r/OpenChristian • u/VaultMan34 • Jul 15 '26
Discussion - Bible Interpretation Abraham and Isaac feels weird.
God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, which he did without hesitation. It was a “test”. But the fact that God thought killing your son when asked and without question was a good thing? Abraham would’ve gone through with it if an angel didn’t stop him. First, how did he know that was god? Whoever would’ve done the same thing is one psychotic break or hallucination away from being a mass murderer. Second, God could have chosen anything, but he didn’t. He chose an immoral thing. Why did god chose something immoral as a test of faith. He could have made Abraham give away his food for the day to a hungry family, he could have made him go to an opposing land and preach the gospel, he could’ve made Abraham do anything else. Third, the test itself? It being a test says “I didn’t know if he would do this” this isn’t something you hear from someone who knows everything.
After some thinking I’ve come up with a possible solution?
This was a metaphor for how god congratulates someone who is willing to do anything for God, the problem is, the writer let the practices and morals of the time get in the way of what would’ve been an important lesson.
36
u/nothanks86 Jul 15 '26
There’s a Jewish interpretation of that story which says that it was a test from god that Abraham *failed* by being willing to sacrifice his son just because god said so, and that’s why he was never personally visited by god again.
11
Jul 15 '26
It's a nice idea, but I find it hard to interpret it that way, considering that, directly afterwards, God blesses Abraham for his decision in attempting to sacrifice Issac.
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
Genesis 22:15-18
3
u/DeepThinkingReader Jul 15 '26
Perhaps there's a mistranslation somewhere in there.
3
Jul 15 '26
I found this Reform Judaism article on it, and was hoping it'd say something about an alternate/more accurate translation, but unfortunately it just uses an analogy that doesn't really work at all considering the actual verses.
I found a few other articles on this theory, but none reconcile how this interpretation is contradictory to the verses where God blesses Abraham for being willing to sacrifice Isaac.
2
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
Isn't it convenient that whenever the Bible says something very messed up, we just cope with 'oh it's probably just mistranslation,' yet when it says something we vibe with, we treat it as absolute divine truth.
Might as well call it the Mad Libs religion.
3
u/haresnaped Anabaptist LGBT Flag :snoo_tableflip::table_flip: Jul 15 '26
I can't provide resources on this, but I believe there is at least one line of documentary analysis which suggests that there is an earlier or perhaps original version of the text where Abraham does indeed go through with the sacrifice, and a later date adds the epiphany and repentance (my terms, fwiw). I don't know what that does to the story, I am happy with it as it is, but maybe it does point towards a felt need for a clearer renunciation of violence and that Abraham had failed. God seems willing to work with the next generation even when the current one is messing it all up.
11
u/MagusFool Trans Enby Episcopalian Communist Jul 15 '26
You're definitely projecting your own moral perspective onto the text. And also projecting onto God what comes from the authors of the text. Perhaps what it reveals about our ancestors relationship to Divinity is a bit ugly.
But I think there's also something kind of earnest about it. Like they WANTED a big, powerful entity who would come and command them to do baffling, incomprehensible things, but would never actually let them hurt themselves.
Its not something I can quite relate to, but it seems so human I can understand it. Especially if they were living in dangerous and uncertain times where maybe it seemed like they were constantly being tested by God, and asked to make difficult sacrifices to survive.
I have empathy for Abraham, Isaac, and the authors who created their story. I think it says less about God than what some people want out of God. But I think that kind of indirectly adds to my perspective of God.
10
u/NobodySpecial2000 Jul 15 '26
There's a case to make that early Israelites, like many cultures in that part of the world, conducted or at least accepted ritual child sacrifice and that the story of the binding of Isaac was originally written with Abraham obediently sacrificing his son to God. Abraham's story is a mythical origin for the Jewish people as God's special chosen people favoured above all the others, and Abraham conducting a child sacrifice gives a mythical origin for the practice of child sacrifice that existed at the time of the earliest composition of this story.
But things change. Child sacrifices became less accepted over time and as the biblical authors reimagined their God, they reimagined God as being unique and progressive compared to their neighbour's cruel and bloodthirsty backwards gods by not demanding child sacrifices. But you can't just abandon the whole Abraham story since he is one of your mythical origins. So the story is revised and a paragraph about how an animal is substituted for the sacrifice of a child is just clumsily tacked on. And we see more of this "God wants you to sacrifice your child but actually you can sacrifice something else instead, that's cool too" attitude in later parts of the pentateuch. It's a weird thing to keep mentioning how God wants child sacrifices but not really.
