The Trials of Abraham
The Sacrifice of Isaac (oil on copper) by Jacopo Chimenti Empoli (1551–1640).
ABRAHAM THE TESTED. THE MAN OF FAITH. SARAH CAPTURED. SODOM AND GOMORRAH. THE OFFERING OF ISAAC.
Abraham’s life hardly went smoothly: from his youth on into old age, a series of events brought him hardship and suffering. What had the Bible intended by recounting Abraham’s troubles?
The bare facts of Abraham’s biblical biography are simple: From his native Ur, he is said to have moved with his family to Haran in northern Mesopotamia, and from there he continued on to Canaan. But life was not easy for Abraham in his new home. At the time of his arrival, Canaan was in the midst of a famine, so he and Sarah found themselves obliged to continue on to Egypt in search of food. There the Egyptian king, believing Sarah to be Abraham’s sister, took her to the royal palace, presumably to be part of his harem (Gen. 12:15). It was only after God “afflicted” him that the king returned her to Abraham and they left Egypt for Canaan.
After the couple’s return to Canaan, a major war broke out between the kings of five Canaanite cities and the rulers of four foreign nations (Genesis 14), and Abraham’s nephew Lot was caught up in the fray and taken prisoner. Abraham found himself obliged to enter the war with his own corps of retainers, and he eventually succeeded in freeing Lot (Gen. 14:16). But his troubles were far from over.
Abraham and Sarah had long been childless; at Sarah’s urging, Abraham sought to have a child with Sarah’s servant Hagar, and in due time, Ishmael was born. Afterward, however, tension developed between Sarah and her servant. Meanwhile, Sarah did at long last succeed in becoming pregnant, and she bore a son, Isaac. Displeased with the behavior of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah now demanded that they be banished. Despite his own feelings for his son, Abraham did as his wife had asked—Hagar and Ishmael were cast out.
Now Sarah and Abraham were left with their only son, Isaac. No sooner was Isaac grown, however, than God confronted Abraham with what seemed like his greatest challenge of all: He ordered him to take his beloved son to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a sacrifice on an altar. Abraham set out to do as he was told, but at the last minute God relented, and Abraham offered a ram on the altar in place of his son.
Considering this sequence of events, ancient biblical interpreters could not escape the impression that Abraham’s life was itself intended as a kind of lesson. After all, it is not only the wicked who suffer in this world—often, adversity seems to befall those who least deserve it. This is not, of course, a problem for biblical interpretation alone, but for the very belief in one God (monotheism): for how can one maintain that all of reality is created by a single, benign God when so much of what happens in life seems unfair, bringing pain and heartbreak to the innocent, nay, to the unquestionably good? The story of Abraham did not provide an answer, but at least it provided a comforting proof that such things are indeed part of the divine plan. For here was a man who was quick to do whatever God demanded of him, yet his life’s path was marked with hardship at every turn. Was this not confirmation enough that God sometimes imposes suffering even on those whom He loves most? At the same time, they noted that in old age Abraham at last found the peace and contentment that had eluded him earlier: “the LORD blessed Abraham in all things” (Gen. 24:1). He lived to see his children and grandchildren grow up, and he ended up becoming the ancestor of several mighty nations. Indeed, his name became a blessing among these many descendants—just as God had promised him at first (Gen. 12:1–3).
