Genesis 22 · NIVAC

Original Meaning

God Tests Abraham (22:1)

ONE UNUSUAL ASPECT of this text is that the speaker in verse 1 is not referred to as Yahweh or El Shaddai or any of the more common names for God in Genesis. Instead the author uses “The God,” which, with ʾ ^elohim being plural, can feasibly be translated “the gods.” The only other time in the Pentateuch this subject is used with the verb for testing is in Exodus 20:20. In both occurrences, the result of the test concerns the fear of God.

The fact that this combination appears elsewhere in the Pentateuch in regard to God’s testing (and especially since it is in Ex. 20, where there is no doubt that Yahweh is meant) eliminates the option that the author in Genesis 22 is making an attempt to insulate Yahweh from such a potentially compromising command by using a generic alternative. In addition it must be noted that only absolute certainty on the part of Abraham would have led him to obey such a command. But is there any nuance suggested in the choice of this way to designate God? The other occasions of this designation in Genesis may give us some information:

1. It is used as the object when someone is said to walk with God (Enoch, 5:22, 24; Noah, 6:9), where it is possibly idiomatic.

2. It is used when discussing the actions or words of deity with a foreigner (Abimelech, 20:6, 17; Pharaoh, 41:25; etc.), in which cases it retains a generic aspect (probably also somewhat generic in 6:11 and 27:28)

3. It is used when one of the patriarchs refers to the deity who has been identified by a particular name (Abraham in 17:18, referring to El Shaddai in 17:1; Jacob in 35:7, referring to Yahweh in 28:13), where it has the force of “that God.”1

Genesis 22:1 fits into this last category as a reference back to that God who has just been identified by a new epithet in 21:33. There Abraham called on the name of Yahweh as El Olam (“the Enduring God”), and it is that God who tests him sometime later. Of course, this is not a different God, it is simply a new epithet. But these epithets serve to indicate specific attributes of God’s nature, and we should pay careful attention.

With the birth of Isaac, the resolution of the Ishmael dilemma, and the settling in around Beersheba in the last chapter, the designation of Yahweh as the Enduring God indicates the stability, security, and permanence that Abraham now feels in the covenant and in his relationship with God. This condition is not to last, however, as God tests Abraham. The very God who has become recognized and appreciated for bringing enduring stability and security is the God who is now responsible for such turmoil.

The word translated “test” here (Piel of nsh) is used with God as subject and people as object, or with people as subject and God or other people as object.2 In testing, one is testing some value, quality, or attribute in that person. For example, when people test God, they are generally testing his patience (Ex. 17) or his faithfulness (Num. 14:22). When people test other people, they test something such as their wisdom (1 Kings 10:1). There is always some implied (though rarely specified) object to the verb beyond the personal direct object.3 Whatever is being tested is stretched to its limits.

Likewise when God tests, he tests some value, quality, or attribute by stretching it to its limits. In most cases he is testing the faith and faithfulness of individuals or of Israel by expecting them to obey in difficult circumstances (cf. esp. Deut. 8:2; Judg. 3:4). Nowhere else, however, is this accomplished by giving a command that is rescinded before it is carried out.

Bridging Contexts

IN THIS BRIDGING CONTEXTS section, we will address questions in which we explore the mind of the author and attempt to catch a glimpse of the unfathomable mind of God.

Narrator’s purpose. Just when every trouble seems resolved and everything is in hand, an obstacle appears that threatens to put Abraham, Sarah, and the covenant back to square one. This obstacle differs from the previous ones in that it is not built out of circumstances such as childlessness, famine, human strife, and so forth. It is put there by God. Consequently, we cannot say that the narrator’s purpose is to demonstrate that God can overcome obstacles. Of course he can overcome this one—the obstacle is himself!

Yet would not the Israelites have considered God just as responsible for the previous obstacles as he is for this one? After all, God was not dissociated from Sarah’s barrenness or from the famine. Still, it is not just our modernity that sees a difference. In earlier stories, it was barrenness, for instance, that was the obstacle. In contrast, in Genesis 22 God himself seems to be the actual obstacle—or is he?

