NOTES for Gen 22:1-24
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.