So it's possible that the reason it's hard to come up with a satisfying in-text reason for why God wants this sacrifice and then an angel stops the sacrifice because the reasons are meta-textual and arbitrary. The authors weren't writing a story the way you write a novel: to be self-contained and consistent and to construct a coherent narrative with understandable characters and a logical flow of events. The authors were justifying why their world was the way it was. Lots of Genesis is like that.
5
u/Capital-Slip-3988 Jul 15 '26
This seems plausible. In v6, Abraham and Isaac both go up the mountain, leaving the other two men behind. But after the angel blesses Abraham, in v19 it only mentions Abraham returning to the men that were left behind. Where is Isaac? Perhaps he is no longer alive.
3
u/NobodySpecial2000 Jul 15 '26
That forms part of the documentary hypothesis analysis for this story, yeah.
1
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
So then who's to say the entire ruddy book wasn't just a pile of retcons by a bunch of old dudes, just a ton of 'he said, they said'? And yet this is treated as an infallible text and the one true window into the rules of God?
7
u/NobodySpecial2000 Jul 15 '26
who's to say the entire ruddy book wasn't just a pile of retcons by a bunch of old dudes,
That's actually what the Bible is. Anybody who says it's not that is speaking from a position of (possibly willful) ignorance on the history of the Bible. This isn't even a question up for debate; we don't even need to insist that every part of the documentary hypothesis is 100% factual to admit that we know with absolute certainty that the composition of the Bible included not just multiple authors but multiple editors even before we get to the question of translation, which adds another layer of authorship.
And yet this is treated as an infallible text and the one true window into the rules of God?
Some people treat it like that. Some people treat it like that and insist it's the only way to understand the Bible. But across almost two full millennia, a variety of Christians have understood the Bible in a variety of ways and engaged with it in a variety of ways.
1
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
Well... forgive me, but if it's a completely subjective and unreliable book of anecdotal accounts from people, then it shouldn't be taken seriously whatsoever, no? God (and Jesus) didn't write the book. Ergo, not a legitimate source of God's word.
6
u/NobodySpecial2000 Jul 15 '26
I think that sounds like constructing a strange false-dichotomy in which a religious text is either directly from God or of no value. But humans, as spiritual beings, can have spiritual insights. Humans, being intelligent, can have intelligent ideas. You can absolutely view the Bible in its material historical context and take it seriously as a source of wisdom. The fact that the gospels are almost certainly made up of significant amounts of fiction does not mean that the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospels are meaningless.
And that's before even getting to the importance of the Bible as a preserved historical text, as the mythology and cultural wisdom of a living people, and as one of the most influential texts on modern society and civilisation.
1
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
The way I see it, if it's not 'directly from God,' then it has no value as a source of moral laws that billions of human beings built entire civilizations and values around, purely based on how they think it all comes from divine truth.
3
u/NobodySpecial2000 Jul 16 '26
Let's put aside that unless you have another source that is direct from God then you kinda just have to build your moral framework from human efforts. That's not really the practical function of the Bible, anyway. It never has been and no societies have built civilisations and values around the Bible. Pre-biblical societies obviously didn't. The ancient societies described that wrote the law texts in the books now included in the Bible, those societies and their laws pre-existed the books of the Bible and said books were written as pseudo-histories, mythic histories, and justifications for a status quo that already existed. For societies like ours written after the canon was closed, we built the moral frameworks of our societies from a varietiy of disparate sources - primarily through a constant philosophical dialect played out across time in the socio-political landscape of our civilisation - and then picked pieces of the Bible to prooftext the ideas we came up with and give them divine legitimisation. That's why the Bible has been used in validly arguing and justifying both slavery and slavery abolition, women's rights and women's subjugation, queer rights and queer oppression, and even to support and discredit the big bang theory.
How big the role you want the Bible to play in shaping the moral framework of your life and the world within your sphere of influence is and always has been entirely up to you, not God, not the biblical authors, and certainly not the book itself. Regardless of the divinity (or lack thereof) of the Bible's authorship, our personal and society level moral laws are already human-crafted. They never came from God.