Abraham the Tested
If the end of Abraham’s life was happy, why had it earlier been marked by so many difficulties? In seeking an answer to this question, ancient interpreters were drawn in particular to the last of these hardships, God’s demand that Abraham offer up his own son Isaac as a sacrifice. The opening sentence of this episode describes it as a test: “And it came to pass, after these things, that God tested Abraham” (Gen. 22:1). The idea that God might be testing his chosen servants with adversity—to see, as it were, what they are made of and how well their devotion can survive under pressure—would certainly go far toward explaining suffering in the lives not only of biblical figures, but of ordinary humans as well. So it was that Abraham came to be thought of as “Abraham the tested.” Indeed, since the sentence read, “And it came to pass, after these things, that God tested Abraham,” interpreters were inclined to read the indicated phrase as a hint to the existence of previous tests in Abraham’s life. In other words, if “after these things” God tested Abraham, perhaps this meant that the previous things in Abraham’s life were also tests, that his leaving Ur and the famine in Canaan and his losing his wife and so forth were all part of one long series of divinely imposed trials:
[Even before the offering of Isaac,] the Lord knew that Abraham was faithful in every affliction which He had told him of, for He had tested him with regard to [leaving his] country, and with famine, and had tested him with the wealth of kings, and had tested him again through his wife when she was taken forcibly, and with circumcision; and He had tested him through Ishmael and Hagar, his maid-servant, when he sent them away. And in everything in which He had tested him, he was found faithful; he himself did not grow impatient, yet he was not slow to act; for he was faithful and one who loved the Lord.
Jubilees 17:17–18
Among other things—it would take too much time to mention all of them—Abraham was tested concerning the offering up of his beloved son Isaac, in order to prove his pious obedience and thereby make it known to the whole world (but not to God [since He already knew]). Not every test is a sign of disapproval—it may in fact be a sign of praiseworthiness, since it provides proof [of the person’s virtue].
Augustine, City of God 16:32
The Man of Faith
But what exactly was being tested? Interpreters believed that it was not merely Abraham’s ability to endure hardships, but his faithfulness to God, that was being proved by the difficulties that he encountered. The Bible in fact said as much—not in Genesis, but in a prayer of a much later figure, Ezra the scribe. Reviewing the events of Genesis, Ezra had praised God in these words: “You are the LORD, the God who chose Abraham and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham; and You found his heart faithful before You and made a covenant with him” (Neh. 9:7–8).
As a result, ancient interpreters came to think of Abraham’s faithfulness as one of his outstanding characteristics:
He established His covenant in his flesh, and when tested he was found faithful.
The Lord knew that Abraham was faithful in the midst of his afflictions . . . And in everything in which He had tested him he was found faithful, and his soul was not impatient, yet he was not slow to act, for he was faithful and a lover of God.
Abraham was found faithful to [G]o[d] for favor.
4Q226 Pseudo-Jubilees b fragment 7:1–2
There is certainly a difference between being a faithful servant of God—that is, one on whom God can rely—and having faith in God. In Greek, however, the word pistos can express both ideas. Thus, among Greek-speaking Jews and Christians (including New Testament writers), “Abraham the faithful” slid easily into “Abraham the man of faith.” For this idea, too, there was biblical support: after all, when God had promised Abraham many descendants (despite his long-standing childlessness), the Bible observed: “And he had faith [or believed] in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). Abraham thus became the exemplar of trust in God:
Thus “Abraham believed in God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed” [Gen. 12:3]. So then, those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.
For what does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” . . . That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants—not only to adherents of the law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all.1
The Greatest Test
Surely the greatest test to Abraham’s faith was God’s demand that Isaac be offered up as a human sacrifice. Abraham’s willingness to give up the son whom he had yearned for during all those years of Sarah’s infertility, and in whom he had delighted since the day of the boy’s birth, bespoke an uncommon devotion to God’s will. Not only was Abraham prepared to carry out this most painful command, but the text even stressed Abraham’s promptness in doing so: after receiving God’s command, Abraham “rose early the next morning and saddled his donkey” (Gen. 22:3).
To some ancient interpreters, however, this very aspect of the story was troubling. The narrative gives not the slightest indication that Abraham felt sorrow (or anything else) at the prospect of having to slay his own son. He moves through the story like someone in a trance. Isaac seems to be a young man—old enough to carry the wood for the fire (Gen. 22:6), but young enough, or trusting enough, not to have the faintest idea of what is afoot. So, when Isaac says to his father, “The fire and the wood are both here, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” one might expect Abraham to take the occasion to inform his son of God’s tragic commandment—but no. Apparently bent on keeping Isaac in the dark, Abraham hedges: “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” (What he says actually turns out to be true—but Abraham presumably had no way of knowing this at the time.) In fact, after the altar is built, Abraham has to tie Isaac up in preparation for sacrificing him. There could scarcely have been any clearer indication in the text that Isaac was an altogether unwilling victim until the very end.
