NOTES for Isa 45:11-17; Gen 22:1-18

Our spiritual weakness is such that even when we are at the center of God's saving action, we grumble because the salvation being given is not what we expected. This is characteristic of people of every age; our contemporaries no less than the Jews of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor were the Jews of the second half of the sixth century before Christ, to whom the Lord speaks through the prophet Isaiah, an exception in this respect. Rebuking those who refuse to see the Creator's intervention in the events taking place, the Lord speaks of His omnipotence and His authority over everything in this world. Distrustful people, focused on immediate earthly problems, are called to believe in this authority and power of the Creator and to rely on it. Only in this way can Israel enter the salvation that God is bringing about.

God says that it was He who desired to accomplish the deliverance of the captive Jews through King Cyrus, who, without suspecting it himself, became a prototype of the Anointed One of God who carries out the work of salvation on earth. Therefore no one can give God instructions in the work of His hands, in how Israel's salvation must be accomplished. To those who trustingly follow the Creator's will, the Lord promises eternal salvation - that is, something that far surpasses our narrow earthly notions.

In addition, today's reading is important because in it, almost for the first time in history, a new and exceptionally important name of God is revealed to us: the hidden God, the Savior.

"I created the earth and made man upon it; I - My hands stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host" (Isa 45:11-17). These words, with which the Lord addresses us today through the appointed reading, take one's breath away and leave one speechless in holy awe. "When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You remember him, and the son of man that You visit him?" (Ps 8:4-5).

We are used to these words; we know them well, and our perception of them has grown dull. Yet they are truly, deeply awe-inspiring. And falling on our faces, having prayed this psalm through until these words are fully received into our heart, let us imagine that the Lord suddenly says to me: I have chosen you. I do not merely visit you when you feel My light breath, quiet and barely noticeable, which only passes by and makes a skeptical mind wonder whether God has spoken with me. No. I will enter your flesh in all fullness. As a weight that you will feel very soon.

What will happen to our awe when it has reached its limit? It seems we have reached the limit of reverence and speechlessness, but this is still not the limit. Yet only the Mother of God could bear such a tension higher than the highest tension. Let us remember Averintsev's poem "The Annunciation." "But who can endure, asked the prophet, the burning of fire? Who can endure the heat of concentration? The innocent one, said the prophet. Yet even innocence itself climbs this steep height with effort. Attention to what flesh cannot attain is for the flesh a likeness of death. Thought is nailed fast, and the earthly mind is crucified; and this is the cross of attention. All life is enclosed in a single point as in a burning spark; everything is gathered in the heart, and life has ebbed back to it. From whitened fingers, from the whole bodily frame, life has departed and passed into prayer."

"Do not fear, worm Jacob," the Lord says to us today. A worm... dust. Yet You visit. And once You came forever to the Virgin. And because she was not afraid, to us.

We strive toward God with an irresistible force. And it seems to us that we are achieving something along this path. We understand something; something comes to us; we grow close to our brothers and sisters and to our spiritual father. And it seems to us that this is what is purest and best in me and in my life, that this is my fortress and my stronghold. I know dozens of prayers by heart; my favorite prayer beads are always with me; no one can take this away from me. And we set all this against the dark, raging world, seeing in it a bright and warm refuge. If this is so, we must be prepared for the Lord one day to ask us to give up all of it. For He will understand that our “spiritual life” has become more important to us than He Himself. And if we fail to understand this trial correctly, our end may be very sorrowful. Nothing on earth—not even the people closest to us, not even the one person who was the sole witness to your confessions before God—can be dearer than God Himself. This thought frightens us, but only because our faith is small.

The entire first half of Genesis, apart from the Prologue comprising its first eleven chapters, is devoted to describing how Abraham gradually, step by step, comes to know the God who called him to follow Him to Palestine, knowing Him ever better. The sacrifice of Isaac is the final and dramatic step in this encounter.

Why, one might ask, would God test a person with something he will never have to do? God does not need human sacrifices; they are an abomination to Him, as the Bible says repeatedly. Of course, the Bible does not always clearly distinguish God’s will from what He permits. Sometimes what He permits is regarded as God’s own intention and attributed directly to Him. Yet even this approach cannot be considered completely mistaken: if God does not decisively prevent something, then He has some plan connected with what is happening.

In any case, one thing is clear: Abraham withstands the trial, and God confirms this. What, then, is the meaning of the trial? Could Abraham have thought that his God would demand a human sacrifice from him? Perhaps he could. God had earlier called Himself by the name El Shaddai, “God of power,” and ancient pagans tended to seek gods with such names in the lower world rather than the upper, in the kingdom of the dead beneath the earth rather than in heaven.

Whatever the case, they placed the source of the power implied by the name God revealed to Abraham not in heaven, but in the lower world. A ruler of the lower world, the world of shades and the kingdom of the dead, might be expected to demand a human sacrifice. But how could Abraham’s God require him to sacrifice his son? Had He not said earlier that all the promises He had given would be connected precisely with this son, born into the world by a miracle?