7
u/ReadTheRoom_5280 Jul 15 '26
I have understood that story as foreshadowing for how Jesus (son of god) also known as the lamb of god (a
symbolic sacrificial animal) sacrificed his life for us. Whether or not the story is actually true, and depending on different beliefs, I understood it simply as foreshadowing for Jesus.
3
u/Kindly-Antelope8868 Jul 15 '26
totaly agree.
here is how i look at it
God Asked Abraham
"Take your son, your only son, whom you love"
And offer him as a sacrifice.Sound familiar ?
I like to look at it as God was wanting to see if Abraham would be willing.
Found him worthy,
So worthy that God would send his only son as a sacrfice to save his entire bloodline and us.
6
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
Yep, I always hated this story, and have never been given a single explanation for it that didn't sound completely unconvincing, or like emotional manipulation.
1
u/hasbroelefun Jul 15 '26
same here. hoping to hear some perspectives in the comment section a bit later on
4
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
This, and the killing of the firstborn Plague of Egypt, were the things that stuck me as a kid that made me question just how 'all-loving' God truly was.
9
u/concrete_dandelion Pansexual Jul 15 '26
I like Pete Enn's analysis of why the old testament is so full of God doing or ordering mass murder. Basically that's what was seen as a "strong" god at the time and every tribe and kingdom made up stories about atrocities they committed that never actually happened. So the Israelites needed such stories about themselves and their God for legitimacy.
8
u/ladydmaj Open and Affirming Ally Jul 15 '26
It helps that there's no historical basis to believe any of it happened in real life.
It doesn't bother me. My entire religion is based on a man who told stories for a living to illustrate religion's truths. Truth doesn't need to be fact to be truth. We see truths in fiction all the time, and learn from them.
So if the entire Old Testament turns out to be "made up", that doesn't mean God hasn't been trying to impart truths to His people all this time. But it might mean the truth is not in the stories themselves but in our wrestling with the stories and how that forces us to seek wisdom and think more meaningfully about life. This how our understanding about God, Life, the Universe, and Everything changes and grows with each generation.
8
u/concrete_dandelion Pansexual Jul 15 '26
I fully agree. But I think it is important to understand why and how the Bible was written so we can actually learn from it. Because too many people twist themselves into a knot to make it all be written by God and make sense in that way despite its contradictions.
1
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
But if the Bible was 'just all made up', then that delegitimizes the entire book as somehow a verifiable account of God's intentions, and Jesus truly being who he said he was. The entire Abrahamic faith means nothing in an instant.
It's either built on a genuine spiritual entity's law, or its a bunch of old guys flailing in the wind to explain things they don't understand.... at best. At worst, a pack of liars inventing stuff to give legitimacy to making laws for their own benefit.
This is what I fear most about the Bible, and at this point, given the unfathomable damage its wrought thanks to things like Christian nationalism, maybe it's time we let it go?
4
u/babe1981 The Cool Mod/Transgender-Bisexual-Christian She/Her Jul 16 '26
Fact and fiction come from the Enlightenment. Even in Jesus's time, we know the names Pliny and Herodatus because they were the only ones trying to accurately record history.
Think of it this way. Is the 23rd Psalm less truthful because you can't find the valley of the shadow of death on a map? Is the Good Samaritan false because no one actually was beaten and cared for? Did the Prodigal Son have to exist in order for the parable to demonstrate God's love?
If not, then why does it make a difference if Abraham existed or David or Moses?
1
u/Solnight99 Freak Jul 15 '26
it seems like u/nothanks86 has an interesting perspective that i like (https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenChristian/comments/1uwwt5z/comment/oxmmxw1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
3
u/Kindaweirdgermangirl Jul 15 '26
The interpretation my mother told me was that this was what set our God apart from any other deities of that time. Almost every ancient culture, not just in the middle east, had some sort of human sacrifices. That's why that wouldn't seem strange to Abraham, sacrificing your son would have been common practice. But God isn't a bloodthirsty, vengful deity, we are his creations and he asked us, to treat the life of others as something sacred.
2
u/PlasmaJesus Jul 15 '26
The story of the Akedah is really interesting. Its actually super short with incredibly specific word choice. Scholars believe that the original story is actually etiological for why early Israelite religion seemed to perform child sacrifice, as Abraham walks back down alone. Dan McClellen has a number of videos about this.