Certainly this picture of an apparently coldhearted father and his simple, trusting son was repellent; it was difficult for ancient interpreters to make their peace with it. It would be nice if, somehow, the text could have indicated that Abraham was pained at what was about to take place—indeed, that at some point he had actually confided in Isaac and explained his dilemma, thereby also telling his son what was being asked of him. Then, if they nevertheless went forward, it would mean that both parties had accepted God’s decree. Far from a naïve victim, Isaac would be a willing martyr.
Apart from matters of sentiment, there was a more concrete reason for wishing that the story had unfolded in this way. Toward the middle of the second century BCE (that is, right at the time of the ancient interpreters), the Jews were seeking to rebel against their Syrian rulers, and not a few found themselves called upon to be martyrs and willingly give up their lives in the name of their religion. (This is recounted in 1 and 2 Maccabees, among the biblical apocrypha.) The line between martyrdom and suicide is not always clear, and some Jews must have wondered if the Bible even sanctions a person willingly giving up his own life. But there were no clear examples of martyrdom within the Hebrew Bible itself2—unless, of course, it could be argued that Isaac somehow knew that he was going to be sacrificed and nevertheless went along with it. Then he would indeed be a kind of martyr.
As was seen earlier, ancient interpreters did hit upon one anomalous detail in the biblical account:
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and he put it on his son Isaac, and he took the fire and the knife, and they walked the two of them together. Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father?” and he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And they walked the two of them together.
Assumption 3 of the ancient interpreters—that the Bible contains no internal contradictions but is perfect in all its details and perfectly harmonious—eventually included within it the notion that every word of the Bible is significant. The Bible thus never repeats itself or says anything for emphasis, and when it seems to, there must be some additional, hidden meaning. Read with that in mind, the words indicated above seemed to be saying two different things. If the first and they walked the two of them together meant that Abraham and Isaac physically proceeded together along the same path, then the second use of this phrase must have been intended to communicate something else. Since the preceding sentence has Abraham saying, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” it did not seem too much of a stretch to conclude that this second appearance of the phrase meant that, in the intervening time, Abraham had somehow indicated to Isaac—through a gesture or otherwise—that he was to be the sacrifice, and despite this discomfiting bit of news, “they walked the two of them together.”
Such a possibility seemed all the more likely in view of the ages of the two people involved. As mentioned, Isaac may still have been a boy, but he was old enough to carry the wood for the sacrifice—surely he was at least ten or twelve, perhaps even older.3 As for Abraham, he was a hundred years old when Isaac was born (Gen. 21:5), so by the time of the sacrifice he would have to be, by the same logic, 110 or older. Even given the longevity of early biblical figures, it seemed unlikely that a man more than a hundred years old would be able to outrun a boy of ten or twelve, should the boy have chosen to flee. Still less likely did it seem that Abraham would have actually been able to tie his son up (Gen. 22:9) without the boy’s assent.
On top of all this was the fact that, as we have already noted, the Hebrew text of the Bible contains a great potential for ambiguity. Not only are the vowels in a word usually left to be figured out by the reader, but the beginnings and ends of sentences are not marked: biblical Hebrew had neither capital letters nor periods at the ends of sentences. As a result, interpreters constantly had to decide between different ways of dividing up a sentence and construing the relationship of the various words within it. In this case, Abraham says to his son, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” But that sentence could, if forced a little, be read as two sentences: “God will provide for Himself. The lamb for the burnt offering [is] my son.” (Note that Hebrew normally has no word for “is,” so this second sentence is altogether grammatical.)
Thus developed the idea that Isaac was actually a willing victim, nay, a martyr to God:
Going at the same pace—no less with regard to their thinking than with their bodies—down the straight path whose end is holiness, they came to the designated place.
Philo, Abraham 172
[Abraham said to Isaac:] The Lord will provide a lamb for Himself for the burnt offering, my son—and if not, you will be the lamb for the burnt offering. And the two of them walked together with firm intention.
