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0Ohhhhh! So it wasn’t a test of faith for Abraham after all! It was a way to teach some little punk a lesson! Too bad that angel stepped in and messed it all up. What a chump.
The Binding of Isaac is another one of those tales from Biblical mythology where God, in his infinite wisdom and compassion, decides to harass and terrify innocent people to make a point. Not only does he terrify innocent people, they happen to be faithful folks as well, which makes the whole story just a little bit weirder.
For centuries, Jewish and Christian scholars have tried to make sense of this tale. Why does God, an infinitely powerful deity, take time out of his undoubtedly busy schedule to tell an old man to take his son up to a mountain and make a sacrifice of him? If he actually wanted a sacrifice, he would have let Abraham finish the job, but an angel shows up and puts a stop to the whole affair. Abrahamic faiths have long attested that God is compassionate and good and that he looks after the people of Earth but stories like this tend to throw a wrench into the works. Sure, it’d be a lot worse if the Big Guy had actually let Abraham kill his son, but it still doesn’t look good.
What I’m saying is that this story doesn’t really help Yahweh’s public image.
The general consensus from the sort of people that discuss this type of thing at length is that God was simply testing the faith and loyalty of Abraham. By demanding an outrageous act, God hoped to see whether or not this supposedly righteous man were as true of spirit as he appeared. It just so happens that Abraham was faithful enough (or crazy enough) to go through with it right up until the very last minute when the angel stops his blade.
That’s dedication, yo.
Now, why God needed a demonstration of faith rather than simply KNOWING Abraham was faithful and true is beyond me and, in fact, is something some religious scholars have spent a lot of time thinking about. An all powerful, all knowing deity that can do anything he wants shouldn’t have to test people, right? Well, there’s another interpretation of the story that takes this into account. See, Yahweh was just one of many deities amongst the many clans and tribes of the Middle East. In that part of the world, as in many others, gods demanded sacrifice and, sometimes, that sacrifice was one of human flesh. In an area rife with such barbarism, the argument goes, it’s far more likely that God was demonstrating to his followers that he was unlike the other deities in the area. By stopping Abraham and refusing to take the sacrifice of Isaac’s life, Yahweh was showing that he was a different sort of God, one that objected to sacrificial killings. Really, a stand up sort of fellow.
Of course, God didn’t seem to care too much about killing folks when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah…or when he flooded the entire earth and killed everyone except the people and animals on Noah’s Ark…or when he murdered countless innocent Egyptian children to punish Pharaoh for being a total dickweed to Moses…or when…
But hey, at least he didn’t ask the ancient Hebrews to kill their own in his name, right? No, He only went around terrorizing them to make a bunch of points he could have made by sitting down and talking to them instead.
I guess that’s cool.
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He should’ve just shown him that His ass is NOT fat, coincidentally also blinding him forever for seeing the God’s true form.
But what if he’s self-conscious about his pudgy posterior?
This reminds me of Archetyp by Ralf König; really a fun read. I don’t know if it’s available in English, though.
“Hi, Abe. I’m an angel of the Lord. Listen, ah, I know what Yaweh said and all, but maaaaybe this whole… knife thing is a little overboard?”
LMAO! Yea, that would make more sense now wouldn’t it?
This is just perfect
The “Christian” Bible is full of conflicting stories and situations…. not to mention full of murder, sex and all sorts of other nasties… If it was published today, I highly doubt it would sell much, beyond a few select fanatical groups. I always considered the story of the Binding of Isaac, as a bit of a conundrum… then I stop thinking about it, due to the questionable accuracy and authenticity.. I find it hard to believe, some of the stories…
Because the people around him were sacrificing children, I think that Abraham misunderstood God’s will. He had a history of it. He gave Sarah to the Egyptian Pharaoh, had sex with his handmaid, and then sent
her and their son out in the desert. Because he loved Isaac so much
and probably felt guilty, he probably thought that God was testing him or demanding what other religions did of their followers.
As a jew, I will let you know another interpretation that is not discussed in christian circles (who have absolute shit “old testament scholarship”).
