GEN. 22:1-14; JAMES 1:2-8, 12-15
This is the first time the Genesis text actually says that God tested Abraham. While the NRSV translates the word nasah as “tested,” the KJV translates it as “did tempt” (Gen. 22:1). Not only are both translations possible, but also a significant correlation exists between the two, as the discussion in James 1 makes clear. The Greek word peirazo, like the Hebrew word nasah, can likewise be translated either way, and both meanings are present in James.
The first chapter of James begins by referring to the “testing” of the recipients’ faith by persecution, or “trials” (vv. 2-3), and in the course of James’s discussion the message merges into an analysis of temptation. The meaning is clear and very practical. The “testing of… faith” (v. 3), by whatever means, can become the occasion for temptation, which is a pressure to give up one’s faith in the face of confusion about the purpose of the “trials.” That is the real meaning of James’s exhortation in verse 5 to those who lack wisdom, that is, wisdom to understand the meaning of the testing. It is not an invitation to ask for factual knowledge without putting forth the effort to learn it, as a student who fails to prepare for an exam might want to interpret it.
This raises the question of the purpose of testing, which can originate with God. But as James says, the temptation arises from within (v. 14), since God “tempts no one” (v. 13). Students are tested at the end of a course to determine how well they have learned the course content and to find out if they can apply it. Certain manufactured materials are tested for their tensile strength to see if they measure up for their intended jobs.
Abraham had been through a long course of study with numerous tests along the way to qualify him for the purpose for which he was chosen. Now, as recounted in Gen. 22, God seems to be giving him a final exam, stretching his faith to the breaking point in order to determine his “tensile strength.” No matter how one reads the text, because of Abraham’s humanity, his testing seems to be an unavoidable occasion for temptation.
The casual reader may think that Abraham heard an audible voice speaking to him, and the text certainly gives that impression (v. 1). We cannot at the outset exclude that possibility. But further consideration will likely lead us to conclude that Abraham probably heard God’s voice the same way we do, through an inward impression. This provides fertile ground for Abraham to question the validity of this startling and unconventional word of God. This is like the story of the hiker in the Rocky Mountains who slipped off the trail and was saved from falling to his death by grabbing a small bush growing from the side of the mountain. He called for help and finally heard a voice above him saying, “I can save you if you will do what I tell you.” Not surprisingly, the dangling hiker reacted favorably to this offer, responding, “What do you want me to do?” The voice said, “Let go.” After ensuring that he had heard the voice correctly, the now desperate hiker asked, “Is anyone else up there?”1
Abraham no doubt asked that same question when he heard what God told him to do: “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 that I shall show you” (v. 2). Sacrifice his son! How can that be? This command was in direct contradiction to God’s promise to give him a son through whom he would become the father of many peoples. The Lord seemed intent on taking away what he had given. Thus, in a real sense, to carry out this command, Abraham was being called to sacrifice more than just his son; he was really being called to sacrifice himself. For Abraham, this was a call to end his story, to end the promise he had embraced in faith. Isaac was more than just the child of Abraham’s old age; he was the only link to that far-off goal to which Abraham’s life was dedicated.
Along with the soul-wrenching agony of sacrificing the life of his son, his “only son,” Abraham was also struggling with his basic faith in the God who had been calling him all along and in whom he had put his faith. The God who had made the promise and in whom he had put his hopes is now in fact reneging on that promise. In a real sense, Abraham was being asked to cancel his future.
It is almost certain that none of us will be called on to make such a drastic decision, but actually all of us are called to commit ourselves unreservedly to God. We are called to turn over our futures to him and allow him to shape our destinies and guide the directions of our lives.
This command also calls into question the faithfulness of God. If Abraham goes through with offering up his son, God’s word—his promise and repeated intentions to fulfill it—would be aborted. For faith, such a challenge is exceedingly difficult. When we rely on a divine promise, and everything seems to point to it not being fulfilled, the foundation for a wholesale denial or abandonment of faith is laid. Even if a person doesn’t abandon his or her faith, such a situation must certainly elicit from that person’s lips an anguished cry like that of Job: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (13:15, KJV).
No one has captured the pathos of this narrative more incisively than Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard, who has been called “the greatest Protestant Christian of the 19th century” and “the profoundest interpreter of the psychology of the religious life… since St. Augustine.”2 Kierkegaard refers to this event in Abraham’s life as an “absurdity.” He means by this term something that runs counter to human experience and human understanding in general. It is living simultaneously in the infinite and the finite, which defies rational explanation. Kierkegaard insists that we tend to take the absurdity out of this narrative by looking at it through the outcome and thereby miss the impact on Abraham of what he was commanded to do.
In his analysis, written in his unique literary style, Kierkegaard identifies Abraham’s temptation as a conflict between a universal and a particular.3 The universal has to do with the ethical: “Abraham’s relation to Isaac, ethically speaking, is quite simply expressed by saying that a father shall love his son more dearly than himself and there is no ethical basis to be found for suspending Abraham’s ethical obligation toward his son.”4 Thus in this case Abraham is called to go against the ethical in what Kierkegaard terms a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” In the light of the universal ethical principle, Abraham would be called a murderer by sacrificing Isaac, so his temptation is to perform an act that is universally understood to be wrong. But God has called him in this particular case to transcend what is considered wrong to do God’s will. As Kierkegaard described it, “By [Abraham’s] act he overstepped the ethical entirely and possessed a higher telos [purposive goal] outside of it, in relation to which he suspended the former.”5
The high degree of subjectivity involved here makes it very dangerous to follow Abraham in violating a universally agreed-on ethical standard. Instead we should see his faith as completely implicit and pray for this same measure of commitment to God’s will for our lives. In Kierkegaard’s terminology, we cannot derive a universal ethical principle from a particular except one of faith in the faithfulness of God to perform his word.
So far in our study of the tests of Abraham, we have not given specific attention to the theological development that reaches its climax in the command to sacrifice Isaac. As we discussed in the beginning, we are generally left to wonder about Abraham’s understanding of God at the outset of his pilgrimage. Little if any information is given except that he “heard” a voice. By the time of the present crisis, he has come to know that the God he has been following is God in the most absolute sense. No deity in a polytheistic system could make such exclusive demands of obedience as the Lord has made of Abraham. In many ways God has demonstrated that faith in him excludes any alternatives. “He insists on being trusted only and totally.”6 Here, at the threshold of redemptive history, the foundation is laid for the first commandment given to the children of Abraham: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:2-3).
Abraham’s faith seems from the narrative to result in a quick and easy response. However, it was probably a matter of much soul-searching, eventuating in a gut-wrenching decision. But he did respond with, “Here I am” (Gen. 22:1). This response is the translation of one Hebrew word, hinneni (hin-ne-ni). Note how the great leaders of the faith were hinneni people. This is how Moses responded (Exod. 3:4), it is the same way young Samuel responded (1 Sam. 3:4-10), and it is the response of Isaiah to the call arising from his vision of God’s holiness (Isa. 6:8).
Ultimately, with this kind of obedient response to God, any time Abraham called on God, he most likely heard the Lord say, hinneni!