Targum Neophyti and Fragment Targum (Paris MS.), Gen. 22:8
Even without the specific connection to the phrase “and they walked the two of them together,” the motif of Isaac the willing victim is widely attested:
Remember what He [God] did with Abraham, and how He tested Isaac . . . For He has not tested us with fire, as He did them, to search their hearts.
Remember . . . the father by whose hand Isaac would have submitted to being slain for the sake of religion.
Given the basic clues of the text, some sources lovingly elaborated the full conversation that must have taken place between Abraham and Isaac on their way to the sacrifice:
And as he was setting out, he said to his son, “Behold now, my son, I am offering you as a burnt offering and I am returning you into the hands of Him who gave you to me.” But the son said to the father, “Hear me, father. If [ordinarily] a lamb of the flocks is accepted as a sacrifice to the Lord with a sweet savor, and if such flocks have been set aside for slaughter [in order to atone] for human iniquity, while man, on the contrary, has been designated to inherit this world—why should you be saying to me now, ‘Come and inherit eternal life and time without measure’? Why if not that I was indeed born in this world in order to be offered as a sacrifice to Him who made me? Indeed, this [sacrifice] will be [the mark of] my blessedness over other men—for no such thing will ever be [again]—and in me the generations will be proclaimed and through me nations will understand how God made a human soul worthy for sacrifice.”4
Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32:2–3
The Foreshadowing of the Crucifixion
The typological approach to Scripture (see chapter 1) had some Jewish antecedents, but it was essentially a very Christian way of reading. According to this approach, early things foreshadow later ones; more specifically, Christians came to believe that things contained in the Old Testament are actually there as hints or allusions to events in the life of Jesus or to elements of Christian belief and practice (the Trinity, the Eucharist, baptism, and so forth). To put it another way: the Old Testament may not seem like a Christian book, but its stories and laws and prophecies all correspond to something in the New Testament or even in post–New Testament Christianity.
The roots of this idea are not hard to find: as we shall see, certain verses in the Psalms and the book of Isaiah were, from a very early stage of Christianity, taken as prophecies of the events of the Gospels. But after a while, the typologies began to suggest themselves at every turn: Adam, Abel, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and other figures were all read as foreshadowings or prefigurations (figurae they were called in Latin, “figures”) of Jesus. So was Isaac. After all, his father offered him up to be killed as a sacrifice—certainly anyone who thought of Jesus as the son of God could see the parallel.
If God is for us, then who is against us? He who did not spare27 His own son but gave him up for us all, will He not also give us all things along with him?
[Jesus was the fulfillment of] that which was foreshadowed in Isaac, who was offered upon the altar.
Letter of Barnabas 7:3
Eventually, other elements were found to suggest further correspondences between the story of Isaac and the crucifixion:
And on this account Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be offered up to the place of sacrifice, just as the Lord himself carried his own cross. Finally, since Isaac himself was not killed—for his father had been forbidden to kill him—who was that ram which was offered instead, and by whose foreshadowing blood the sacrifice was accomplished? For when Abraham had caught sight of him, he was caught by the horns in a thicket. Who then did he represent but Jesus, who, before he was offered up, had been crowned with thorns?
Augustine, City of God 16:32
Such, in short, is the portrait of Abraham that first emerged toward the end of the biblical period. Having been tested by God on multiple occasions, Abraham never lost his faith; even when God demanded he give up his beloved son, the biblical patriarch did not flinch. As for Isaac, he was a willing victim, a would-be martyr to his own trust in God. For Christians, the story of that great near-sacrifice was confirmation of the Old Testament’s foreshadowing of the New—and hence, further proof that God had arranged all in advance and according to His own plan. These interpretations, created by the Bible’s ancient interpreters, were then lovingly passed down from late antiquity through the Middle Ages and on to the present day. But modern scholars see a different picture.
