Boehm, Omri - The Binding of Isaac. a Religious Model of Disobedience

8/19/2019 Boehm, Omri - The Binding of Isaac. a Religious Model of Disobedience

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LIBRARY

OF HEBREW BIBLE/

OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

468

Formerly

Journal

for the Study o f the Old Tes tament Supplement Series

Editors

Claudia

V .

Camp, Texas Ch ristian

University

Andrew Mein, W estcott H ouse, Cam bridge

F ou n d in g E d i t o r s

David

J. A.

Clines, Philip

R .

Davies

and

David

M.

Gunn

Edi tor ia l Board

Richard

J.

Coggins, Alan Cooper, John Goldingay,

Robert P.

Gordon,

Norman K . Gottwald, G ina Hens-Piazza, Joh n Jarick, A ndrew D. H. M ayes,

Carol M eyers, Patrick D. M iller, Y v on ne Sherwood


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his page intentionally left blank


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THE BINDING OF ISAAC

A

Religious Model of Disobedience

Omri Boehm

A\

t t dark

NEW Y O R K

•

L O N D O N


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Copyright

©

2007

by

Omri Boehm

All rights

reserved.

No

part

of

this book

may be

reproduced, stored

in a

retrieval system,

or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying,

recording,

or

otherwise, without

the

written permission

of the

publisher,

T & T

Clark

International.

T & T Clark International, 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

T & T

Clark International,

The

Tower Building,

11

York Road, London

SE1 7NX

T & T

Clark International

is a

Continuum imprint.

Library of Congress

Cataloging in Publication

Data

Boehm, Omri.

The

binding of Isaac : a religious model of disobedience / Omri Boehm.

p. cm.

— (The Library

of

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies

;

468)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-567-02613-2 (hardcover

:

alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-567-02613-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1.

Isaac (Biblical patriarch)— Sacrifice. 2. Abraham (Biblical patriarch)

3.

Obedience— Biblical

teaching.

I.

Title.

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2 6 3525

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T o

fear God i s not the s a m e as to be afraid

o f

h i m . W e ar e afraid

o f

G o d wh e n w e have

transgressed and fee l gu i l ty , bu t we fear h im when we are so d isposed to conduct

ourse lves

tha t

we can

s tand before h i m .

— K ant

To my

parents,

Eti and

Amnon Boehm


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C O N T E N T S

Foreword by Jack Miles ix

Acknowledgments xiii

I N T R O D U C T I O N 1

P R E L I M I N A R Y

M E T H O D O L O G IC A L R E M A R K S :

O N T E X T U A L I N T E R P R E T A T IO N 4

Chapter 1

ABRAHAM: A MODEL OF OBEDIENCE? 12

Chapter 2

THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE STORY: ABRAHAM DISOBEYS 20

Chapter 3

T H E

T R I A L

O F

S O D O M

I N T H E

B A C K G R O U N D :

A B R A H A M 'S E T H I C A L P R O T E S T 3 4

Chapter 4

ABRAHAM'S JOURNEY TO MOUNT MORIAH: OBEDIENCE,

I N T E R N A L

S T R U G G L E O R P R E D I C T I O N O F D I S O B E D I E N C E ? 4 1

Chapter 5

T H E

R E L I G I O U S S IG N IF IC A N C E

O F T H E

A K E D A H :

E T H I C A L R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y , C H I L D S A C R I F IC E

A N D

T H E E X I S T E N C E O F T H E P E O P L E O F IS R A E L 4 9

Chapter

6

A B R A H A M 'S

P R E V E N T I O N

O F T H E

S A C R I F IC E :

I B N

C A S P I 'S I N T E R P R E T A T I O N O F G E N E S I S 2 2 5 8

Chapter

7

T H E

F U N D A M E N T A L P R IN C I P L E

O F

P R O P H E C Y :

M A I M O N I D E S ' E S O T E R I C I N T E R P R E T A T I O N O F G E N E S I S 2 2 7 3


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viii

The

inding of Isaac

Chapter 8

H E D E S T R O Y S B O T H T H E I N N O C E N T W I T H T H E W I C K E D :