Perhaps it is better to think of the obstacles throughout the cycle as the prospects connected to various situations. This view suggests that it was not barrenness that was the obstacle; it was the prospect of childlessness. It was not Lot that was the obstacle; it was the prospect that in the future his descendants might lay claim to the land. It was not Ishmael per se that was the obstacle; it was the prospect that he or his descendants might overshadow Isaac’s role as Abraham’s heir in the future. It is not Abimelech’s taking of Sarah that was the true obstacle, but the prospect of an uncertain paternity for the heir.

Following this line of thought, it is now not the impending death of Isaac that is the obstacle; rather, it is the prospect that Abraham and his descendants may be more attached to the promised blessings and benefits of the covenant than to God. This obstacle, as much as any of the others, brings jeopardy to the integrity of the covenant. In this sense, these are all presented not as personal obstacles (though they often are that as well), but as covenant obstacles.

God’s reason. The most difficult thing to understand about this passage is why God does such a thing. As we noted above, in Abraham’s day it was considered a deity’s right to ask for such a sacrifice, and Abraham does not question that right. God previously asked Abraham to do things that might entail significant emotional trauma (12:1). If he gives up things that are dear to him, God will provide replacements7—though this does not lessen the emotional toll.

The difference here, however, is that God does not really intend for Abraham to make the sacrifice. It certainly stretches the normal parameters of a test to require obedience to a command that is in some ways repulsive and contrary to the nature of the one making the request. None of God’s other tests of people share that feature. Why could God have not simply said, “Human sacrifice is repulsive to me,” if that were the point he wanted to drive home? He eventually did, but that is not the point he is trying to make. His purpose is to see what Abraham is prepared to give up. In the end God’s reason and God’s purpose are one and the same.

God’s purpose. What is accomplished by this unusual test? Commentators have made many suggestions, most of which are at least partly acceptable. But in most cases, the suggestions qualify more as function than purpose. It is true that this sequence of events functions in numerous ways:

• to strengthen Abraham’s faith

• to give Isaac a firsthand experience of the God his father has come to know over years of association

• to enable the world to see how justified God was in selecting Abraham as the recipient of the covenant promises

• to offer a picture of a father’s pain in sacrificing his son, as God eventually did in offering up Jesus

• to demonstrate how God abhors human sacrifice

But none of these serves as the divine purpose behind this passage. The text itself specifically indicates what God’s purpose is.

The text maintains that the sequence of events is done for God’s benefit. This stunning suggestion would seem impossible were it not for the clarity of verse 12: “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” God himself focuses on what he gains from the test. Despite its forthrightness, it has often been circumnavigated by interpreters as they object that God, in his omniscience, must have known that Abraham would do what he did. God, by his nature and affirmed attributes, cannot add to his cognitive knowledge. Yet the text stands, and our commitment is to understand it, not sidestep it.

We must differentiate between knowledge as cognition and knowledge as experience. We can agree that God knew ahead of time what Abraham was going to do. But there is ample evidence throughout Scripture that God desires us to act out our faith and worship regardless of the fact that he knows our hearts. God wants us to pray even though he knows what we are going to say and may already have the answer in motion. He wants us to praise him even though he knows how we feel. God asks us to express our faith and love. It is honoring to him for us to demonstrate those things that he knows exist because it pleases him. That is what I mean when I speak of God’s “benefit.” We all know that as much as our parents, spouses, and children know that we love them, it is important that it be said and demonstrated. Cognitive knowledge is not enough and is often less than satisfying.