All the Way to the Bank
To begin with, a modern scholar would hardly see the series of biblical narratives about Abraham as a unit. Different episodes in his life are attributed to different authors with different purposes, and while most of the stories are allocated to the source (or complex of sources) designated J, a number are connected with P and E.5 Thus, the idea that these separate passages and incidents were all designed to transmit a single theme—“Abraham the tested” or “Abraham the man of faith”—would hardly seem self-evident to most modern scholars. Indeed, no such theme is actually evoked in some of the incidents mentioned. Take, for example, the episode of Sarah’s being taken by Pharaoh against Abraham’s wishes. On closer inspection, it hardly seems to be presented in Genesis as a test of Abraham’s faith—or even as a hardship.
Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Now I know that you are a beautiful woman, and when the Egyptians see you they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they may kill me and keep you alive [for themselves]. Say instead that you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life will be spared on your account.”
When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was indeed very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s palace. He dealt generously with Abraham because of her, and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her and be gone.”
If there is any victim here, it seems to be Pharaoh, not Abraham. Moreover, this episode hardly presents Abraham in heroic posture. He tells Sarah to say she is his sister in order to save his own life; then, as a consequence, he ends up surrendering her to Pharaoh—without a word of protest. This could hardly be considered a test of faith.
But then why, a modern biblical scholar might ask, was such a story ever told? There is still no scholarly consensus on this issue, but one thing is clear: the narrative highlights the fact that, as a result of Pharaoh’s taking up with Sarah, Abraham became a rich man. All those sheep and oxen, donkeys, camels, and servants that Abraham ends up with—the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a hefty investment portfolio—were apparently one of the perks of being the Egyptian king’s brother-in-law.6 Surely this was not an insignificant detail. Nor does the Bible say a word about any emotional hardship suffered by either Sarah or Abraham—for all we know, Abraham chuckled all the way to the bank. So . . . why was this story told? To some scholars it seems more a way of accounting for Abraham’s great wealth than a divine test. After all, Abraham appears later on to be a wealthy man—at one point he is said to have had 318 retainers in his employ (Gen. 14:14), a detail no doubt reflecting his proverbial wealth. Indeed, mention of his wealth served to introduce the very next episode in Abraham’s life, his separation from his nephew Lot. As the Bible remarks in introducing that episode, “Now Abram was very wealthy in livestock, in silver, and in gold . . . so that the land could not support both of them living together” (Gen. 13:2, 6). Some scholars say that accounting for Abraham’s great riches may have been one reason for which the incident with Sarah and Pharaoh was told.
Lot and the Wicked Sodomites
The incident that follows Abraham’s separation from Lot likewise has a different look for modern biblicists. Abraham decides to settle in the mountains of Hebron, while Lot chooses to settle in Jordan valley, in the ill-starred region of Sodom and Gomorrah. These two cities, along with others near them, were destroyed under unknown circumstances sometime early in the biblical period itself. Ever afterward, they were mentioned as an old ruin, a place that was wiped out and never rebuilt. For modern scholars, therefore, the whole tale of Lot and the people of Sodom (Genesis 19) looks like an etiological narrative, that is, the recounting of some incident from the distant past that serves to explain the way things are “now,” at the time of the story’s composition, when Sodom was a ghost town. The story thus relates that Lot settled in Sodom only to find that his fellow inhabitants were altogether wicked—that they quite literally sought to sodomize some visiting angels. The angels then tell Lot to leave the city with his family members, since it is to be destroyed; Lot does so, escaping as fire and brimstone rain down onto Sodom. For modern scholars, this narrative would appear designed to explain not only why the region had been wiped out (God could not tolerate the inhabitants’ wickedness) but also why it had never been rebuilt and remained as an eyesore throughout biblical times (God intended it as a constant reminder about sinfulness and its consequences).
