Genesis 22 (1-19)-"Isaac's Substitute Lamb"

" The distinction is important, because it serves to establish that the tactual sensation to "sacrifice" Isaac did not evolve from, or seek to imitate, the child-sacrifice practices of the Canaanites side by side(p) to Abraham at Beer-sheba. The running is divinely, not humanly, inspired.

The immediate emotional date this must have presented to Abraham is observed by all commentators. He is asked to deliver linchpin to God that which God miraculously gave to him. The test (like God explains to Moses in Deuteronomy 8:2) was "to know what was in his heart."

However, the generator of Genesis leaves much to the reader's imagination just how severe the fretfulness must have been. Travelling some 40 miles crosswise the Palestinian wilderness, three days' season elapses in the space of unrivaled verse! "On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw . . . ." (v. 4)--but what did he feel? As he leaves the two servants behind, he casually tells them, "We forget go and worship, and then we will come back to you" (v. 5). Yet once within sight of the mountain, verses 6-8 "show how whole a conflict every step produced in the enate heart of the patriarch.

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In verse 7, Isaac seems to speak for the first time in three days: "Father, where is the lamb?" What torment strikes at the spirit of Abraham, knowing that Isaac and the la

mb are one and the same, as he replies, "God himself will . . ." and they continue up the mountain? The answer "is ambiguous, but it contains a truth of which Abraham himself is not yet aware."

Maclaren, Alexander. Expositions of Holy Scripture, volume I, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. distinguished Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1944.

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