B E T W E E N

J O B A N D

A B R A H A M

8 6

Chapter

9

O N

F E A R I N G

G O D

W IT H O U T B E I N G A F R A I D

O F

H I M :

F R O M K I E R K E G A A R D

T O

K A N T

1 0 1

Chapter

10

A

R E L I G I O U S M O D E L

O F

D I S O B E D IE N C E

1 2 1

Bibliography 37

Index

of

References

4

Index of Authors 44


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F O R E W O R D

Jack Miles

Before you lies a book that, long before I met its author, I yearned to

read. Perhaps no

passage

in all of Scripture—surely no passage in the

Tanakh— has provoked so broad and deep a literature of commentary as

Gen 22, the story of the heart-stopping human sacrifice that somehow

never took place.

But

this literature, many centuries

in the

writing, comes

down to us in three streams that no one before Omri Boehm has brought

fully to confluence. The first and oldest stream is that of traditional

Jewish and Christian religious commentary: midrash, hagiography, and

rabbinic or patristic exegesis. The second stream is that of philosophical

and theological commentary, Jewish and Christian, again, but rising and

subsiding

in

powerfully different

waves:

what

Maimonides and Aquinas

do

with this haunting story is not what Spinoza and Kant do, and theirs

was far from the

last wave

to

break.

The

third stream

is

that

of

modern

historical commentary, reading the ancient Israelite text critically by

reading it in and against its context in the recovered literatures and

reconstructed cultures

of

Semitic antiquity.

Even

the oldest of these streams continues to flow in a new way.

Aggadic midrash—commentary by artful narrative expansion—lives on

as biblically inspired poetry and fiction, now being written by women as

well

as

men.

As for

philosophical

and theological

speculation inspired

by

Gen

22, it has been given a grim but overwhelmingly

powerful

new

impulse

by the

Shoah, Finally,

as

regards

the unfinished

enterprise

of

historical-critical Bible scholarship, there awaits the still unexcavated

and inexhaustible immensity of the ancient Near East. In the present

context, I might mention, as just one example, the Harvard Punic Project,

which unearthed

the

tiny skeletons

of

literally thousands

of

sacrificed

infants from the "Tophet" of

ancient Carthage.

Because this trio of discursive streams continues to flow, but not for

that reason alone, the last word about the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac,

will never be written, and Omri Boehm makes no claim to the contrary.

He has produced, nonetheless, an original thesis about the righteous


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x The Binding of Isaac

disobedience

of

Abraham that,

far from

merely listing earlier opinions,

builds both on them and, so to speak, into them.

The silences of the Bible may be its most eloquent moments. In the

original, laconic version

of the

Akedah,

as

Boehm reconstructs

it,

Abra-

ham falls silent after what

is

surely

the

most poignant exchange

in the

entire episode:

Isaac:

Father

Abrah am:

Yes,

my

son.

Isaac:

Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep

for the burnt

offering?

Abrah am:

God

will

see to the

sheep

for His

burnt

offering,

my

son.

(Gen 22:7-8)

"And the two of them walked on together," the text continues, clearly

implying

silence. Abraham's reply to his son's question may no less

grammatically

be

translated: "Let

God see to the

sheep

for His

burnt

offering,

my

son."

In

Boehm's reconstructed text, these

are the

last words

Abraham speaks,

and

they hang

in the air as a

challenge

to the God who

has

commanded

the

inhuman.

Is

Abraham willing

to

comply

or

not?

In

an interpolated passage, the received text has an angel of the Lord

attribute

obedient, submissive intentions to Abraham, but Abraham

never gives voice to these himself, nor does he express acquiescence

or pleasure in the

angel's

praise. In effect, even in the received text, his

last words to Isaac are his last meaningful words. Modern commentators

have tended

to be

troubled

by

Abraham's presumed, scandalous obedi-

ence. Ancient commentators,

less

ready

to

credit

the angel's

praise, were

often

troubled by what they saw or suspected to be his latent, scandalous

disobedience. Boehm—and this, I repeat, is the great merit and charm of

this book—brings both

"families" of

interpretation into

a

single great

conversation.

Abraham's silence after Gen 22:8 is equaled, in the Bible, only by the

thematically related

and

comparably portentous silence

of Job

40:4-5

and

42:5-6.

