So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. Genesis 22:6There are so many verses that are good and a lot of events that take place in Genesis chapters 18-21 that I am only going to summarize for the sake of space. Read these chapters on your own and you will see that Abram’s name is changed to Abraham to signify the new covenant God made with him. Sarai’s name is also changed to Sarah. Isaac is born to them when Abraham is 100 years old and Sarah is 90. Ishmael was 13 when he was circumcised the year before Isaac’s birth so this means Ishmael is about 14 years older than Isaac.
We also see the first instance of Abraham lying about Sarah being his wife and saying she is his sister. He justifies it we see because she actually is his half sister. And, now we come to one of the most famous stories in the Bible. Tradition tells us that Mount Moriah is where the temple would one day stand in Jerusalem and where the Dome of the Rock currently stands, which is a Muslim mosque. This is also where Abraham earlier paid a tithe to Melchizedek. I think it is interesting here because since Abraham is from Ur of the Chaldees, his background was from a Babylonian culture that did practice human sacrifice. I think one part of the test is to see if Abraham recognizes the God of Israel as being different. I believe he passed the test of obedience but failed this part of the test for not recognizing that the Judaeo-Christian God is different and does not require human sacrifice. I know there is one other story of human sacrifice in the Bible but it is a very unusual circumstance. God is really the only one that had to sacrifice his actual son for the remission of sins. The parallels between Isaac and Christ are also striking. Isaac was old enough to carry the wood so he was old enough to stop his elderly father or get away from him. He carried the wood voluntarily and allowed himself to be bound to the wood. The knife was to be used to pierce Isaac’s flesh but God spared Abraham this part of the ordeal. This is a picture of what Christ did for us on the cross.
You have given uis a nice retelling of the story, but do you thing that God might be trying to teach something to Abraham? Abraham was asked to sacrifice his firstborn son. Maybe God was trying to get him to understand the feelings that he had in offering his firstborn son (Jesus Christ) as a sacrifice to save mankind....This lesson taught Abraham about the eternal consequences of that sacrifice, and God's love for man.
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