YHWH but ha Elohim, who requested Abraham to make the sacrifice. That is enough to make me question whether Abraham heard the voice of God at all. Perhaps the story is a lesson in discerning God's voice or realizing we often assume God is just like the other would-be idols and cruel gods of our time: gods that demand sacrifice without mercy.

            But even if this was a genuine test from God, I am now firmly convinced we have taken away the wrong moral from the story. The moral isn't that we should follow God mindlessly. It isn't that we should obey God at all costs and live in fear of God. No, the text is far too provocative for that. The moral is, in fact, to the contrary. It is an invitation to know a God of compassion, mercy, and kindness. It is an invitation to speak our minds, truths, complaints, and protests to God. It is an invitation to know, as Abraham's grandson Jacob would come to know that God is fond of wrestling, and we should never be scared to get in the ring.

Artwork: Binding of Isaac by Marc Chagall
Comic by Man Martin.