On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
On the third day of the journey to Moriah, Abraham looks up. The place is still far off — the mountain where God has told him to offer his son. Commentators read this one verse two ways: it shows how long the trial lasted, and it quietly points to resurrection.
Three days of testing
Three days of walking gave Abraham every chance to change his mind. That is why the detail matters.
For three days he travels on his way. That gave him time to take in everything God had asked him to do. For three days this terrible trial was before his soul. During these days he had to face the agony of offering up his son. He did not act in a rush, on a passing impulse. He chose it after facing everything it cost him. His love for his son, what Isaac felt, Isaac's love for his father, God's promise that "through Isaac shall your offspring be named" — he faced it all, and faith won.
He also carried the weight alone, unable to explain it to anyone travelling with him.
What must that three-day journey have been for Abraham! He alone knew the secret, and he could tell no one. And what it would cost him was terrible. But he had support in that trial, and we learn what it was. He knew God as the God who gives life to the dead.
What he saw when the place came into view
The strain of the road did not show itself at the moment of arrival. One writer notes the steadiness of Abraham's words to the young men once the mountain was in sight.
The trial of those three days was deep and painful. Yet Abraham knew that God was working out His own great plan of blessing. If God was about to take his beloved Isaac from him in this life, God would give him back in resurrection. Abraham made the journey with the God of resurrection beside him. He counted on God being able to raise Isaac from the dead. So when he saw the place on the third day, he did not tremble. He had the calm certainty of faith.
God's choice of place
He did not pick a convenient hill. He walked until God's chosen spot came into sight. One writer sees a pattern here for anyone who serves God.
Abraham was not left to choose the place. The sacrifice had to be on one of the mountains God would show him. It must always be like this. In the service of the Lord, He must order everything, and it must fit His will. Abraham goes to the place of which God had told him. He was not like the prophet Jonah, who went west when God told him to go east.
The third day and resurrection
Commentators differ on how far the third day in Scripture points to resurrection. One writer weighs the evidence and stops short of calling it proof.
About the third day in Scripture: it often points to resurrection, though Scripture does not teach this plainly. Yet to the spiritual mind little doubt can remain that the third day would be the day of Christ's rising from the dead. Abraham saw the place of sacrifice far off on the third day. That makes it likely Isaac was untied from the altar on the third day too. But this is not clear enough to count as proof. The prophet Hosea also marks the third day with God's own stamp of resurrection: "After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live before Him."
That reading changes what the mountain meant to Abraham afterwards.
On the third day Abraham saw the chosen spot. This mattered. Later he would look back on it not so much as the place of sacrifice, but as the place where, in picture, he received Isaac back from the dead. It was the place of resurrection.
The future of that hill
The spot Abraham glimpsed on the horizon did not stay obscure.
About four centuries after Moses, the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite stood on Moriah. Years later Solomon built his temple there. So Moriah became the place where the Jewish people offered their sacrifices. All these sacrifices pointed forward to one event. It took place "outside the gate," because people rejected the Lord Jesus.
What this asks of the reader
One writer turns this to our own losses, when God asks for what we love most.
Isaac is raised up as a picture of this. So faith can let the death sentence fall on the dearest things we have. God may come and ask for what is dearer to us than life itself. Faith can count on the God of resurrection. He who takes away gives back every blessing He removes for a time — and gives it back better than we could have kept it. There on Mount Moriah, with his only son on the altar, what had Abraham left? The living God!
Summary
- Three days — the cost. The distance gave Abraham time to turn back. He obeyed by choice, not on a wave of feeling.
- Third day — the confidence. He travelled with the God who raises the dead, so the sight of the mountain brought calm rather than panic.
- The place — God's choice. God did not name the mountain in advance. He ordered the service from start to finish.
- The figure — resurrection. Abraham remembered Moriah less as the place he gave Isaac up, more as the place he received him back. The "third day" carries that mark elsewhere in Scripture.
- The mountain — the future. That distant hill became the temple site. The sacrifices there pointed to the One who suffered outside the gate.