What, then, could the demand to sacrifice him mean? Had everything been a deception from the beginning? But the promised son really had been born, at a time when such a birth was already entirely beyond expectation! This was a true trial, a trial by absurdity that could be endured only by relying on complete trust in God in a situation where reason refuses to comprehend the horror happening to a person.

Abraham withstands this trial: he hopes to the end. And in the end the situation is miraculously resolved, for God truly does not need human sacrifices. He needs our trust. Sometimes in defiance of what seems obvious.

The prophets, and not only they, often proclaimed God's absolute sovereignty in the world He created—not only as Creator, but also as Ruler. It might seem self-evident. In practice, however, things are not so simple. Fallen humanity is inclined to forget God's sovereignty. Even members of those primitive tribes in which the memory of the One is still preserved usually prefer to turn to other spirits and other powers, although they know that these are beneath the One and not as powerful as He is. And the familiar phrase ‘Well, now all we can do is pray’, usually uttered after everything else has already been tried, shows that we are not so very different from primitive people either. Only a minority know that it is better to begin with prayer.

Yet this is precisely a diminution of God's sovereignty. We are ready to turn to anyone but God, hoping that something can be done in the world without His direct permission and without His participation. We rely on other spirits, other powers, other people—in short, on anything at all except God Himself. And we forget that without God's direct participation, we can do only evil. Of course, God knows about evil too. But He does not participate directly in it.

Evil is always a concession God makes to a human will, or some other will, that opposes Him—a concession made out of respect for the free will of the beings He Himself has created. But nothing other than evil can be done in this way. And yet, again and again, we try to arrange our lives somehow so that God will not look in on them, or at least will do so less often. We often regard His appearance in our lives as a visit from a hostile inspector from whom, we are certain, nothing good can be expected.

What is this? A consequence, if not of recognizing our sinfulness, then at least of sensing it? Probably so. But not only that. There is also distrust of God's love. Of course, absolute power without equally absolute love is an infinitely terrifying thing. Yet in God, fullness of power and fullness of love complement one another. We fallen human beings, however, see the power but do not see the love. That is understandable: the evil in which the world lies exists to a large extent precisely as power without love.

Power is familiar and comprehensible to us, whereas love fares less well in the fallen world. We cannot seem to imagine that the two can go together. Only complete trust in God, a willingness to accept Him as He reveals Himself to us, can change this situation. Then we will understand that God's absolute sovereignty is not a nightmare to be avoided at all costs, but the foundation of God's Kingdom, towards which we should strive with all our strength.

The Persian king Cyrus, having conquered Babylon, soon allows the captive Jews to return to their homeland, to Palestine. Thus ends one of the most important periods of sacred history, the Babylonian captivity. But behind historical upheavals the prophet sees the power at work in history of the true King of the universe, the Lord, the God of Israel. He Himself leads His people toward salvation, toward divine life. To achieve this final goal, He permits catastrophes and calamities, and for the same purpose He later heals, forgives, and returns the people from captivity.

Seeing the presence and action of evil forces in our world and in our history, we, following the prophet's example, must realize that the Master of history is God, that authority over time and the world belongs to Him, and that, as we pass through every trial, we are moving toward the goal He has appointed, a goal that both the prophet and we ourselves can hardly imagine or describe.

Today's reading is rather unusual in both meaning and content. It begins quite unexpectedly: the prophet calls Cyrus the Great, ruler of the Persian Empire, God's anointed (v. 1). Cyrus, of course, played a crucial role in the historical destiny of the Jewish people: his victory over Babylonia opened the way for the exiles to return to the land of their fathers, and it was Cyrus's decree that began the repatriation of the Babylonian Jews to Judea. It is not surprising that Isaiah regards the Persian king's victory as a providential event, seeing the chief significance of the military and political changes then taking place in the Near East in the opportunity they gave the Jews to return and rebuild the city and the Temple (vv. 2–10).

At first glance, such an approach to great historical events may seem to narrow the perspective somewhat. Yet the prophet immediately broadens it to universal dimensions, for in the very next prophecy (vv. 11–25) the perspective becomes messianic. Isaiah understands perfectly well that the Jews' return to the land of their fathers is not an end in itself, and that even the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple cannot yet be regarded as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. They will be fulfilled when the Messiah promised by God and foretold by the prophets comes. From that perspective, every historical event, however great, truly becomes only a prelude to the one central reality for whose sake the whole of world history exists.

Cyrus undoubtedly had a very important role to play in this, initiating processes that began a new stage in the history of God's people. He himself, of course, knew nothing of this; yet he apparently understood the essential point: if a people had managed for several decades to preserve its faith—despite being deprived not only of its land but also of its altars—then that people deserved respect and therefore deserved to have both restored to it.

