1 Now after these things, God put Abraham to the test, and said to him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I.
2 And he said to him, Take your son, your dearly loved only son Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and give him as a burned offering on one of the mountains of which I will give you knowledge.
3 And Abraham got up early in the morning, and made ready his ass, and took with him two of his young men and Isaac, his son, and after the wood for the burned offering had been cut, he went on his way to the place of which God had given him word.
4 And on the third day, Abraham, lifting up his eyes, saw the place a long way off.
5 Then he said to his young men, Keep here with the ass; and I and the boy will go on and give worship and come back again to you.
6 And Abraham put the wood for the burned offering on his son's back, and he himself took the fire and the knife in his hand, and the two of them went on together.
7 Then Isaac said to Abraham, My father; and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, We have wood and fire here, but where is the lamb for the burned offering?
8 And Abraham said, God himself will give the lamb for the burned offering: so they went on together.
9 And they came to the place of which God had given him knowledge; and there Abraham made the altar and put the wood in place on it, and having made tight the bands round Isaac his son, he put him on the wood on the altar.
10 And stretching out his hand, Abraham took the knife to put his son to death.
11 But the voice of the angel of the Lord came from heaven, saying, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
12 And he said, Let not your hand be stretched out against the boy to do anything to him; for now I am certain that the fear of God is in your heart, because you have not kept back your son, your only son, from me.
13 And lifting up his eyes, Abraham saw a sheep fixed by its horns in the brushwood: and Abraham took the sheep and made a burned offering of it in place of his son.
14 And Abraham gave that place the name Yahweh-yireh: as it is said to this day, In the mountain the Lord is seen.
15 And the voice of the angel of the Lord came to Abraham a second time from heaven,
16 Saying, I have taken an oath by my name, says the Lord, because you have done this and have not kept back from me your dearly loved only son,
17 That I will certainly give you my blessing, and your seed will be increased like the stars of heaven and the sand by the seaside; your seed will take the land of those who are against them;
18 And your seed will be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, because you have done what I gave you orders to do.
19 Then Abraham went back to his young men and they went together to Beer-sheba, the place where Abraham was living.
20 After these things, Abraham had news that Milcah, the wife of his brother Nahor, had given birth to children;
21 Uz the oldest, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel, the father of Aram,
22 And Chesed and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlaph and Bethuel.
23 Bethuel was the father of Rebekah: these eight were the children of Milcah and Nahor, Abraham's brother.
24 And his servant Reumah gave birth to Tebah and Gaham and Tahash and Maacah.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Genesis 22
Commentary on Genesis 22 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 22
Ge 22:1-19. Offering Isaac.
1. God did tempt Abraham—not incite to sin (Jas 1:13), but try, prove—give occasion for the development of his faith (1Pe 1:7).
and he said, … Here I am—ready at a moment's warning for God's service.
2. Take now thy son, &c.—Every circumstance mentioned was calculated to give a deeper stab to the parental bosom. To lose his only son, and by an act of his own hand, too!—what a host of conflicting feelings must the order have raised! But he heard and obeyed without a murmur (Ga 1:16; Lu 14:26).
3. Abraham rose … early, &c.—That there might be no appearance of delay or reluctance on his part, he made every preparation for the sacrifice before setting out—the materials, the knife, and the servants to convey them. From Beer-sheba to Moriah, a journey of two days, he had the painful secret pent up in his bosom. So distant a place must have been chosen for some important reason. It is generally thought that this was one the hills of Jerusalem, on which the Great Sacrifice was afterwards offered.
4. on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, &c.—Leaving the servants at the foot [Ge 22:5], the father and son ascended the hill, the one bearing the knife, and the other the wood for consuming the sacrifice [Ge 22:6]. But there was no victim; and to the question so naturally put by Isaac [Ge 22:7], Abraham contented himself by replying, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." It has been supposed that the design of this extraordinary transaction was to show him, by action instead of words, the way in which all the families of the earth should be blessed; and that in his answer to Isaac, he anticipated some substitution. It is more likely that his words were spoken evasively to his son in ignorance of the issue, yet in unbounded confidence that that son, though sacrificed, would, in some miraculous way, be restored (Heb 11:19).
9. Abraham built an altar, &c.—Had not the patriarch been sustained by the full consciousness of acting in obedience to God's will, the effort would have been too great for human endurance; and had not Isaac, then upwards of twenty years of age displayed equal faith in submitting, this great trial could not have gone through.
11, 12. the angel … called, &c.—The sacrifice was virtually offered—the intention, the purpose to do it, was shown in all sincerity and fulness. The Omniscient witness likewise declared His acceptance in the highest terms of approval; and the apostle speaks of it as actually made (Heb 11:17; Jas 2:21).
13-19. Abraham lifted up his eyes … and behold … a ram, &c.—No method was more admirably calculated to give the patriarch a distinct idea of the purpose of grace than this scenic representation: and hence our Lord's allusion to it (Joh 8:56).