Part IV in The Theology of the Pentateuch
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Divine Child Abuse?
Genesis 22:1–2
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Perhaps you’ve grown too comfortable with the idea that God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. If we come to the story fresh it is incomprehensible. There is no category for this other than psychopathy—what would you say about someone who told you God spoke to them and told them to kill their children?
For many readers willing to give Abraham the benefit of the doubt, blame falls on the kind of god that would command such a thing, using Isaac—a human child—as an instrument to make a religious point while putting Abraham through a ringer no parent should have to experience. How is this not abuse layered on abuse?
Was child sacrifice ever ‘normal’?
As modern people, we have no category for child sacrifice. Chilling as it may be, however, we must remember ancient cultures did. They imagined child sacrifice as a desperate but sometimes necessary measure to ward off disaster or win special attention from the gods (Judg 11:29–40; 2 Kgs 3:26–27; 16:3; 17:17). In Abraham’s day child sacrifice was a live option.
This is not to say the Bible condones or encourages child sacrifice, on the contrary the Old Testament consistently condemns the practice (Lev 18:21; Deut 12:31; Jer 7:31; 19:5; Mic 6:6–8). And yet, the Old Testament precedent dedicates the firstborn to YHWH (Exod 13:12–13; 22:28–29 ; Lev 27:26; Num 3:13). Because of this, redemption is fundamental to Israel’s relationship with God. Through a substitute the first-born is redeemed so it can both be “sacrificed” to YHWH and go on living (Exodus 12:1–28; 13:15; 34:19–20; Num 8:16–19; 18:15; Luke 2:23). Scripture transforms sacrifice into a comprehensive metaphor for offering to the LORD your most valuable possession.
Isaac is not only Abraham’s dearly beloved son, he is also the fulfillment of a promise that embodies his entire relationship with God. Sacrificing Isaac would erase Abraham’s past and his future (Rutledge, 262). It would wipe out the evidence of God’s goodness and faithfulness. From Abraham’s perspective, YHWH’s rejection of child sacrifice through law and prophecy has not been established. Abraham is learning that YHWH is the God who provides a substitute, who does not actually demand that we sacrifice our children. In Genesis 22, child sacrifice is an incredibly potent way of testing both the struggle of faith and the character of God.
Testing & Faith
So what does it mean that God “tested” Abraham? For many people the idea that God tests human beings implies that he sets arbitrary or cruel challenges to toy with us—to weed out the weak in a sort of spiritual natural selection. On the other hand, it might imply that God doesn’t know the true nature of our faith. Both options are unsettling. But is this what Scripture means when it says God tests someone?
Consider the process of testing and its purpose in the paradigmatic passage:
Deuteronomy 8:2–3
And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Like a patient parent with a child, God takes his people through a (sometimes painful!) pattern again and again (for forty years!) that he might form humility in them. All the fiery serpents, the water from the rock, the manna, the great and terrifying wilderness, the Exodus itself, are to bring us to humble dependence on God—“to do you good in the end” (Deut 8:16).
In Scripture, testing is more like refining than evaluating (Prov 17:3). Testing does not connect to divine knowledge as much as to spiritual relationship. The word know in Hebrew is not fundamentally an intellectual term, but also encompasses intimate personal and relational knowledge (as in, “I know this town like the back of my hand,” or “Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived,” Gen 4:1).
As Walter Moberly argues, the testing and its outcome matter to God because it involves relationship and response. When the Angel of the LORD says “now I know that you fear God” (Gen 22:12), it shows that the relationship between God and Abraham has been meaningfully deepened (105–07). Within the story Abraham expresses his fear of God through an eerie calm (vv. 5, 8) that witnesses to a deep confidence in God’s character (Heb 11:19). The orientation of Abraham’s heart is made visible by the fact that he has not withheld from God his most valuable, beloved, irreplaceable thing—Isaac. To say that Abraham fears God is the highest endorsement of the quality of his relationship with the LORD (Deut 10:12–13; Eccl 12:13; Heb 11:17–19).
The Theological Logic of Isaac’s Sacrifice
In the foreground, the narrative focuses on the quality and testing of Abraham’s faith. In the background, the story makes an equally emphatic point about God’s character—YHWH is supremely trustworthy because he provides (Gen 22:8, 14).
Abraham’s faith, then, can be read as a model for the Christian (Heb 11:17–19; Jas 2:18–24) and the ram becomes a type of Christ (John 1:29, 36; 1 Pet 1:19; Rev 5:12). This interpretation illustrates that God richly rewards faith. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his beloved son also pictures God the Father’s love (Rom 8:32; 4:20–25).
But on another interpretation, Abraham becomes a type of Christ through his self-annihilating obedience. With the command to sacrifice Isaac, God appears to turn against Abraham and take away his only hope. As Fleming Rutledge says, “It is ‘the road out into Godforsakenness.’ Abraham is asked to burn up the charter of salvation, ‘leaving for himself nothing but death and hell’ ” (Rutledge, 262). This is Christ in Gethsemane, sweating blood that the cup might pass from him, and Christ on the cross crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
One detail of the text draws all these interpretations together: Where does it all take place? Where is Mount Moriah (Gen 22:1, 14)?
There is only one other place in all of Scripture where the name Moriah is used:
2 Chronicles 3:1
Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Walter Moberly draws out the significance, “Abraham is required to offer in sacrifice, in the place where the temple was to be built, that which would cost him everything” (131). This narrative about Abraham, the first narrative, chronologically speaking, to establish that God provides a substitute realized by human faith that redeems life, takes place on the very spot where perhaps 1,000 years later the temple would be built and perhaps 1,000 years after that Jesus would enter “the land of Moriah” to die. When the Christian confesses, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided,” that mountain is Golgotha and that provision is Christ. YHWH is the faithful father willing to sacrifice his beloved son (Matt 3:17; John 3:16). Christ is the faithful servant willing to abandon himself to Godforsakenness. The work of Christ is so all encompassing that he is the ram, he is Isaac, and in Gethsemane he is even Abraham walking into the dark by faith.
If we read Genesis 22 in isolation, we might imagine God a tyrant, but because we have the witness of the rest of Scripture Genesis 22 shows us that God never asks us to put up more than he himself has paid. Therefore, God calls us to emulate Abraham’s radical, sacrificial obedience because God in Christ has both walked this road before us and provided what he commands once and for all.
LORD, may we press into faith and find you faithful. Teach us to praise your provision when we don’t understand the path you are asking us to walk. Draw us into a deeper appreciation of the path to Godforsakenness that Christ has walked before us. Teach us to follow by faith. Refine us and deliver us from witholding that we might see your goodness.
Alex Kirk is the Visiting Professor of Old Testament at William Tennent School of Theology. He has been married to Meghan for over ten years, and currently lives in Durham, England, where he is nearing the completion of his Ph.D.. Alex is most passionate about leading people deeper into the literature of the Old Testament as the living and active word of the LORD to his people.