Understood in this way, Cyrus's decision was both reasonable and just, and became part of God's plan. The prophet therefore has every reason to call him an anointed one, a man of God. Cyrus did not belong to God's people and probably knew little about the God of Israel, yet he fulfilled His will.

The king has reached the height of greatness and power; the army of his empire is conquering one state after another. He imagines himself the centre of the universe and the author of his own victories, while prophetic words have already been spoken declaring that everything Cyrus received was allowed by the Lord only so that he might play a role in the historical destiny of a people scarcely known to him. Cyrus does not suspect that, by freeing captives from slavery, he gives both his own country and the countries he seeks to conquer an opportunity to hear about the God who speaks of him through a prophet unknown to him. Centuries will pass, the empire Cyrus is creating will suffer defeat after defeat, and among the many deeds of Persian rulers, the most enduring will be those performed for the sake of a weak group of people who follow the Lord.

The true meaning of history often escapes the attention of contemporaries, while history itself unfolds unnoticed. Yet what was not visible often proves more genuine and enduring than what was before everyone's eyes and on everyone's lips.

The event we call the sacrifice of Isaac is called the Akedah in Hebrew. The word literally means "binding" - and indeed, the sacrifice itself never took place; it only came to the binding of Isaac and his being placed on the altar. God stopped Abraham - and no killing took place. Killing is exactly the word: today hardly anyone would have doubts about God's attitude toward human sacrifice; the Bible speaks about this completely unambiguously.

So what happened to Abraham then? Traditionally, what happened is interpreted as a kind of test of Abraham - of his faithfulness to God, his trust in Him, his readiness to do everything that God might require. All of this would be true if not for one very important point: why would God need to test Abraham's readiness to commit what in God's eyes is a double sin - apostasy and murder? Apostasy, because in those times human sacrifices were offered only to underground gods, gods of the lower world, lords of the realm of shadows; and murder for an entirely understandable reason - God does not need human sacrifices by definition, so from His point of view this is precisely murder and nothing else. What, then, are we to do with the voice Abraham heard? If it was not God, then who was it? And where was God, if it was not His voice?

In the biblical story of the Akedah God is not named by His personal name; He is simply God there - and the word used in the text to designate God was not used in Abraham's time. We clearly have before us a retold story, retold, judging by the features of the text, by someone from a priestly milieu. In that milieu (and generally in pre-exilic times), believing Yahwists did not distinguish between God's will and His permission as we distinguish them today - at least on the level of terminology. If God allowed Abraham to hear a voice, then the voice was from Him.

What, then, could Abraham himself have thought? He knew that his God was El Shaddai, God of power, as He Himself named Himself during the second of Abraham's theophanies described in the Book of Genesis. The ancients were more inclined to seek the source of power in the lower world, under the earth, than in the upper world, in heaven. What if Abraham's God was lord of the lower world? Then He could demand a human sacrifice... but then what about the promises connected with Isaac? What about the alliance-covenant made with God?

A trial by absurdity is the most terrible kind. Because absurdity paralyzes the soul - and a paralyzed soul is far more terrible than a paralyzed body. Yet Abraham still preserves trust in his God. To Isaac's question about the lamb he answers: God will provide Himself the lamb. And God really does provide it, freeing Abraham's soul from the power of the force He had permitted to take hold of it.

He praises Abraham - for faithfulness. For not going back, for not retreating. Abraham, even while under the power of a dark force permitted by God, understands that there is no way back for him. Back there, behind him, there is no salvation from the evil absurdity in which he has found himself. To be saved, he must go only forward, toward God. Abraham goes forward - and truly meets God, who accepts him, frees him from the power of darkness, and praises him for his faithfulness.

Having read the preceding chapters of Genesis, we cannot doubt that Abraham loves his son. In real life, a late and only child draws such a boundless sea of parental love that he often turns into a selfish monster. And nevertheless today we read about how a father takes his only son, leads him up a mountain, and prepares to offer him as a sacrifice. The whole horror is that there is no sense in any of these actions. Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans, famous for its monstrous rituals of human sacrifice. He left at the call of God, who is One and Holy and who promised to make a great nation from Abraham. Without complaint and for a very long time, he waited for the promise to be fulfilled, and at last a son was born to him. It would seem there was nothing more to desire; everything had turned out right. And at the very moment when the boy had grown up, when all the fears of losing a small and weak child were behind him, that same Holy and Merciful God demands that Isaac be offered as a sacrifice. To us this seems like senseless cruelty, but Abraham is righteous by faith. His faith is beyond calculation, and in this he is for us an unattainable example of holiness, that is, of being given over to God. Our reasoning and our confidence that certain words of God are meaningless become grounds for refusal. For Abraham there is no such possibility. He obeys God without question, and in this lies his great strength. That is exactly why a great nation came from him, the nation that gave the Savior to the world. For the will of God and its fulfillment are higher than our ideas about what God may ask of us.