So now we
know what kind of sacrifices Abraham was going to make, how monumental this
would be to his life in every single way, and yet he still went through with
it. But, of course, Isaac’s life is spared at the last moment thanks to an
angel telling Abraham to stop. It’s a good thing that said angel did not get
stuck in traffic.
Of course
we come to the crucial question regarding this entire story: why? What’s the
point of it. We’re told by the angel that it was to “know that [Abraham] fears
God,” but that doesn’t really make sense, does it? This, if anything, raises a
more pressing question, which we’ve touched on before, but is still very
poignant: Is God omniscient?
Right, both
this story and Adam & Eve’s fall point to an answer that says, no, he’s not
omniscient. He had to ask where Adam and Eve were, and he had to test Abraham’s
faith. So, if we take this literally, it implies that God does not know all and
see all.
But we must
also take other things into consideration. First, God created the cosmos as
evidenced by Genesis Chapter 1. Moreover, this took considerable planning and
know-how, mostly because He knew what order the creation had to happen in.
(This isn’t Brahma fumbling through creation haphazardly.) So we know God is
intelligent and ordered, but we need to be able to prove that God is not
omniscient to proceed.
With
regards to Adam and Eve, we can either take this literally or we can look at
this as God as a parent (as we did when we looked at this chapter). Since God
is about the spoken word, he has given them a chance to tell the truth, an idea
he repeated with Cain. We also have to look at this in terms of simple
deduction. When you’re a parent and you have one kid, and the cookie jar is
broken, you know who did it. Adam and Eve don’t exactly have a lot of options
for who to blame, but they do immediately spread it to the serpent as well.
With
Abraham we’re a little more confused. If God knows what Abraham would do
because of omniscience (or even simple deduction) why go through with it? What’s
the point if God already knows what Abraham is going to do? Moreover, isn’t
this out of order? Shouldn’t God be testing Abraham’s faith prior to making a
covenant with him?
We already
know that there was an instance where God tested Abraham, though not quite to
this extent, and God found him worthy to receive the covenant, so this should
be completely redundant.
So what
gives?
I think we
can be reasonably assured that God can figure out what Abraham’s faith was. This
is not exactly rocket science. God has been able to watch Abraham for, well,
all of his life, so he’s got a good grasp on what Abraham is going to do at any
given time. So, again, what gives? Why go through this?
If the test
is not for God’s assurance, it must be for someone else’s. Isaac is a
possibility. He needs to see the level of devotion that his father has for God and
the covenant, that this truly means everything, not just to Abraham, but Isaac,
too. After all, Isaac will have to carry the covenant forward.
But he is
just a kid, and chances are that his attention was elsewhere instead of
pondering the life lessons God wanted to teach him. This just leaves Abraham.
So why is
important that Abraham go through this? First is the obvious, that he needed to
know his own level of faith. Many interpretations of the story point out this
as a definite part of the story, and I agree with it. Abraham needed to know
how much he trusted God, but this probably isn’t the main reason. Abraham and
God have enough history that this was always in the background. Abraham had
proven that he trusted God in numerous instances, this would just be a matter
of degrees, but it’s still largely redundant.
However,
there is something else that Abraham needed to learn, and that was what it was
like to be a king. God has promised him that he will father nations, that the
chosen people will come through his descendants. And while I dearly love Mel
Brooks as Louis, it really is not “Good to be the king.” The king must make the
hard call, choosing for the benefit of the entire population instead of just
what the king would like. The sacrifice of Isaac is about learning to make the
touch choice, that kings will make choices that make them unhappy, that some
choices have no happy ending. Abraham was fortunate this time around as God
stepped in to give Abraham the best possible outcome. Had he not, Abraham would
have had to live with the choice he had made, accepting all of the consequences
with it.
This is a
lesson of kings and command, to choose who lives and who dies. Abraham
experienced this on a small-scale when he negotiated the lives of Sodom and
Gomorrah, but now it’s been made personal, and it’s not a lesson he’ll forget
soon. He’ll also pass it down to his descendants so that they know how to
govern, as well.