There is more. Abraham is being asked to demonstrate something that goes well beyond anything he has previously demonstrated. It is true that he cut the ties to his family and relatives when God called him to leave (Gen. 12), but in that situation there was something in it for him: the promise of a new family through the covenant God would make with him. Every other sacrifice God had asked Abraham to make was balanced by a promise that, in a sense, made it worth his while; there was something to lose but more to gain. Here, however, there is nothing to gain. No promise balances the loss. No covenant offers motivation. In fact, it is not only his son that he is putting on the sacrificial altar, it appears to be the covenant and its promises as well. Thomas Mann has eloquently captured this tension:

God demands that Abraham kill his only son; within the context of the cycle, God demands that Abraham kill the promises God has made, and thus return the world to its state at the end of the Primeval cycle. Of course, son and promises cannot be separated, but the weight of meaning lies in the fact that Isaac is a gift who embodies God’s promise of blessing, land, and nationhood. The test is one of obedience and trust. In essence, it is a test of Abraham’s relationship with Yahweh. It asks whether Abraham’s trust is really in God, and not simply in what God has promised. Abraham has built altars before and sacrificed to this God, when God renewed the promises. Is he willing now to build an altar and sacrifice the promises themselves, embodied in his son, in order to demonstrate his unswerving trust in the God who stands behind the promises?8

The stakes are considerably higher here. Has Abraham’s faith been motivated by personal gain or simply by his love for God? Up until this point one does not know which is true. Maybe Abraham himself does not know for sure. This test allows the patriarch to demonstrate to himself, to Isaac, to the world, but most of all to God that his faith is not driven by what he will receive out of it but by his commitment to God. God and God alone motivates his faith—he is willing to give up all he stands to gain, all he loves, all he hopes for. Elie Wiesel sees the drama between God and Abraham as “brinkmanship,” but that would require a certain bravado that the text does not attribute to Abraham.9 He is not trying to challenge, prod, or force God’s hand.10 Instead, surrender and a resigned faith characterize him. God takes the expression of this as a benefit to him.

Abraham’s faith is not only demonstrated in his willingness to obey the command but is also evident in the confidence he shows that somehow the situation will be favorably resolved. Consequently, he tells the servants that “we will come back to you” (22:5) and tells Isaac that God will provide the sacrifice (22:8). It is easy from the human perspective to identify these as dissembling statements or evidences that he is in denial—but faith would sound no different, and God knows the heart. It is important to understand that he has not arrived at his confidence because God has somehow informed him of the outcome. These statements echo his faith.

The distance. Why does God have Abraham travel three days to a specified place to make this sacrifice? If we have properly identified the purpose for this test, the time serves an important function. When Abraham acts, it is not a knee-jerk reaction. He is not able to push himself through it quickly before he feels it (let’s get this over with). For three days he has to live with the haunting specter of what he is going to do. For three days he must live in the confusion about how God’s covenant promises will be carried out now. For three days he can try to rationalize some other course of action and talk himself out of doing what has been asked. This transforms his response from a reaction to a decision. The purpose of God will not be achieved unless Abraham arrives at the point of conscious commitment.

In English there is a cliché that says, “The devil is in the details.” It is used when, for instance, the president gives his state of the union address and lays out grand schemes of reform. It all sounds so good, even utopian, but “the devil is in the details”—how will such a plan be accomplished? How will it be paid for? What repercussions will it have? We all know that at some point we have to stop looking at the forest and pay attention to the trees. The expression indicates that the details of any given program can be a real problem and potentially pose insurmountable difficulties to the achievement of the overall goal.

When Abraham names this place, he designates God as the One who is in the details. God is the One who will “see to it” that everything is appropriately cared for. Abraham, and with him Moses, affirms that God is superintending the flow of events. This is to be read as complementary to the name given to God at the end of the last chapter—El Olam, the Enduring God, which depicts him as responsible for the grand scheme of things. He is the God of the long term. Here the designation of the place recognizes the Lord as God of the short term, caring for the needs of the moment.