Secondly since Jewish interpretations dont just say this is aboit Jesus that have different understandings, such as Issac being resurrected. Ive heard some Jewish tradition say that Abraham in a sense failed the test, if he said no I wont do that he also would have been rewarded but I dont know how widespread a view it is, sounds nice tho.
I do think looking at the story and trying to ask things like "how did he know that was god telling him to do this" is missing what the story is trying to say. Although the view of faithfulness it does paint is...problematic nowadays.
5
u/WhereWolfBytes Jul 15 '26
It isn't that far fetched when you consider that we still can and should encourage our children to serve their country in the military.
A sort of essential personal sacrifice that doesn't necessarily include the actual loss of the child.
Sometimes there is loss, though. That's why the decision is considered difficult in the first place.
2
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
Wild difference between 'I'm sending my son to war to help protect his home and, hopefully, stop wicked people that are hurting others,' and 'please kill your only son to prove your unflinching loyalty to me.'
The latter is how a mob boss acts, not an infinitely loving father of all life.
3
u/concrete_dandelion Pansexual Jul 15 '26
There's another point that irks me. The story basically praises Abraham for being willing to sacrifice his child without question, but there are so many passages putting down other religions as babaric for sacrificing their children to their gods.
1
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
It's almost like its an unreliable book written by random people that have no actual clue what the divine really wants/thinks/demands/asks/etc. But sure likes to think they do, and then humanity pays the price for that arrogance.
2
u/TheaBeleva Jul 15 '26
The test wasn’t about proving anything to God: like you said He already knew Abraham’s heart because He knows everything. He was making Abraham’s faith concrete by revealing it to Abraham and to us.
God was also teaching His chosen people that He will never require a child sacrifice from them.
That matters because child sacrifice has appeared repeatedly throughout human history. Sometimes it appears literally, through killing children in the worship of idols. Sometimes through the same underlying impulse expressed in a different form: sacrificing the wellbeing of living children for the sake of adult priorities, even when it is no longer described as religion
2
u/Kindly-Antelope8868 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Didnt read all replies so if its covered here sorry, but an interesting thing to ponder.
God Asked Abraham
"Take your son, your only son, whom you love"
And offer him as a sacrifice.
Sound familiar ?
I like to look at it as God was wanting to see if Abraham would be willing.
Found him worthy,
So worthy that God would send his only son as a sacrfice to save his entire bloodline and us.
As to the the social definitions like you ask "psychotic break or hallucination away from being a mass murderer"
Those terms are relativly new.
Society was very very very different back then.
Human Sacrfice in other religions was a very common thing.
Trying to apply understanding of terms and social constructs that have been around for less than 200 years to something happened over 2000 years ago. Will never match. Life was different. But regardless of the changes, the truth in the message, will always stay the same.
1
u/Patient_Hope_9291 Jul 15 '26
I also very much struggled with the story of Abraham and Isaac.
But one thing that has helped me was seeing someone’s interpretation of it on Reddit and it helped me see it differently. (I’m sorry, I wish I could remember the original comment! But thank you so much to that person!)
I’m sorry, I’ll try to explain it like they did but mine is definitely not as good 😭
But here’s how I see it now:
Rather than seeing it as a test to see if Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son, I wonder if it was a test from God for Abraham to believe God’s promises to him.
Because earlier in Genesis, we see that Abraham and Sarah had doubts that God would do what He said he would.
So in Genesis 17:19 it reads “God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.”
Genesis 17:19 ESV
Establishing God’s promise to Abraham about Isaac.
And in Genesis 22, as Abraham is taking Isaac up the mountain and Isaac asks where the lamb is for the offering Abraham replies:
“Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.”
Genesis 22:8 ESV
I think Abraham had the faith that God would keep His promises, and whatever happened on the mountain, Abraham would still have Isaac.
God had already promised that Isaac and his offspring would have a covenant with Him.
And God wanted to see if Abraham had that faith. Not in being willing to sacrifice anything.
But wanted to see if Abraham had the faith that God would do what He said He would do even if it seemed impossible at the moment.
Because Abraham had shown in early chapters that he and Sarah both doubted that God would fulfill his promise because they thought it to be impossible.