"I am of

small worth,"

Job

says

to God in a first

attempt

to

retreat into silence:

What can I answer you?

I

clap

my

hand

to my

mouth.

I

have spoken once, and will not reply;

Twice, and

will

do so no

more. (Job

40:4-5)

But Job's silence only

further

enrages the Lord, who hears it, correctly,

as

resigned rather than repentant

and

who,

in

reply, blasts

forth— "from

the tempest"—the single most overbearing oration in the entire Bible.


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Foreword

xi

But Job will not be provoked. His terse and enigmatic rejoinder ends, in

the

Jewish Publication Society translation:

I had heard Y ou with my

ears,

But

now I see You with my eyes;

Therefore, I recant and relent,

Being

but

dust

and

ashes. (Job 42:5-6)

I have argued elsewhere for the translation:

Word of you had reached my ears,

But now that my eyes have seen you,

I

shudder with sorrow

for

mortal clay.

The

wording aside,

the effect

upon

God is

beyond dispute.

As

before

with Abraham,

so now

with Job,

it is God w ho

must

be

satisfied with

his

defiant creature's

response rather than the creature with God's. In both

exchanges, divine rhetoric inadequately masks a divine defeat.

These two paradigmatic biblical encounters come together in the cli-

mactic eighth

of

Boehm's

ten

chapters: "'He Destroys Both

the

Innocent

With

the

Wicked': Between

Job and

Abraham."

At the end of

Job's

career as at the beginning of Abraham's, the issue is divine destruction of

innocent

life,

and the

reader must determine whether

God's

Favorite—

the father of Israel or the archetype of all righteous Gentiles—is to be

celebrated

for his

gracious submission

or for his

terminal defiance.

In our

day,

as

never before, theology

has

come round

to

theodicy.

B y

bringing

his

exceptionally rich consideration

of the

Binding

of Isaac to a

focus on the death of the innocent, Omri Boehm—Israeli by birth and

early education, American

and

European

in his

more recent

formation—

has

written

a

commentary

on one

chapter

of one

book

of the

Bible that

becomes,

in its

most cogent moments,

an

apology

for the

continuing,

fertilizing

relevance

of the

Bible

as a

whole

and a

refreshing reminder

of

why the wise look back as

often

as they look ahead.


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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

I

began thinking about

the

ideas presented

in

this book when

I was

eighteen,

and

still

a

high-school student. Special thanks

are due to

Leiki

Saban and Tami Ezer, my

Tanakh

Hagbarah teachers, for inspiring my

initial

interest

in the

subject.

I

wish

to

thank

also

my

friends, Ortal, Eliel,

Alex, Shuvi, and Haggai, who encouraged m e in pursuing the first steps

of

the

writing. Professor

Avi

Horvitz,

of the

Hebrew University

in

Jerusalem, read an early draft of my first paper on Gen 22, and Professor

Ed

Greenstein

offered

a great deal of help, criticizing and commenting

on the material in the second and the fifth chapters. I have benefited

greatly from my teachers, including Robert Adams, Sara Klein-Breslavi,

Robert

Burt, John Hare, Yair

Hoffman,

Menachem Fisch, James Ponet,

and

Osnat Zinger,

as

well

as from the

help

of

Christoph Levin, Hanna

Kasher, liana Arbel, and Mati Schechtman. M y grandmother, Shoshana

Boehm, has

provided much help with German texts,

and

Mira Reich

proofread and corrected the manuscript, preventing many embarrassing

errors. Special thanks are due to the red head girl, Anat Schechtman, for

giving

my

book

its

name.

Three institutions supported me in the period of writing the book: the

"Adi Lautman Program

for

Outstanding

Students,"

Tel

Aviv University

(2001-2003),

the "Shalem

Center,"

Jerusalem (2003), and Yale Univer-

sity

(2004).


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I N T R O D U C T I O N

"Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom

you

love

and go to the

land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering..." Must Abra-

ham

obey his God? It is usually thought that the Akedah presents not

only an ethical question but also an ethical reply. But for the intervention

of the angel, Abraham would have killed his son. The moral to be drawn

would be that obedience to God takes precedence over morality as

humanly conceived. However, in a textual study of Gen 22 (first pre-

sented as a paper in Vetus T e s t a m e n t u m 52 [2001]: 1-12), I suggested

that

the figure of an

"angel

of

YHWH"

(w.