Some believe that the incident was Abraham testing this new god to see if this god was a merciless as the others.
The Torah and Tanakh are filled with we Jews arguing with/testing our G-d.
Ps. I am not offended by the comic. haha
A few generations later Moses DOES get to see God’s backside, but sadly he forgot to record whether or not there was junk in YHWH’s trunk (Ex 33:21).
God didn’t need to “test” Abraham because he, God, didn’t know something. When God tests us, it is to show us that we know or don’t know something.
That story… makes so much more sense now.
I loled.
Oh, and even though this will make this post catch in the spam moderation filter, it has to be posted: Mitchell & Webb’s brilliant Binding of Isaac sketch.
well, that actually makes more sense than the bible explanation, so…
honestly, i just figured all the god wants this and god wants that stuff was made up by preists to keep folks in line. you can’t get your whole world paid for, gold robes, fancy food, etc by saying “hey folks, god generally just doesn’t really care” or “god’s bored, let’s do something interesting for him to watch”. ok, actually, maybe the last one would work, but, you know, people EXPECT morals, and sacrifices.
What I have been taught is that the problem in this story is not that God contradicts himself but that Abraham misinterpreted what God told him to do. God told Abraham to give Issac to Him as a “burnt offering”, but an offering is not always a sacrifice. In Eastern custom, speaking of people as a “burnt offering” indicated that they would be completely committed to God.
In Judges 11, Jephthah gives his only daughter as a “burnt offering” to the Lord, yet afterward people would go talk to her four days a year. God did not want want Issac to die, He wanted Abraham to commit Issac to Him.
The problem was that Abraham lived near Canaanites and had seen them burn human sacrifices to their gods. So when he heard that God wanted him to offer up Issac, he incorrectly decided that this meant killing his son for God.
Also in regard to the flood and plagues and such, the Idiom of Permission was being used because God’s people would not be able to handle the idea of a spiritual adversary, Lucifer.
This is a pretty long post, but I hope it answers some questions for someone.
If we assume that God actually wanted Abraham to kill Isaac (after making the first assumption that these things occurred exactly as recorded and also that God is all-knowing), then we also have to assume that what God was doing wasn’t for himself, it was to influence Abraham or Isaac in some way. Perhaps it wasn’t to test Abraham’s faith, but rather show Abraham the very extent of his faith–often, we don’t know how we would act in situations that we haven’t been put in. Now, Abraham knows exactly how much he trusts in God, and could use that in the future. “Well, what I’m about to do in the name of the Lord isn’t so bad as killing my son, and I was totally gonna do that, so…”
Also, as well as allowing Abraham to discover the extent of his own faith, and thus strengthen it, this occurence was a foreshadowing of a greater sacrifice yet to come.
Just as Abraham was willing to give up his beloved son for God, so God was willing to give up his own son for mankind. Except of course, that sacrifice was willing and the son was actually killed.
The Lord provided a lamb for the sacrifice in the time of Abraham, and he sent the Lamb of God to be a sacrifice at the time of Jesus.
Its not to see if Abraham had faith, its to teach a lesson about losing a son..
I think God made Abraham go through that trial so that 200+ years later, it could be the inspiration of this truly great game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Binding_of_Isaac_(video_game)
All hail god in his video gaming magnificence!
One of the interesting things about Old Testament writings when viewed from a Christian perspective is the idea of typology. You can see the concept very clearly in the festivals that the Israelites had, through the significance of the way the temple was constructed, but perhaps one of the better examples is that of Moses and the rock.
When it comes to Abraham and Isaac, you need to catch the significance of what is going on there. Abraham takes Isaac, his only son, to the place where God’s only Son would be sacrificed. Jesus would be offered as a sinless sacrifice for others by God, and it was pictured through Abraham– though God spared Isaac. Was it a test? Yes, because Hebrews states that God looked at what Abraham did and his faith and counted it as righteousness.
God had promised Abraham some pretty big things– that the Messiah would come through his line, that his children would number that of the sand and the stars of the sky. So it would make sense that there would be some testing of Abraham’s loyalty.