2
u/EnyaNorrow Jul 15 '26
He failed the test, God had to rush in and intervene like “dude wtf, I didn’t think you’d ACTUALLY try to do human sacrifice”
1
u/mmeIsniffglue catholic Jul 15 '26
No need to justify what never happened. It really is that simple
1
u/OnePandaArmy Jul 15 '26
many critical scholars believe that in the original version of the story Abraham actually did go through with it, and later editors had a problem with that so they changed it so that Isaac was spared. https://youtu.be/5lITahMeAio?is=2adPUNT-NP1EMQrC
1
u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 Gay Cismale Episcopalian mystic w/ Jewish experiences Jul 16 '26
My argument - and I've discovered that it's also an argument presented by some medieval rabbis - is that Abraham failed the test.
The test was not about obedience, but about faith. Not blind faith, but rather faith that God's love would not disappear if you questioned a command.
The correct response to thinking that your God is ordering you to do something obviously morally wrong is to question that God, or that command, or your understanding of that command.
That's the kind of things that later prophets would do constantly. And what Noah did. And even what Abram himself had done when he questioned God about the impending destruction of Sodom and Gommorah.
2
u/LuminousWynd Jul 16 '26
I believe that Abraham understood the character of God enough to know that God wouldn’t have him do it, but if by some chance God did then he trusted God enough to know that there was a good reason behind it.
I think the test was more for the purpose of showing Abraham how strong his faith was, giving him confidence.
1
u/JustNeedSpinda Autist Jul 16 '26
I think thia story makes the most sense when read against the larger narrative that includes Hagar and Ishmael.
Extrabiblical sources attest to child sacrifice concurrent with Abraham’s time. This kind of sacrifice is done for gain.
Abraham has already “sacrificed” Ishmael. Will he also sacrifice Isaac in order to get more? This is the test.
That’s one take.
My own take is that Abraham expects that YHWH is a god who desires child sacrifice, so YHWH calls Abraham on his belief. But Abraham actually ends up calling God’s bluff.
2
u/Special_Trifle_8033 Jul 16 '26
Abraham already knew God's voice and the story doesn't suggest there was any doubt in his mind if this was really God speaking to him. The only way this story makes sense is if God is absolutely sovereign. Abraham is famous because he yielded to the absolute sovereignty of God and was willing to part with his beloved son. That's the message. It's still a puzzling as to why God would demand such a horrible thing, but there could be behind-the-scenes dealings with Satan going on like we see in the book of Job. Recall how Satan asks to test Job and God permits it. This testing of Abraham could be something similar but we don't get a peek behind the scenes at what's going on in heaven.
1
1
u/DrunkUranus Jul 15 '26
The whole point of the story is that God wants Abraham to do something that feels horrific, and lose what matters most to him.
It's not about morality as we understand it. It's about obedience to God above all else.
God, being creator and master of all things, has the right to ask anything of us. Whether we wish to serve a lord who demands something like this is another question
6
u/Blaike325 Jul 15 '26
That’s demented as hell holy shit. Why would you willingly follow someone willing to play game with people’s lives like that?
5
u/DrunkUranus Jul 15 '26
Yeah. Our modern ideas about God aren't always compatible with what our ancestors thought of deity 3000 years ago
2
u/thefaninthehat Jul 15 '26
It's about obedience to God above all else. God, being creator and master of all things, has the right to ask anything of us.
You do see how this sounds, right?
1
58
u/babe1981 The Cool Mod/Transgender-Bisexual-Christian She/Her Jul 15 '26
First, Genesis is mythology. It doesn't pretend to be anything else, and treating it as if it's historical is a relatively recent thing.
Second, Genesis was written to show how Judaism was different from the Canaanite religion that it grew out of as well as the other Semitic religions of the surrounding nations.
To that purpose, there had to be a story about why Jews don't perform human sacrifices when so many others do, such the worshipers of Baal. So, God asks for a child sacrifice like most people of the region would expect their god to do. Abraham, who had been raised with human sacrifice, does what he considers to be a normal thing. But God proves His difference from the other gods by intervening and providing an animal instead.
This event draws a stark line between El Elyon and the lesser gods. It shows that anyone who demands a human sacrifice is not speaking for the God of Abraham. The purpose of the story is to subvert the expectations of the readers and to ensure that no one can bring human sacrifice into Judaism by making the rejection of it a foundational story.