Friday, Aug. 23
Genesis 21:22 – 23:20 Read it here
The story of God testing Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his son Isaac is a difficult one for modern readers. Almost every part of it is completely at odds with our understanding of the way the world works and should work.
Gaining meaning from the story, though, doesn’t depend on accepting that it is OK to offer up your children as burnt sacrifices (it’s best to keep that option off the table, no matter how angry you get at them), but understanding some of the context might get us to the point that we can look beyond our reaction and gain some positive lessons.
The first thing to understand is that death was more familiar to people of that time. Seeing animals slaughtered was a daily occurrence even for the youngest of children. When loved ones died it was frequently in the home, not out of sight in a hospital. That didn’t make the loss of the person any less, but the fact of death itself was less of a stranger to people.
Second, we’ll see later in the Old Testament that the sacrifice of one’s own children was practiced by other religions in the region. The concept of that being a test of faith would not have been as shocking to Abraham as it is to us.
Third, the story of Abraham is a story of a promise of descendants. In telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God is testing his willingness to trust in God’s promise even to the degree of eliminating what appears to be the only way it can be carried out.
Fourth, when we read this as Christians, we can’t help seeing the parallel to God sacrificing his own son and recognizing that the sacrifice God asked a man to be willing to make, God actually made.
Abraham is led into an impossible situation from which he can see no way out. Those are often exactly the situations where we find God has prepared a way.