This is an important point to make in the context of the ancient Near East. In the polytheism of Abraham’s day, national and cosmic deities handled the long-term kinds of issues that concerned the stability of the world and national destiny. Other deities were more involved with the daily life of the people. These patron deities (city, ancestral) were believed to have the bulk of the personal impact in the life of the individual. We must remember that God has still not presented to Abraham the tenets of monotheism either on the practical level (sole object of worship) or on the philosophical level (no other God exists). Nevertheless, in the names being attributed to God, Abraham is moving in that direction. He has now recognized that this covenant God of his is not just a replacement deity for one of the standard categories of deity. He is filling all the roles of deity. We can hardly begin to understand how revolutionary this was.

Contemporary Significance

ROLLER COASTERS. Just when Abraham thinks that life has achieved an acceptable level of “normality,” he finds himself again in the midst of crisis. Should our expectations of a “normal” course in life be that we will experience no crises? I live in the suburbs of Chicago, a city rightly notorious for its congested expressways. Consequently, when I commute into the city each day, I encounter the traffic. If there were no traffic, it would take me seventeen minutes to drive to work. That seventeen-minute commute could legitimately be called “ideal” or “optimum,” but it cannot be called “normal.” In fact, it is highly abnormal. If I expected to be able to get to work in seventeen minutes each day, I would be frustrated and almost always disappointed. My expectations would need significant adjustment if I made the mistake of confusing “ideal” with “normal.”

Yet confusing “ideal” with “normal” is a mistake many make regarding their expectations in life. Somehow we have come to the conclusion that a normal life is one that glides along above the fray with nothing to interfere with health, happiness, and prosperity. We may even consider such things are “rights,” owed to us by society, the constitution, or God. Then when something disrupts that calm stability, we begin to wonder why God has done this to us. We need to adjust our expectations and come to a new definition of “normal.”

We cannot expect stability and security to define “normal” because we live in a fallen world. “Normal” is not the smooth, gliding monorail; it is the roller coaster with life’s ups and downs. This idea is clearly presented in that famous section of Ecclesiastes 3, where we are told that there are times in life for all types of experiences, many of them less than pleasant. We do not choose the time to mourn, but it cannot be avoided. Unlike the monorail, which functions to take us somewhere, the roller coaster is designed with the ride in mind, not the destination.

Some people see the roller coaster as frightening; others call it exhilarating. What separates the two groups? The former, I suggest, not only fear the queasy feeling in the stomach but experience anxiety that comes from feeling out of control and, above all, worry that the cars will not hold onto the tracks. In contrast, those who feel exhilarated welcome the thrill that comes from not being in control. If, however, they had sufficient reason to believe the car would fly off the tracks, that exhilaration would quickly be transformed to the fear of the first group.

This illustration can also help us to analyze our various responses to life’s roller coaster. When we are not in control, it is easy to become anxious and fearful. The distance between a response of fear and one of exhilaration is the belief we have that the situation truly is under control, even if it is not our control. In the illustration, the tracks are life, and the cars represent God. We may feel that we are free-falling through life, but we are held by God, who is in absolute control. It may not quite be exhilaration that we feel when life takes a dive, but having faith that the situation is never out of God’s control and that we are still on the tracks can calm our fears.

When I commute, my expectations are not based on the ideal but on the traffic report for the day. Likewise in life, we have to take each day’s prospects as they come. When we climb that first big hill of the roller coaster, we do not expect just to get to the top and have a pleasant ride up there. We know that there are going to be nerve-racking turns and breath-taking dives. If we expect them, we are somewhat prepared for them. God does not promise a smooth ride; he only promises to hold us in his embrace. That is our only guarantee, and it is the basis of our expectations. The euphoria and exhilaration do not eliminate the pit in the stomach; they are the response from relinquishing control to another. In that sense, we can say the life of faith is often not characterized by a calm sense of well-being; it is a thrill ride.

Tests. God’s testing is like testing for gifted or accelerated programs in school—they do not test people who have little or no ability. In that sense, testing is a compliment and a privilege. What kinds of tests might we expect from God? It is a mistake to infer from this passage that God may ask us to give up our children because he asked Abraham to give up Isaac. I call this a mistake because neither physically giving up a child (e.g., to terminal illness) nor spiritually giving up a child (e.g., to the mission field) can be equated to what is going on in this passage. Though we may be called on to give up our children in either of the ways mentioned above, that is not the point.

