Genesis 22:2: A country named, a mountain withheld, and the sources forty-seven kilometres apart
Read it →Commentary on Genesis 22:2
Genesis 22 opens with God asking Abraham to give up Isaac, the son through whom every promise was to come. Each word of the command is chosen with care. Commentators read the scene as the first shadow of a far greater sacrifice.
A test, not an enticement
The demand is severe, but its purpose is not cruelty. One writer weighs the trial, rules out any thought of God luring a man into evil, and tells us whom God tests most:
It was the greatest trial to which God had ever put the heart of a saint. It was not a temptation to evil, any more than God Himself is tempted by evil. On the contrary, God had His own good in view. He would make His friend the witness of it, while testing his confidence in Himself and in His word to the very limit. … God could not lie; but He can and does test, and He tests most those He loves best.
Every word aimed at the heart
The command asked more than acceptance. Naming Isaac struck at two things at once — a father's affection, and everything God had promised through that boy:
Abraham had to do more than accept God's will. He had to act against himself. He had to sacrifice himself, so to speak, for the sacrifice of his son was nothing less than that... "Your son" — this word kindled in Abraham the tenderest of feelings; and he had to sacrifice that son! More than that, this name reminded him of God's promises. Those promises were to be fulfilled in this son, for God had plainly told him, "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named."
Notice, too, that God does not soften the blow, and He does not let Abraham pick the spot:
Then consider how God stresses, rather than softens, everything that would make the demand still more terrible to natural feeling: "your son, your only son, whom you love." Such small details show God's knowledge and His interest. Nor is anything left to Abraham's choice in the matter of place. The sacrifice was to be on one of the mountains that God would tell him of. So must it always be. In the service of the Lord, He Himself must order everything, in line with His will.
"Your only son"
The Hebrew word behind "only son" means more than a number. The New Testament title for Christ answers to it:
This is a name of special affection for the Lord Jesus in His eternal Sonship, as He existed before He came into the world. He is called the only begotten Son, the only begotten of the Father. John 1:14, 18; John 3:16, 18. It is used here as the equivalent of a Hebrew word (yachid) which means 'only one,' and so 'darling,' Gen. 22:2; Ps. 22:20; 35:17.
Where love is first named
Love enters the Bible's vocabulary in this verse, and it enters attached to a sacrifice:
The Bible's very first mention of love sets before us the supreme sacrifice that the Father made in giving His Son: "Take your son, your only son … whom you love … and offer him … as a burnt offering." The love of the Father for His Son comes first. As a picture, the love of Christ for His Church is the second mention of love in the Scriptures (Genesis 24:67).
The first offering of its kind
Burnt offerings were not new. Asking one of a human life was:
We remember that Abel offered an offering from the firstborn of his flock. Noah, when he came out of the ark, took some of every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings to the LORD. But this was the first occasion that pointed so solemnly to a human sacrifice. That offering surely foretold the sacrificial death of our Lord, the only begotten Son of the Father.
What Abraham was asked to do, God Himself did — and the result reaches us:
Abraham's love for Isaac is only a very faint picture of the infinite love of the Father for the Son. Yet God was willing not to spare His own Son, but to deliver Him up for us all (Rom. 8:32)... In love, God gave His only Son, so that we might be accepted in all the value of that wonderful burnt offering. That offering glorified God and brought us before Him in all the acceptability of what the Son is and what He has done.
The land of Moriah
The exact mountain is not named here. Later history ties Moriah to Israel's sacrifices, and past them to the cross:
Four centuries or so after Moses, the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite stood on Moriah. Years after that Solomon built his temple there, and so it became the place for Jewish sacrifices. That to which all these sacrifices pointed took place "outside the gate," for the Lord Jesus was the rejected One.
Summary
- Tested — the command tried Abraham's confidence in God. It was never an enticement to evil; God tests most those He loves best.
- Named — "your son, your only son, whom you love" spares Abraham nothing. Each word touches his affection and the promise that hung on Isaac.
- Only — the Hebrew yachid means "only one," even "darling." It stands behind the New Testament title "only begotten Son."
- Loved — the Bible first speaks of love here: a father's love for the son he must give up, pointing to the Father's love for His Son.
- Given — what God asked of Abraham on Moriah, God Himself did. He did not spare His own Son, so that we might be accepted in the worth of that offering.
