The Offering 2 - Genesis 22:3-14

22:3-14 - We don’t know how long it took Abraham to figure everything out in his mind, and there is probably more to a sacrifice offering than just deciding to do it and then going there. The confusing thing is that verse 3 days that “Abraham rose up early in the morning” and left with Isaac to go make the sacrifice. I always assumed that this meant that Abraham rose “early the NEXT morning,” but there’s nothing in here that says that they left the next day, just that on the day that they did leave, it was early, implying a sense of purpose and commitment. So overall, we don’t know how long it took Abraham to come to terms within himself and his faith to reconcile the command to sacrifice his son Isaac and everything that he believed that went against that. They traveled three days to get to the spot on mount Moriah where Abraham had been commanded to perform the sacrifice. Abraham has the two servants that he brought with him wait “afar off” from the mount with the donkey that had carried all their stuff. This can be seen as similar to when Jesus had Peter, James, and John wait “afar off” from him in the garden of Gethsemane as he performed the atonement. The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com says, “Isaac must go alone with his father. No servant can save him now. His Father is his only confidant, but his Father is the one who is requiring the sacrifice. So really, Isaac was alone. Very similar to Jesus being alone during the atonement. If they left the donkey there, how did they get all the stuff they needed for the sacrifice up to the mount? They needed wood for the fire “and laid it upon Isaac his son.” The article says, “Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice is symbolic of the Savior carrying his cross to Golgotha.” Abraham carried the fire and the knife and they walked to the place together. It’s at this point, once they reach the place that Isaac says, “Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” It’s important to point out here that Isaac is at least a teenage boy, with some scholars speculating that he might have been in his 30’s when all this happened. Let’s remember that Abraham is a very old man, and Isaac is a strong young man, so if Isaac didn’t want to be sacrificed, it would have been too easy for him to physically decline his father’s offer. After building an altar, Abraham laid the wood down “and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.” I had always imagined that Isaac was a small child when all this happened, but now I try to picture a really old man tying up a strong, younger man, like the image is almost laughable to think about. All this is to say that Isaac trusted his father, and was going to allow himself to be sacrificed. Isaac’s voluntary sacrifice is just like Jesus’ voluntary sacrifice. Imagining Abraham tying up Isaac is just as disconnected as seeing the God of the universe being murdered, it doesn’t make any sense when you consider that either of them could have stopped the process at any time, but chose not to, meaning that they consented to the suffering and sacrifice. It appears that this lesson isn’t just to teach Abraham something but probably Isaac as well. Looking at this whole situation 4,000 years after the fact, and deeply immersed in Christian dogma, it’s difficult for us to understand exactly what the gospel was like at the time of Abraham. Abraham was one of the very small number who didn’t believe in idols, just considering that this was the low bar standard set, it’s important to consider that at that point, most of the truth about the plan of salvation had been lost. Maybe the Lord had been teaching Abraham about it and at this point, he needed it to hit a little bit closer to home. At any rate, as Abraham “stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son,” an angel called out to him telling him to spare his son and that “now I know that thou fearest God,” and there was “a ram caught in a thicket by his horns” and Abraham sacrificed the ram instead.