A test similar to Abraham’s would not be primarily concerned with investigating whether we love our children more than we love God. Likewise it would not concern whether we will trust God with our children. The test seeks to discover the motivating factor in our relationship with God: Is it God himself, or is it the benefits he provides and the hope he offers? For Abraham, his benefits and his hope were tied up in the covenant and therefore tied up in Isaac. God’s tests may force us to step out of the comfort zone of hopes, expectations, and routines. Is our faith focused on our hope and expectations, or is it focused on God?

Jesus challenged the rich young ruler on this same point in Luke 18:18–23.11 What the young man is asked to sell would have included his land and his goods. The land is the covenant benefit shared by all the people of Israel. Possessions represent the prosperity that was believed to come to those who earned the favor of God. By asking him to sell all of this, Jesus is asking this man to be willing to jettison all of those things in his life that he considers the perquisites of God’s favor. This is the type of test set before Abraham: Are you willing to follow God if there is nothing in it for you?

We should expect that God will not hesitate to push us out of our comfort zones. We should not be surprised that he does not actively try to meet all of our expectations for life. But this does not mean that God will send us into careers or ministries that represent our worst nightmares. God has given each of us gifts and passions, and we can expect that he will ask us to use them. Nevertheless, we may find that as we use them, the cushion of comfort will be thin.

Even a person who has all the gifts and passions for being a pastor, who gets up each morning thrilled that God has allowed him to be a pastor, will encounter situations that will stretch and challenge him personally and professionally. There will be days when he is still delighted he is a pastor, but the last thing he wants to do is confront the annoying, self-absorbed parishioner who sits in his office. God’s tests will help that pastor to recognize that he is not serving as a pastor because that is what he loves doing—he is serving because God has called him to it and strengthens him for it. God tests us not by trying to make us miserable but by disrupting our comfort zones, thereby forcing us to rely on him.

Giving up God’s benefits for God. If we wanted to devise a test that would be comparable to Abraham’s, we would not ask, “Would you be willing to give up your child?” Instead we would have to ask, “Would you give up eternity in heaven for God?” In the 1970s a popular spiritual by Andrae Crouch explored this question. The song asked what motivates us to serve God: “Is it just for heaven’s gain?” The chorus says it all:

But if heaven never were promised to me;

neither God’s promise to live eternally;

it’s been worth just having the Lord in my life—

living in a world of darkness he came and brought me the light.

What a challenging lyric that is! We could just as easily sit with John Lennon for a moment and “Imagine.” Though Lennon would have seen heaven and hell as fantasies that prevent people from living in the real world, his words can function differently to help us think of what our faith might be like without the hope or threat of eternity factored in.

Imagine there’s no heaven,

It’s easy if you try,

No hell below us,

Above us only sky,

Imagine all the people

living for today . . .

Would we give God a chance if there were nothing in it for us? Would we give God our lives if he gave nothing back but himself? Would our lives have a place for God if we were “living for today”? It should be our aspiration to respond to those questions with a resounding “yes!” That is what Abraham did when he built his altar on Mount Moriah and bound his son. God asks no less of us than to be our all in all.

Job also was called upon to demonstrate that there was such a thing as disinterested faith. When all is stripped away and no hope remains, in the dark, in the loneliness, in the emptiness, there is God. That is when faith stands up and is counted. Many times I have heard those whom I consider spiritual express a longing to hear the coveted accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Is our faith impetuous enough that we long to hear the words God said to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God”?

Two roles of God. In America in the twenty-first century, it is hard not to be aware of the impact of the stock market. As I write the market is experiencing dramatic rises and falls day by day. While an increasing number of investors look for ways to make a quick killing, basic financial advice has not changed. The way to realize financial gain from the market is to get into it and stay in it for the long haul. When accounts are settled at the end, it will not matter how frequently or how dramatically the stock has fluctuated. It will not matter what earnings, losses, profits, or dividends have been posted. What will matter is the price of the stock when you sell compared to the price when you bought.