11-12), apparently checking

Abraham

at the

last moment before

he

kills Isaac,

is a

secondary

interpolation in the original text (together with the second angelic speech

which is usually considered as such). If this is so, in the original narrative

Abraham actually disobeyed the divine command to slay his son,

sacrificing

the ram

"instead

of his

son" (132

firm, v. 13) on his own

responsibility:

Then they

came

to the

place

of which God had

told him,

and Abraham

built an

altar there

and

placed

the

wood

in

order,

and he

bound Isaac

his

son and

laid

him on the altar upon the

wood;

And Abraham stretched out

his hand and

took

the

knife

to

slay

his

son...

B ut Abraham

lifted

up his

eyes

and

looked,

and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by

its horns. And Abraham w ent, and

took

the

ram,

and offered it up for a

burnt

offering instead of his son. (Gen 22:9-10, 13)

The assumption that Abraham obeyed God's command has been

commonly accepted by generations of readers. It is adopted not only by

biblical scholars—philosophers, poets

and

painters have presumed

it in

their works,

as

well

as

Jewish

and

Christian theologians.

1

In

Judaism,

Abraham's readiness to kill his son symbolizes the moment when the

blessing

of his

children—Abraham's "seed"—is confirmed. "Because

you

have done this..." the angel proclaims, "I will indeed bless you";

"your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies" (w. 16-18). In

1.

There

is an

Islamic version

of the narrative

presented

in the

Qur'an,

but it

differs significantly from that

of the

Hebrew

Bible.


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2

T he Binding

o f I saac

Christianity

the

Binding

2

prefigures

the

Crucifixion,

the

supreme event

in

world history: as Abraham was ready to sacrifice his

"beloved son,"

God

was ready to sacrifice

his,

Jesus of Nazareth. In this

way,

Abraham's

obedience prefigures

the

redemption

of the

world.

If he

actually dis-

obeyed, however, this tradition may be tested anew; we must reopen the

religious and philosophical questions that are associated with the story.

The first

part

of the

book

is

designed

to

show that

the "original" ver-

sion of the narrative did not contain the angelic figure. This is suggested

by a different style of writing, the use of different divine names and the

structural considerations of the narrative. Anxious to conceal Abraham's

disobedience,

a

later redactor interpolated

the

angelic intervention into

the text, thereby

shifting

responsibility for halting the trial from Abraham

to the angel, and commending Abraham's apparent obedience: "because

you have not withheld your son, your only son from me, blessing I will

bless

you"

(Gen

22:11-12,15-19).

As

soon

as we

observe that Abraham

in fact disobeyed

the

divine command, however,

his

character appears

more coherent. In the story of Sodom, for instance, he argues against

God's

unethical plan.

"Far

be it from

you.

Shall not the judge of all the

earth do what is just?" (Gen 18:25).

It is not necessary to assume a modern secular approach or a source

criticism method of biblical interpretation ("higher"/"lower" criticism) in

order

to see the

twofold meaning

of the

story.

3

In the

second part

of the

book, I re-examine some medieval religious interpretations of the nar-

rative, showing that Abraham's disobedience was pointed out by tradi-

tional exegetes such as Maimonides and his followers. They believed

that

the story has an esoteric, concealed layer of meaning, besides the

external one commonly realized by ordinary readers. According to these

writers, whereas this external meaning is aimed to maintain political-

religious stability, the

esoteric

layer in

fact

declares that d isobedience to

God's command was Abraham's true affirmation of faith. These esoteric

interpretations have been so far overlooked by modern scholars. This, it

seems to me, is precisely because Abraham's obedience has generally

been taken

for a

fact.

It is well known that S0ren Kierkegaard relied on a close reference to

Abraham in developing his philosophical ideas about the "Knight of

2. Throughout the book I

refer

to Gen 22 as the

"Binding"

or the Akedah

(mpr)

interchangeably.

