The Unexpected Lesson
of the Binding of Isaac

January 29, 2010
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

      We read the Five Books of Moses from "In the beginning" to the death of Moses, one portion for each Sabbath, completing the reading once each year. Yet, it never fails that the story of the binding of Isaac comes as a shock to our senses. It is an unspeakable horror, whether we empathize with Abraham, with Sarah, with Isaac, or even with God. The story comes when it is least expected, when God's promises to Abraham seem finally to be coming true, when all obstacles have seemingly been overcome and all rivals have been set aside. And the story raises intriguing problems.

      We are told at the outset that this is a "test" of Abraham. And, at the end, we are told that Abraham passed the test. God's promise to Abraham is repeated: to make his offspring numerous as the stars by night, multitudinous as the sands on the seashore. But there is the fact that God never again speaks to Abraham. We are told that Abraham returns to his servants, but there is no mention of Isaac returning with him. And there is no further dialogue between Abraham and Sarah, either. Sarah dies a few verses after the story ends and Abraham rises, as it says, "from beside his dead,"  to purchase a cave for burial and to find a wife for Isaac.

      The story becomes even more vexing when we do the math. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, at the time of the binding, Isaac was twenty-five years old. The Bible is less precise, leading some ancient rabbis to conjecture that Isaac was fourteen, while others guessed that Isaac was forty. There can be no doubt, however, that Isaac was no small child.

      Abraham instructs his servants to wait while he and the boy go up the mountain. But the word he uses for "the boy" is not yeled, the Hebrew for a child, but na'ar, the Hebrew word for a "youth," an "unmarried young man." And that leads to other nagging issues.

      The conversation between Abraham and Isaac as they climb the mountain together seems like a dialogue between a mature man and an naive child. In all innocence, Isaac says, "Father, here is all we need for a sacrifice, but no sheep." Abraham avoids any real explanation. He simply disguises his purpose from his son, as he says, "God will provide the sheep." But in the very next verse, Abraham binds Isaac and places him on the altar. Surely, there is a missing element here. Where is the reasoning offered by Abraham to Isaac for what he is doing? Why would a grown-up Isaac not question further or struggle to survive? Are we to assume that Isaac was resigned to his fate, though he himself had no commission from God to die and no rationale from his father to obey? Or is something even more mysterious going on in this story?

      We do not have the time for me to walk you through all the nuances of my theory but there is enough time for me to give you the broad outlines of what I believe happened on that mountain. The clues are scattered all around the story. Take, for example, the kind of wife chosen for Isaac. The faithful servant of Abraham sets up a test for Isaac's future wife. He asks God to send him a woman who will offer him water and also offer to water his camels. Rebecca answers the test perfectly, drawing water for the camels until they are finished drinking -- and that is no small matter! Camels drink prodigious amounts of water after a long journey. The test was obviously designed to find a woman who would be unutterably kind.

      There is also the fact that, from birth, Isaac stayed close to home, close to his mother. His brother was a hunter and a man of action. Isaac was a man "of the tent." This suggests that Isaac may have been weaker than his brother and I will go even further. Isaac was Sarah's first-born child and Sarah was far past the time for having children. Let me not beat about the bush. At age 30, a woman has a one in one thousand chance of giving birth to a baby with Down Syndrome or some other chromosomal disorder; by age 40, the chances are one in one hundred; and by age 45 the odds are one in thirty. To find a wife for Isaac, Abraham sent plenty of gold and silver as a dowry, and the servant purposely looked for a woman with a kind and patient disposition.

      There is more. Archaeology provides us no direct evidence of any common tradition for people to sacrifice their children in Abraham's time. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that some children born less than perfect were "allowed" to die, usually in infancy. In a time when infant morbidity rates were generally high, infants born with imperfections were the least likely to survive. Special infants who perished were often buried under the lintel of the doorway to the house to bring good fortune to the family.

      Suppose that Sarah, having waited all her life to bear a child, has finally given birth to a child with Down Syndrome, but she cannot bear to abandon her child. Abraham begs her to accept Ishmael as the obvious next leader for the Hebrews, but she resists. She keeps little Isaac at home and tends for him lovingly, doting over him in every way. But now she is nearing the end of her life. She has entered on her final illness and Abraham, who is responsible for the future of the Hebrews now believes that he has no choice. He must do now what Sarah would not let him do when Isaac was born. He is called to do what all the peoples around him did with such children, despite the fact that Isaac is now fourteen, or twenty-five, or even forty. So, it is destiny that leads Abraham up the mountain, the same destiny that is always expressed in the Bible as the will of God (and we note that the Hebrew word for the God who proclaims the test is literally, "the gods"!). It is with grim destiny in mind that Abraham builds the altar and prepares the wooden bed for fire.

      There is no need to explain anything to Isaac. Isaac is in a world of wonder, far from his normal home in the tent. He speaks like a child, thinks like a child, and obeys without protest whatever his father demands. He is effortlessly bound on the altar and Abraham raises the knife.

      But it is God (not "the gods" this time, but YHVH, the One God of Abraham) who calls to him through the angel. It is the One God who intervenes in this intense moment to teach a lesson that will resound throughout history. "Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him." It is the One God who tells Abraham and tells us that every life is precious, that Isaac must be spared no matter what his defects; in fact, that no human life is ever flawed without a purpose. For the One God, the message is always, "Choose life, that you and your children may live" (Deut. 30:19).

      And that is how I believe that Abraham passed the test. Or better, that is the test that Abraham was meant to pass to teach us all a new truth about being human. And let us say: Amen.