Now it happened after these things, that God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Take now your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10–13, 15–18 LSB
Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood.…
And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” Then Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, there was a ram after it had been caught in the thicket by its horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.
Then the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not spared [withheld] your son, your only one, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have listened to my voice.”
Withheld is our word to focus on today. Withhold (Heb. חָשַׂךְ khasakh) in Hebrew sounds like Issac’s name (Heb. יִצְחָק Yits-khak). There’s a wordplay here, and it has to be heard out loud in order to get it, because the Hebrew letters are not the same, but make similar sounds, like our “k” and hard “c” do in English. Literary ninjas are hard at work here. We’ll read their story about a painful letting go, and the transformative effect of what was received in exchange.
A couple in hiding
You see, for years Abraham and his wife Sarah withheld themselves in so many ways. They withheld their identities (chapter 12), hid their emotions (chapter 18), and obfuscated their relationships (chapter 20). There were a few very bright moments when all was said and done, but we might say that Abraham maybe missed at least as much as he hit. Chapter 21 is probably their lowest point in the entire biography, and gives us the narrative lead-up (what 22:1 calls “these things”) to a watershed moment in Abraham’s life: the crisis of Issac and the spectre of a divine promise broken.
After giving birth to the promise-child Issac early in chapter 21, Sarah tells Abraham to “make foreign” the Egyptian “foreigner” Hagar and her son (by Abraham) Ishmael. Get rid of them, she demands. And the means by which this was done puts a dark cloud over the couple charged to mediate blessing to every family on the planet.
The word “withhold” itself is not used in this scene, but Abraham epitomizes the withholding, miserly, stingy, tight-fisted oppressor of the poor, the foreigners, widows and orphans. Abraham sends Hagar and her son into the barren wilderness with a little bread and one skin of water. And no transport or pack animal, either. They have to journey on foot and shoulder their load of provisions. Remember, Abraham is stinking rich at this point in the story. He had just thrown a huge “shalom party” for the whole community. (And scoot over to chapter 24 to see what loot he sent along with his servant to fetch a wife for Issac.) Sorry, Hagar, no shalom for your family.
This meager provision for a long, harrowing journey is akin to a death sentence, one which Abraham may have avoided being directly responsible for, as Hagar and her son’s deaths wouldn’t strictly be classified as knife-in-hand murder. In Canada we call this “culpable homicide” by either withholding what one needs to stay alive (like sufficient food and water), or by causing the victim to do something that brings about their own death (wander aimlessly in the vast Judean desert).
With no one left to save them, God himself steps in unilaterally in response to the cries of the slave and her child. “The LORD cares deeply when his loved ones die” (Psalm 116 NLT). Disaster is averted, but the guilty still must pay if justice is to be satisfied. Exodus 22 tells us the penalty for abusing foreigners: execution via the sword of the LORD.
Life after certain death
We return to Genesis 22, now approaching the Moriah hills, and our wordplay of “withhold” and “Issac.” The author is pairing these two words to draw our attention to his point: the father is not to withhold his only beloved son Issac in the quest to bless all nations of the earth. Said nations would include Hagar’s family, ironically.
It was a long, quiet and sober walk up to the mountaintop altar. Plenty of opportunity to grumble, lament, bargain, or turn back. No transport or pack animal is used for this last leg of the journey—the boy and his father carry their supplies up the mountain. The only thing heard is two pairs of sandals crunching the gravelly path.
But Abraham digs deep, and in obedience and determined allegiance to his covenant partner, he does indeed sacrifice Issac, his child of promise. In his heart he surrendered God’s own promise back to God who gave it. And God was faithful—he kept his promise and gave it back to the one who relinquished it. These promises taken, kept, released and fulfilled make a never-ending circle of loyal covenant love. The apostle Paul meditates on our Genesis passage in light of Jesus and rephrases it, “[God the Father] who indeed did not spare [withhold] his own Son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Romans 8).
As his covenant people, the LORD wants us to grow in our ability to live his good life and generously share it with our neighbour. For our benefit he will challenge us—sometimes quite severely—to offer up our most precious things to him for his wiser use and greater glory. I heard it said, “God asks a lot from those who follow him, and very little from those who don’t.”
The precious things are not what God is after—he neither needs nor wants our idols. The enemies called pride, selfishness and destructive power-grasping are what he’s targeting. Self-centredness and scarcity mindset get in the way of the increase of grace as we follow him and grow in his fruitful love. Our holy training includes exercises in self-denial and other-centred generosity to combat ever-encroaching greed and preserve the communal balance of sufficiency. On the mountain of the LORD all will be provided (Genesis 22:14).
After Jesus’s disciples saw him transfigured on the mountain top, they debated with one another about the meaning of a “resurrection” (Mark 9). After their adventure on the mountain top, Abraham and Issac knew its meaning by experiencing it. For his part, Abraham was never the same. Chapters 23 and 24 tell of a very different Father-Of-Many-Nations, one much less stingy, with a more truthful self-identity and greatly increased humility. Something old had been taken off and something new had been put on. It appears an open hand of grace had worked its way into his life.
Hold tightly to that hand, father Abraham.