Where Did Abraham When Did When He Was a Baby

Abraham in Genesis 22: Model or Monster?

28/07/2021

Abraham in Genesis 22 – Model or Monster? i

'God has told me to kill my son!' How would you respond if someone told you lot that? On a practical level you would probably seek immediate help for the speaker (and their son) to avert a disaster. On a theological level you would almost certainly call back that the speaker is wrong – God wouldn't inquire such an immoral thing!

How, then, exercise we read and utilize a passage in the Bible where information technology appears that God does just that? In Genesis 22:2 he says to Abraham '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 ane of the mountains that I shall show you.' Abraham's response is to obey without question, right up to the betoken where he stands, knife in hand over a leap Isaac, and God tells him to finish (22:10-12).

There are other passages in the Bible when people deport in ways that we notice immoral. The particular difficulty in this example is that God both commands (v.2) and commends (vv.12, xv-eighteen) the problematic action.[ 2] Moreover, elsewhere in the Bible Abraham'south action here is held up as a model of right activeness for the faithful believer (Hebrews 11:17-19; James ii:21-23).[ 3] How, then, should we read and use this difficult passage?

We need to beginning by immediately ruling out 1 way of reading the text. We should never read the text as a literal control to kill our children. This illustrates, in an extreme way, the danger of an overly literalistic reading of a passage: 'Skillful biblical grapheme X did Y, so I should also practise Y!' We must be more nuanced and careful in our estimation.[ 4]

In this short commodity I will not requite 'the answer', merely hopefully provide ways that volition assistance u.s.a. to read and use information technology as office of scripture. We start from the basic interpretative principle that nosotros need to brainstorm with the original meaning of the passage, including cultural and biblical context.[ 5]

Cultural Context

One element of this is understanding the cultural context of the fourth dimension. We recoil, rightly, from any proffer of killing a child, because information technology child corruption of the worst kind. However, in the cultures of the time child sacrifice was far from unknown. These were cultures where many children died as infants, and where famine or disease could lead to the death of an entire family. Moreover, ofttimes the family unit was more important than nosotros would recognise, with our strong focus on the private.

Imagine a state of affairs where your family unit faces death past famine. The only hope is to pray to the gods for help. To demonstrate your sincerity you cede to them the most precious thing that y'all have: one of your children.[ half-dozen] Thus you give up i child, then that your other children and family might accept a take chances of life.[ 7]

Therefore, Abraham would not have had the automatic repulsion that we would have. However, this does non hateful that the control was easy. Note the diction in 5erse 2: 'your son, your merely son, whom yous love, Isaac'. The four phrases build upwards the relationship and therefore the horrendously difficult nature of what Abraham is told to practise.

Biblical Context

This story is arguably the climax of the Abraham stories in Genesis 12-24. These stories kickoff with God's speech to Abraham which contains both the difficult command to leave his land, and the astonishing promise that he will receive descendants, state, and blessing for himself and others (Gen. 12:1-3). These promises form a thread that links all of the Abraham stories together.[ eight] The starting time of the fulfilment of these promises is the birth of a son, Isaac, to this old man and his barren wife (Gen. 21:1-7). Abraham has been told that information technology is through Isaac that the promises will come up (Gen. 18:19-21).

At present, at the finish of the stories, God tests Abraham (Gen. 22:1). Testing in the Bible is a plush and hard procedure which is ultimately for the testee's own skillful.[ ix] The test is whether he can give back to God the miracle child that God has given him, the child who carries and embodies all the promises that God has made. To put it some other way, in Genesis 12 God asked Abraham to surrender his past. Now in Genesis 22 God asks Abraham to give up his futurity, including the hope. Abraham'southward human relationship with God is tested to an extraordinary degree in holding together this seeming contradiction betwixt what Brueggemann describes as God's loftier hope and his dark command.[ x] This contradiction cannot be only resolved, but must be lived through as part of the life of faith.

We are not told what Abraham idea or felt well-nigh the command. This is normal in Quondam Testament narrative, where we learn about the characters by what they say and do. Abraham's actions clearly announce obedience.[ 11] Apart from this nosotros take a couple of short speeches from him. In verse v he tells the accompanying young men that '… we will return to you' suggesting that in some fashion he hopes that Isaac volition return. Then, in response to Isaac'south question well-nigh the lack of the lamb he simply answers that God will provide the lamb (v.eight). We should not read these speeches every bit a blasé balls that everything will exist fine, every bit this would diminish the difficulty of the exam. (Afterwards all, in 1 sense God has already provided the lamb – Abraham's son…) Rather, they are the outworking of his relationship.

