Genesis 22:1-19 tells the story to which Israel looked back for the revelation of Yhwh Yireh - ‘Yhwh the provider’. It was the story of Yhwh’s trial (nissah) of Abraham, too. At the outset, a word comes from God that makes Abraham’s experience of God to this point baffling (22:1). He cannot see the pattern of the divine plan. He cannot make sense of this command according to some rational scheme; or according to some morality to which he imagines that God is subject like everyone else; or, by dint of some hermeneutic strategy lately learned, hear something other than what he has heard. He does not even begin to doubt his own sanity. There is the semblance of cruelty in the request, even: God reminds him that he, Abraham, loves his son (22:2).
With what attitude does Abraham set out on his journey? In the other pieces we have of his story, we have presented to us a fearful doubter. In Egypt he presents his wife as his sister; in the disastrous begetting of Ishmael, he is seen (with Sarai) as attempting to foreshorten the gap between the divine promise and its realization in his life. In those tests he stumbled; here now, he silently presses on towards the mountain. He cannot see what is ahead, but rather only possesses the promises of the God who called him. As he says to Isaac, ‘God himself will provide the sacrifice’. That is the perspective that to which he clings.
At the climax of the story, the angel stays Abraham’s hand; and the ram – a superior sacrifice? – is found caught in the thicket. This provision of God of course is not merely a result of his action as a supreme being – if it were, then this whole episode would certainly be an exercise in divine sadism of the hapless human subject. However: this is not the God that Abraham encounters here; he proceeds on the basis of the God who has previously revealed himself to him, and meets at his journey’s end the Yhwh Yireh. Abraham receives the provision of a ram as a demonstration of God’s determination to be the Lord of the covenant with his people in its concrete history.
7 comments:
Three things:
1. Not only does Yhwh remind Abraham that he loves his son, but that ISaac is his only son.
2. Thats not true, right? He does have another son, right? I wonder if something is being alluded to here: that Abraham (and Yhwh) know that this child here really is the child of the promise. The only one. And Abraham has learnt -- no really learnt -- over decades of 'wavering in his unbelief' -- that God does and can keep his promises, even when they look impossible.
3. Which is the point made in Hebrews 11:19. ANd also in Romans 4.
and Galatians?
I can't remember if Kierkegaard made anything of this but I always wonder about the absence of God in this story. Considering that God felt free to drop in for a late lunch, the issue of promise gains even more importance when that is all Abraham has to grasp.
PS Please note my new Blog address
ANOTHER new address?
!!
Please notice also what Abraham says in verse 8: "God will provide for himself the LAMB for a burnt offering, my son."
But what is offered by God is a RAM!
yes, the beast grows up...
is this a case of excessive provision?
God over caters?
Other examples: manna and quail; feeding the 5000, 4000.
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