3. "Lower criticism" is the scholarly

effort

to recognize in the biblical text phe-

nomena

as copying errors and accidental mistakes, occurring during the transmission

of the

text; "higher criticism"

is the

attempt

to

recognize

in the

ancient text deliber-

ate—sometimes even ideological—changes, created by later redactors.


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Introduct ion

3

Faith" and the "teleological suspension of the ethical." Can these con-

cepts be sustained after Abraham's disobedience is argued? Kant too

referred

to the

story

in his

religious

and

political writings, condemning

Abraham's readiness to slay his son. Abraham should have disobeyed,

Kant contends, since he could never have been certain that the command

was truly divine. In the third part of the book, I re-open the philosophical

debate between Kant and Kierkegaard. It will become clear that the

reinterpretation of the biblical text is relevant to both, shedding new light

on their argumentation.

In earlier days Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son was perceived

as a supreme act of

faith.

In our liberal-democratic culture

people

often

regard

it as a distressing and unethical religious submissiveness—per-

haps even

as an act of

insanity

or

domestic violence. These views seem

to me erroneous and misleading. Given the divine command to sacrifice

Isaac—a situation perhaps inconceivable to a modern reader who is not

ready,

or

able,

to

concede—disobedience cannot

be

regarded

a

"better"

alternative to obedience. There is no "better alternative" for Abraham in

this narrative, neither rationally nor ethically: killing one's son and

disobeying a direct divine command are both unthinkable. Therefore, this

book does not discuss such questions as what Abraham should have done

or whether he in fact did the right thing. I do not know how to answer

them and, in

fact,

would be suspicious of any account that claims to do

so. Instead, I shall remain as close as possible to the narrative itself,

attempting to verify textually what Abraham did. Having established his

disobedience,

I

will

go on, in the

concluding chapters,

to

inquire into

its

philosophical significance

and

religious implications.

Religious faith, drawing

on the

Binding

as a

model,

has

often been

understood in terms of obedience. By reinterpreting Gen 22 I seek to

argue against this conception. The monotheistic model of faith presented

by

Abraham was actually a model of disobedience.


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P R E L I M I N A R Y M E T H O D O L O G I C A L R E M A R K S :

O N

T E X T U A L I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

It is the aim of this book to propose an alternative interpretation for the

text and meaning of Gen 22. Let me begin with a few methodological

remarks.

An

alternative interpretation,

as

such, presents

a

case where

a

methodological stand must be adopted. It poses such questions as: Can a

text be given a "correct" interpretation? Can there be an "objective"

study

of the

text

of the

Bible? What

are the

methodological assumptions

of such a study? The interpretation I intend to propose is rather radical in

nature, breaking away

from

any of the traditional views; hence it

becomes appropriate to state the criteria according to which I find this

interpretation

to be the

most responsible one.

1

Can there be a

"correct"

interpretation of a biblical text? This question is

closely related

to the

question

of the

reader's objectivity,

a

matter much

treated

in

current philosophical

and

hermeneutic discussions without

much

agreement being reached. In recent years there is a growing inter-

est in the

"subjective" hermeneutic approaches (best represented

in the

work of Derrida and Barthes), which challenge the very possibility of

assigning a text an objective significance. According to these views, a

text does not have a fixed meaning, determined in the act of writing and

waiting to be discovered by the reader. Rather, they consider it as created

by the act of reading: the meaning of a story, a sentence or even a word

is

determined finally only in the context of reading, which readers bring

with them to their encounter with the text. Therefore, a text's meaning is

essentially in a flux: each reader, as a subject responsible for a different

and individual worldview, is also the final and only authority for its

"correct" interpretation. Clearly, if such a view is adopted it becomes

impossible

to

conduct

an

"objective" study

of the

biblical text.

1

1. For a full discussion, see

S e me ia 51(1990),

an issue

devoted

to the

impact

of

subjective, or post-structural

theories,

on biblical criticism.


