On the Binding and (Interrupted) Sacrifice of Isaac

I have heard many say that the God who in Genesis commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac is thereby revealed to be a cruel God.

Reading the passage today, I found it to be not cruel at all but overflowing with compassion. Here is the passage in my translation:

It happened after these things that God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham.” He said, “Here I am.” He said “Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and bring him up there as an offering upon one of the mountains that I will tell you.” Abraham awoke early in the morning; he saddled his donkey; he took his two young men with him and his son Isaac; he split the wood for the offering; he arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham raised his eyes; he saw the place from afar. Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there and worship and return to you.” Abraham took the wood for the offering; he placed it upon Isaac his son; he took in his hand the fire and the knife; the two of them went together. Isaac said to Abraham his father, “Father. . . .” He said “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Here is the fire and the wood, and where is the lamb for the offering?” Abraham said, “God will see for himself to the lamb for the offering, my son.” The two of them went together. They came to the place that God had said to him. Abraham built there the altar; he arranged the wood; he bound Isaac his son; he placed him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham reached out his hand; he took the knife to slaughter his son. An angel of Hashem called out to him from the heaven. He said, “Abraham, Abraham.” He said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not reach out your hand toward the boy and do not do anything to him, because now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me. Abraham raised his eyes, he saw, and here was a ram, behind, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went; he took the ram; he offered it as an offering instead of his son. Abraham called the name of that place “Hashem will see,” as is said today, on the mountain Hashem is seen [alt.: on the mountain of Hashem it is seen]. An angel called to Abraham a second time from the heaven; he said, “By myself I swear, the speech of Hashem, that because you have done this thing and not withheld your son, your only one, that I will surely bless you and greatly increase your seed like the stars of heaven and like the sand that is on the shore of the sea, and your seed will possess the gate of his enemy. And all the nations of the earth will bless themselves by your seed because you listened to my voice. Abraham returned to his young men; they arose; they went together to Beersheva. Abraham stayed in Beersheva.

                                                                      —Genesis 22:1–19

How can it be compassionate for God to demand that Abraham sacrifice his son, even if God didn’t mean to let Abraham go through with it? Here are the forms of compassion I have observed in the story:

1. According to the great Rav Kook and other scholars (and to my own grandfather), the story was told in order to give divine authority for abolishing the human sacrifice common, perhaps widespread, among the pre-Abrahamic tribes. Why in those tribes were children sacrificed to gods like Moloch and Ba’al? It was a way of propitiating the god: sacrificing the thing most precious would prove the tribesmen to be obedient, faithful, worthy of the god’s care. In our story, God is making it clear that in this matter he takes the will for the deed, and that the deed is not to be enacted. In other words, one can be entirely devoted to God without having actually to slaughter one’s child to prove it. In fact, God doesn’t want that slaughter. The willingness of the founder of the faith was enough. Henceforth any effort to please or appease God by the sacrifice of a child would be forbidden (as it is explicitly in Leviticus 18:21 and 20:3 and in Deuteronomy 12: 31and 18:10). God wants the human will to serve him, but not in the form of human cruelty. Hence the story, so far from depicting God as cruel to Abraham, shows him to be compassionate to all mankind through Abraham’s example.

2.  According to Jewish tradition, the two terms for God in the Torah indicate two contrasting qualities of the divine: The word Elokim denotes God as the source of creation and of justice; the four-letter name of God, the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), denotes God as the source of compassion and forgiveness. (In the passage quoted, I follow the Artscroll editions in translating Elokim as “God” and YHWH as “Hashem” [literally, “the Name,” the ineffable name of God remaining unspoken since the destruction of the ancient Temple at Jerusalem, before which it was spoken only by the High Priest once a year]. Of course these two names refer to two aspects of the one God, never to two divine persons. That is the profound significance of the daily proclamation of observant Jews that Hashem and Elokim are one.

Given this understanding of the Torah’s use of the names of God, it is significant that it is by the name Elokim that God tests Abraham by commanding him to offer up his son, and it is by the name YHWH that God, through his angel, prevents the offering and rewards Abraham. The shift in terms indicates a shift in meaning: what began as a test, once it was clear that Abraham had passed it, became a vehicle of compassion and the promise of future glory. And this shift suggests that the essential purpose of the story is revealed not in the command to sacrifice but in the demonstration of the will to sacrifice and the immediate prevention of the sacrifice. In other words, the compassion of God lies precisely in the separation of the will to do the deed from the doing of it. From then on, God was to be served by all mankind not by the sacrificing of children to a devouring deity but by the offering of the will attended by the valuing of every human life as precious.

3. In addition to the compassion of the story as a whole, there are many details which in themselves imply the value of compassion.

a) The form of the story compels us to experience the imminent sacrifice as horrific and anguishing. That Isaac is Abraham’s “only,” meaning not literally his only son (there is Ishmael, after all), but his only son to inherit his material and spiritual legacy, and therefore the most precious of beings to him, compels us to experience the anguish of the father at having to make this sacrifice. The wood for the sacrifice is placed on the shoulders of Isaac, so that he is carrying the means of his own immolation, stressing again the tragic horror of the imminent sacrifice of a beloved innocent. Isaac poignantly asks “where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” evoking our own compassion for the innocent and unsuspecting boy.

b) There are also acts of compassion within the story itself. Instead of torturing the boy by telling him what he plans to do, Abraham offers him an explanation meant to remove the fear: “God will see to the lamb.” Later Abraham’s compassionate words, which may at first appear to be false, come true. In this way God compassionately prevents the virtuous Abraham from having lied to his innocent son. Then God sends an angel to prevent the sacrifice. He says to Abraham, “I know you are God-fearing now” and does not need or want him to slaughter his son to prove it. This incarnates the principle, articulated too by St. Thomas Aquinas, that even in his sacramental acts, man is united to God by his will rather than by the mere acts themselves. What God values here is Abraham’s will to obey, not the savor of a child burning in the fire. God has arranged for a more appropriate sacrificial victim to be discovered, caught by his horns in a thicket. By the presence of the ram God shows compassion in making the sacrificial animal serve also (as it did later in the Temple services) as food for man and in seeing to it that Abraham still fulfills his duty to make an offering despite the angel’s intervention. After the ram is sacrificed in place of Isaac, the angel appears a second time to say that Abraham’s willingness to offer his son—even though the slaughtering of his son was not carried out—merits divine reward: Abraham’s offspring will be multitudes, and they will conquer their enemies. This is as great a worldly reward as ancient tribes could imagine: fruitful multiplication of offspring and triumph in conflict with other tribes. Hence, Abraham is rewarded for his obedience not only with the life of his son but with everything the surrounding tribesmen sought to gain from their false gods through their human sacrifices.

4. Finally, the passage adds one more dramatic act of compassion for the whole world: Because Abraham has willed to obey God in this extreme way, all the nations of the world will be blessed by the very existence of the people who descend from Abraham, because it is they who will tell and retell this very story to all. The blessing lies in the bearing—to all men and through all time—of the story’s lesson about the true nature of God and of man’s right relation to him and to his fellow man. Henceforth, from the moment of knowing the story of Abraham’s interrupted offering of Isaac, man is to think of God as loving and compassionate, not voracious and merciless, of his own proper relation to God as gratitude and obedience rather than barter and compulsion, and of every human life as precious to God and man alike.