Efrat, Israel – If one had to choose a biblical moment that evokes awe, confusion, inspiration, fear and terror all at the same time, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the akeda, stands unique. For thousands of years, commentators have grappled with this unsettling, disturbing event which, with one stroke of the knife, threatens to dissolve Abraham’s world as well as his world order.

Abraham has been continuously promised that the nation which shall emerge from his own loins will, against all odds, survive and declare the name of one G-d, to the entire world. And Isaac’s very birth to aged parents was a miraculous confirmation of G-d’s promise. Is Abraham now expected to destroy that very miracle? Moreover, Abraham’s message to the world was one of ethical monotheism, of a G-d who created the human being in His own image, who deplored immorality and bloodshed. Hasn’t his very ministry been the exact antithesis of Moloch’s blood-thirsty parts of child – sacrifice?

Tragedy, however, is halted. The verdict of biblical commentaries is that by subjugating his own will before G-d’s will, Abraham proves to be the ever-faithful servant whose immense faith in the face of this 10th, and final, test is rewarded. A ram trapped in a thick grove suddenly appears, and Isaac, as well as Abraham’s dream, is saved.

Most commentators approach this difficult story of the akeda from Abraham’s point of view. Maimonides, for example, sees it as a fundamental confirmation of the truth of prophecy. Upon hearing G-d’s word, Abraham does what he does because he has heard the divine command.

Soren Kierkegaard , in his masterpiece “Fear and Trembling,” understands that Abraham is being taught the essential lesson in religious worship, the “teleological suspension of the ethical,” and, the more contemporary Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz who extracts from the akeda that the human being is not commanded by the Torah to be ethical; he is rather commanded to serve G-d.

But perhaps we ought view the akeda story from G-d’s perspective, from the very complex lesson (or lessons) that G-d was trying to communicate to the first Jews. The command is, after all, an ambiguous one: “lift him up as a dedication (olah)”, literally a lifting-up. As Rashi correctly notes, G-d never said: slaughter him!

Of course, olah certainly means a sacrificial offering in the context of a system of animal sacrifices. And in the light of subsequent Jewish history, tear-stained and blood-drenched, with parents who had to see their children immolated on the pyres of anti-Jewish tyrants from the Nile River of Pharoah to the gas chambers of Hitler, - Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac provides Biblical precedent for superhuman acts of faith which have paradoxically ensured and enshrined our national eternity.

But what if G-d’s ambiguity reveals another message – and a second kind of test. After all, the Biblical punch-line is that Isaac lives, that G-d’s angel – a true deus ex machina – pushes back Abraham’s hand at the very last moment.

Perhaps G-d expected Abraham to have pleaded for Isaac, to have taken a firm stand against child sacrifice, to have resisted, pleaded and begged, on behalf of Isaac just as he resisted on behalf of Sodom. Is that not how Moses reacted in a later generation when, after the Israelites sinned with the golden calf, G-d tells Moses to leave Him alone and He will destroy the entire nation and begin anew with Moses alone. Moses categorically rejects the offer, debating with the Creator effectively and convincingly on behalf of His eternal covenant with Israel, His divine promise to the Patriarchs (Ex 32:11-13). Were not G-d’s initial words to Moses a test of the prophet’s commitment to and love for his nation, a test to which Moses reacted differently from Abraham?

We find evidence for this reading in the text itself. After the akeda , G-d never speaks to Abraham again. Indeed, it is actually an angel and not G-d Himself, who prevents Abraham from the act of slaughter according to the Biblical narrative.

And the Bible reiterates the necessity of sometimes challenging G-d. Job suffers abject pain and bereavement and is comforted by his friends, who urge him to accept his plight as a just punishment from G-d. Job challenges G-d, insisting to be shown where and how he sinned. And in the end, G-d accepts Job’s challenge and rejects the simplistic “piety” and acquiescence of his friends. Indeed, it was Abraham’s earlier remonstrations with G-d on behalf of the wicked Sodomites as well as Moses and Job which served as a model for one of the great religious heroes of recent times, the Hasidic leader and saint R. Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. He once rose in the midst of the Yom Kippur synagogue service, before Kaddish, and cried out to G-d, “Enough! What have Your people done that You continue to make them suffer? Have we not suffered enough? I refuse to leave this place until you forgive Israel! Yisgadal Ve YisKadash Shmey Rabbo.”

In effect, after the binding of Isaac, Abraham’s career is over. We never see him directly encountering or being encountered by G-d again. And indeed, the Sfat Emet interprets the words in our Biblical akeda narrative “And he (Abraham) saw the place from afar” to read “And he (Abraham) saw G-d from afar,” taking the Hebrew makom in this context to refer to G-d, as it is used in the blessing we convey to mourners (Gen. 22:4). The Sfat Emet suggests that this was a test of Abraham’s fear of G-d; had the patriarch been in the mode of love of G-d, he would have realized that the “Merciful, loving Rahum” could never have requested child sacrifice of him.

And this interpretation is not very different from that of Rashi, who suggests that G-d’s initial intent had only been for Abraham to bring Isaac up the mountain, and then to take him down from the mountain. And the probable source for Rashi is Babylonian Talmud Taanit (4a), which cites Jeremiah’s (19:5) critique against Israelite idolaters who set up altars for burning their children to Baal, something which “I (G-d) never commanded, never spoke of, never imagined: “I never commanded Mesha to sacrifice his son, I never spoke to Jefta to sacrifice his daughter; I never imagined that Abraham would sacrifice Isaac.”

Our Bible is eternal, speaking to its generation as well as to all generations. For all generations wherein Israelites would be called upon to sacrifice their children “al Kiddush haShem,” the command to Abraham was a call to faith and Abraham remains a beacon of commitment unto death. At the very same time – and especially for the generation of the Bible with its Moloch idolatry – the entire story comes to teach that our G-d of ethical monotheism would never expect a parent to slaughter his son in His name!

Shabbat Shalom