Blogging toward Sunday
Preachers have often imagined an anguished Abraham staggering toward Moriah as he leads his son to his death. But the biblical account contains no anguish, no heated arguments with Sarah (“Yahweh told you what?”), no teetering on the edge of faith. Abraham is every inch Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith,” the greatest of heroes because he expects the impossible, which is to say, resurrection. (See Kierkegaard’s meditations in Fear and Trembling, available online).
Abraham already knows resurrection. At his birth, Isaac rose from the dead earth of his aging parents (Rom. 4), and Abraham has every confidence that Yahweh will resurrect again. “We will worship and return to you,” he tells the two young men who accompany him. Abraham “considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead” (Heb. 11:19).
Moriah is later the temple mount (2 Chron. 3:1). Thus Abraham’s altar serves as prototype to Solomon’s, and Isaac’s “sacrifice” is the foundation of the sacrificial system. It points us to the substitutionary nature of sacrifice. As later in the Passover, a ram is slaughtered in place of a son (Gen. 22:13; cf. Exo. 12), and over the centuries the blood of bulls and goats is added to the blood of the ram slain for Isaac. In the latter days, Jesus is the Passover sacrificed for us, the Lamb of God who delivers Abraham’s seed by ascending to the altar. Suffering outside the camp, the new temple rises where he sheds his blood.
