Abraham’s Faith Tested
22 Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.
“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”
2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”
6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.
9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”
13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
15 Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. 16 “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that 17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants[a] beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. 18 And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”
19 Then they returned to the servants and traveled back to Beersheba, where Abraham continued to live.
Footnotes:
22:17 Hebrew seed; also in 22:17b, 18.
I first learned many of the biblical stories in the dentist office. Yes. The dentist office. There on the corner end table was a children's illustrated bible. I can still see the blue cover with gold fancy lettering in my head. There were also current magazines, National Geographic, a kid's science and camping magazine, and more. But I remember most that blue covered book of bible stories.
The story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his long awaited heir, Isaac, was in that book. I remember reading it over and over, trying to understand why God would ask someone he loved to do that. And how it must have tore up Abraham to make that decision and commit to doing what his God had asked for. And what about the boy's mother? How would she ever forgive her husband for taking her only son's life? And then there is the largest question of all: how would it affect the relationship between Abraham and Isaac?
Even if God sent notice that Abraham had shown his obedience and the boy would be spared, the boy was tied up on that altar of rocks... by his father! What fear was in his heart? I was a child sitting in that dentist office and I related most to that boy in the pictures. My heart broke for him. I think I related my abuse as a child by my step-dad to this story. I knew how it felt to be betrayed by the one you thought was there to provide and protect. I felt I could imagine exactly what this scared little boy must have felt. My guess is, he kept his eyes shut. Knowing it was his father was one thing. Seeing that it was his father was a whole other depth of betrayel.
The story still bothers me today. Oh, the stories we must take into our soul when we receive God's word as our classroom.
I'm glad God changed his mind.
My dentist had that same edition and I read the stories. Maybe I already knew how it turned out, so did not have the same trepidation. Curiously enough, it was during adult years and a study focused on women of the Bible, that I contemplated Sarah's role and Isaac's relationship with his father.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if our dentists realize how important these little blue books were to many sitting in their lobbies??
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