Indeed, the story’s etiological interests go beyond merely accounting for the ruins of Sodom. Apparently among those ruins was a rock formation that bore a striking resemblance to the shape of a woman. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, attests that he had visited the area and seen such a formation (Jewish Antiquities, 203). Modern scholars thus see the story of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26) as another etiological element: “Why does that rock look like a turning woman? Well, it all goes back to something that happened to Lot’s wife when she turned to get a last look at her hometown as they were escaping from Sodom.” Once again, a story from the past serves to explain what “we” biblical Israelites see in the present.28
When Lot escapes with his two daughters (leaving his pillarized wife behind), they trick him into getting drunk and having sexual relations with them. Nine months later they give birth to two sons, respectively the ancestors of Israel’s two neighbors the Ammonites and the Moabites. Modern scholars see this, too, as an etiological element—and a nasty swipe at these two nations. The story well accounts for the fact that the Ammonites and the Moabites speak a language similar to the Israelites’ and are related to them in other ways: their ancestor (Lot) and the Israelites’ forebear (Abraham) were from the same family. At the same time, the narrative describes these two neighbors of Israel as, quite literally, a bunch of bastards: both were engendered from an incestuous union of Lot with his own daughters. Indeed, the names of the two peoples are somewhat polemically explained in keeping with this tale of incest: Moab, eponym of the Moabites, is said to have been so named because of the phrase “From father” (me’ab in Hebrew), while the Ammonites are so called because of the phrase presumably spoken by Ammon’s mother after his birth, “My dad’s son” (ben ‘ammi).7
An Etiological Sacrifice
Like these other narratives, the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac seems to modern scholars to have had an etiological message for ancient Israelites. To understand it, one must be aware of a somewhat gruesome fact of life in the ancient Near East: apparently, various peoples in the region used to sacrifice their own children to their gods. Consider what the Moabite king Mesha did when it looked like he was about to lose a battle to Israel:
When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.
According to this account, King Mesha sacrificed his own son in order to influence the outcome of the battle (presumably, to spur the Moabite god, Chemosh, into action). And it apparently worked: “great wrath” struck the Israelite side and they had to retreat.
It was not just among Israel’s neighbors that child sacrifice was countenanced, but apparently within Israel itself. Why else would biblical law specifically forbid such things—and with such vehemence?
You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God; I am the Lord. . . . Say further to the people of Israel: Any of the people of Israel, or any of the aliens who reside in Israel, who give any of their offspring to Molech shall be put to death: the people of the land shall stone them to death. I myself will set My face against them and will cut them off from their people, because they have given of their offspring to Molech, defiling My sanctuary and profaning My name.
Do not inquire concerning their gods, saying “How did these nations worship their gods? I also want to do the same.” You must not do the same for the Lord your God, because every abhorrent thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods. They would even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire.
These and other texts have suggested to scholars that it was not just Israel’s neighbors who contemplated offering their young to their deity but Israelites as well; the apparent purpose of these laws is to check that impulse.8
If so, then a story about Israel’s distinguished ancestor Abraham, who showed himself willing to sacrifice his beloved son to God but, at the last moment, was told by God to offer a ram in his son’s stead—such a story would seem to have a clear etiological message: our God does not demand that we sacrifice our children to Him. The one occasion on which He seemed to do so turned out to be only a “test”; ever afterward, we have sacrificed animals, like the ram in this story, as a substitute for our children. Once again, a story about something that happened in the distant past explains present-day reality, in this case, why the Israelites at some point ceased acting like their neighbors and no longer made such drastic demonstration of their loyalty to their God.9
In short, what looked to ancient interpreters like a series of tests seems to modern scholars more like a collection of independent narratives from different periods and of different purposes. The tale of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt may have been designed more to account for Abraham’s fortune (and perhaps to celebrate a certain craftiness withal) than to praise his piety; the narratives of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the petrification of Lot’s wife, and his scandalous unions with his daughters—all these appear connected to various etiological themes. Even the near-sacrifice of Isaac seems etiological in origin: its original purpose was less to commemorate Abraham’s piety than to explain Israel’s curious abstention from the practice of child sacrifice. That notwithstanding, scholars rightly point out that, whatever its origins, the biblical story is introduced as a divine test and not as a precedent for the prohibition of human sacrifice. The story of the binding of Isaac in its biblical form is now all about Abraham’s willingness to carry out God’s command in extremis, as well as God’s unwillingness to let Abraham go through with it. In highlighting these two things, the biblical text and the postbiblical traditions are in rare agreement.