At the climax of the story when God tells Abraham to end, he says: 'now I know that you fear God, since you have non withheld your son, your only son, from me.' (v.12) This is God's verdict on the examination set out in poetry two.[ 12] Abraham fears God. Fearing God in the Old Testament is not a negative matter. Instead it is positive: knowing and acknowledging that God is truly God; the ground for right action.[ 13] By not withholding his son, Abraham shows that he places God above everything else, even the promise that God has made, and his ain time to come through Isaac. He is willing to requite it all back to God, rather than grasp information technology as his. Abraham passes the test, as verses 15-18 make articulate.

One other indicate of biblical context is worth noting. The sacrifice is on Mount Moriah. The but other biblical mention of Moriah is ii Chronicles 3:1, where is it the site of the temple. The comparison is deliberate: the place where people run into with God and offer sacrifice to him equally role of their relationship, the place where God provides.[ 14] Moving on from this we can notation a later story where a son climbs a hill, only this time there is no voice from sky and the male parent does non terminate. The place at that place is not Moriah, but Calvary; another place of seeming horror which becomes the ultimate place where God provides for his people.[ xv]

Decision

How do nosotros read this passage well? In Moberly'southward words 'the reader … must be disposed to think about the story'due south own concerns, such as costly faithfulness to God or the nature of true worship. The more one attempts to remember with the text, the less i is likely to stay with or develop thoughts well-nigh delusion or child corruption.'[ 16] Every bit with all hard texts, we need to read them with a sensitive heart to the rest of scripture and the theological appointment of the community of faith.[ 17] In this way such difficult texts part as part of all inspired scripture in promoting correct conventionalities and right action for the believer (2 Tim. three:16-17).

---

one This championship is based on a chapter of a similar title in R.W.50. Moberly (2009) The Theology of the Book of Genesis. Cambridge: CUP, 179-199. Moberly'due south piece of work has deeply influenced my agreement. His longer 2000 book (The Bible, Theology and Faith. Cambridge: CUP) is, for me, the nearly detailed and useful treatment of this passage.

2 David Gunn & Dana Fewell provide an ingenious alternative reading of the passage where God wants to run into if Abraham will refuse and stand up upwardly for at to the lowest degree i member of his family (1993, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: OUP, ninety-100). However, God's commendation of Abraham'southward actions makes their reading unpersuasive.

3 Jewish and Islamic agreement of the story would echo this. (For Jewish understandings, see J.D. Levenson (1993) The Death and Resurrection of the Dear Son – The Transformation of Kid Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. New Haven: YUP, esp. chps 11, 12, 14. For Islamic understanding, see the Qur'an, Sura 37:99-112, cf.xvi:120-123.)

4 This is non but the pedantry of a biblical scholar. A newspaper story shows the horrific effect of this: (Broward Palm Beach New Times (May 2014). Bachelor at: https://world wide web.browardpalmbeach.com/news/bible-verse-being-investigated-every bit-possible-motivation-for-toddlers-declared-murder-6461324. Accessed 11 March 2021). The reference in the annotation to a sermon on Genesis 22 is a spooky warning to all preachers to consider how our sermons may be (mis-)heard.

5 There is non the space here to requite a full exegesis and estimation of the passage. For this, see Moberly and commentaries on Genesis.

6 This did non mean that the parent did not honey the kid – quite the contrary (the most precious affair…)

vii I am here non trying to justify or commend child sacrifice in whatsoever mode; rather simply to help us to understand why it was not condemned in these cultures.

8 One can likewise see them as a thread that binds the Pentateuch, and indeed the whole Bible together (run across e.g. Acts 3:35; Gal. three:8, fourteen).

9 See the paradigmatic Deuteronomy 8, and also James i:i-iv.

10 Due west. Brueggemann (1982) Genesis. Atlanta: John Knox Printing, 189.

11 Nosotros should notation that Abraham is not someone who is e'er unquestioningly obedient. In Genesis xviii:22-33 he debates with God over the futurity of Sodom and Gomorrah (see particularly 5.25!) 1 divergence hither is that he is arguing with God regarding the destiny of others, rather than himself and his family equally in Gen. 22.

12 The similarity between vv.1-2 and 11-12 indicates this.

13 See Proverbs one:vii, the key verse for the volume. Also Exodus 20:20 which links exam and fear, and many others (Gen. xx:eleven; Exod. 1:17 etc.)

14 Come across the narrator's link to the temple in v.14 of our passage.

15 Romans eight:32 'he who did non spare his own son' may be an allusion to Genesis 22.

xvi Moberly, 2009, 190-191. Thinking with the text would include an understanding of original context.

17 Moberly (2009, 195) notes that nowhere in Christian or Jewish estimation is at that place an account of believers using this text as a warrant for child abuse or killing.

Back

gonzalezhimag1974.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.belfastbiblecollege.com/abraham-in-genesis-22-model-or-monster

Share this post