Like the stock market, our lives have long-term prospects as well as daily fluctuations. In Genesis 21, God as El Olam, the Enduring God, was seen as connected to the long haul. In Genesis 22, God as Yahweh Yireh, the Superintendent God, is seen as being concerned with the daily fluctuations of life and the needs that result. Abraham has to come to know God in both roles, as do we.

One of the masterful qualities of Shakespeare’s plays is the way he weaves intricate details of plot in sometimes surprising ways as the story line moves inexorably toward its consummation. It is with this same type of skill that God weaves the drama of the cosmos. In his last play, The Tempest, Shakespeare embodies this same attribute in his quasi-divine main character, the magician Prospero, and through him we can come to appreciate the interrelationship and the interaction between the means and the ends. Though Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, his office has been usurped by his conniving brother, Antonio. Prospero’s long-term plans are to regain his position, bring his brother to justice (or at least reform), and marry his daughter, Miranda, to Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples (Alonso).

To those larger ends, Prospero contrives an intricate scheme using various strategies and mechanisms to bring all of the main characters to his island by means of a shipwreck. While Miranda and Ferdinand are falling in love, Antonio and his allies are engaging in diabolical intrigue against Alonso and his advisor. In the end all the parties are brought to one location, where Prospero reveals himself to them. Antonio, chastened in spirit, pleads for forgiveness and mercy. Ferdinand and Miranda receive permission from Prospero to marry, and Alonso finally discovers that his son has survived the shipwreck and gladly consents to the marriage. In Prospero’s speech to Ferdinand we can almost imagine God speaking to Abraham: “All thy vexations were but my trials of thy love, and thou hast strangely stood the test.”12

Unlike Prospero, who resorts to deception and manipulation in order to achieve his noble goals, God is in perfect control of the many-faceted complexities that represent each of our lives. Prospero only has a handful of characters to juggle, whereas God works in the life of each and every individual. Yet he orchestrates his long-term plans as a composer who utilizes each instrument’s score and each note on each page to produce the symphony that represents the culmination of his artistry. God’s sovereignty can be appreciated only as we come to recognize its impact at all levels. He is the God of the ends and the means, but he does not justify the means by the ends. He does not exploit or manipulate. God made us corruptible presumably so we would have the choice to reject him. If he only wanted robots to manipulate, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble and made us incorruptible.

Even though we do not have to overcome the worldview of the ancient Near East that included categories and echelons of deities, perhaps there are still ways in which we are inclined to compartmentalize God. For instance, when things are not going well for someone, we may encourage them by quoting Romans 8:28 (KJV), “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

In this King James translation we see an El Olam sort of perspective. That is, all things, whether good or bad or indifferent, work together to the larger good in our lives. The ends make the means tolerable. But in the NIV translation, we see a bit more of the Yahweh Yireh (“God will see to it”) perspective: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This does not focus on the end result of all of our experiences together but on each of those experiences that make up the category of all things. In all things, in each thing, God works for good.

There is no need at this point to engage in discussion over whether Romans 8 has the parts in view or the composite whole. The point is that God works at both levels. We will return to this when we consider the Joseph story.

Original Meaning

Region of Moriah (22:2)

THE ONLY INDICATION of Moriah’s location that the text offers is that it is a three-day journey from Beersheba, though no direction is provided. The only other reference to Moriah is in 2 Chronicles 3:1, which identifies it as the site of the temple in Jerusalem but makes no mention of Abraham or this incident. But Abraham knows where Moriah is, and if it is the area of Jerusalem, he would know that the wooded hills there would provide the necessary firewood. He has, after all, traveled through this region before (Gen. 14). Since he brings firewood, he must be aware that the region of Moriah is unable to provide enough wood for a sacrifice. In other words, this Moriah is not Jerusalem.4 Thus, the reference in Chronicles is most likely a coincidence of the same name.