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Pre l im inary

Methodological Remarks

5

Subjective approaches

to

biblical criticism

are

remote from

the one

adopted in this book. They seem to me to

confuse

perilously the reader

as

synonymous with

the

interpreter which

in

fact

he/she

is

not. Whereas

the first is an individual subject who may be correctly considered as the

authority determining the meaning of a text for h im/her , the interpreter

should be acting under clear methodological restrictions. These may

guide

the reader's inquiry into the independent meaning of the text, and

enable him/her to interpret it objectively. Naturally, since any interpreter

is an individual subject, it is impossible to eliminate his/her subjective

perspectives altogether; nevertheless, such tendencies can, and should, be

reduced

to a

minimum, making

place

for

such questions

as: How can we

find the meaning of the text itself? What are the criteria that enable to

speak

objectively

of its

content?

2

The

"objective" approach to textual interpretation has received sys-

tematic treatment in Austin's ̀ "Speech Act Theory," suggesting what

may be called the "performative" criterion.

3

It considers the notion of

meaning as

strongly related

to

that

of

acting:

to

understand

the objective

meaning of a given text we must discover how the author intended to act

upon the

contemporary reader's mind. This approach

is

particularly

suitable to biblical interpretation since the Bible is characteristically an

ideological text, taking

an

active role

in

shaping

a new

identity

for the

Israelite

people. Its redactors were well aware that their work would have

cardinal influence on what people think and believe in; they did not spare

an effort in editing and revising their material in order that the tradition

they constitute would be the one they actually sought after.

4

Thus many

biblical

stories—Gen 22 is a

striking example— were consciously

formu-

lated as religious paradigms, attempting to achieve canonical authority

over their readers.

The

performative criterion,

as a

guide

to the

compre-

hension of their content, becomes appropriate.

Nevertheless,

it

will

be

necessary

to modify

this

criterion in

order

to

apply it to biblical criticism, since the Bible is very different from any

2. For a different approach, see E. Greenstein: "Deconstruction and Biblical

Narrative,"

Proo ftexts

9

(1989):

43-71.

Greenstein proposes that Deconstruction

may be

relevant

not for

biblical interpretation only,

but for

theological purposes

as

well.

3.

For a

discussion

of this

approach's impact

on

biblical criticism,

see

Semia4l

(1990). For an attempt to bridge somewhat the gap between the objective and post-

structural

approaches,

see S.

Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? (Oxford: Oxford

University

Press, 1980), 190-240.

4. On the Bible's

canonical authority,

see M.

Halbertal,

People o f

th e Book:

Canon , Meaning

and

Authori ty

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1997), 1-90.


21/160

6 The Binding of

Isaac

modern text and consequently from any text that the criterion can be

made

to suit. While most modern texts are products of an instantaneous

one-act composition (the final

form

being determined almost imme-

diately after the writing process), the Bible is the result of a progressive

process.

Most scholars agree that this

is a

composite text,

a

product

of

writing, rewriting and editing, taking place in different places, times and

even centuries.

5

During this time period, the Israelite culture was under-

going through conscious struggles of determination of a new identity.

Religious-political changes were continuously taking shape as the Israel-

ites

were

not

only breaking apart from

the

pagan world

of

without,

but

also struggling within

as to the

form

of the

monotheistic culture they

constituted. Such an atmosphere naturally stimulated controversies and

disagreements: What is the

"identity"

of the new monotheistic deity?

What would be the correct way to worship it? Many traditional stories

had to be continuously edited and revised by

different

authors of

differ-

ent schools, in order to be assimilated into changing world views.

Hence

Austin's

criterion becomes problematic: it is difficult to ascribe

a given biblical text to a definite author, or to determine its target of

readership. Furthermore, since many biblical themes were formulated

to

carry religious significance and become canonical, their appeal to a

contemporary

readership is elusive: some may have been consciously

designed to appeal to a

future

readership as well. This is not to say that

Austin's approach should be dismissed altogether in the biblical context;

but it must be closely accompanied by the methodological assumptions

of biblical criticism, and modified by the specific characteristics of the

biblical text.

The first appearance of a critical approach to biblical

exegesis,

analyzing

the Bible as a composite text

formulated

by various human authors, dates

back as early as

Ibn Ezra's twelfth-century

commentary on the Torah. In

esoteric language, Ibn Ezra contested the traditional assumption that it

was entirely written by Moses and hinted to his

readers

that several

passages must have been composed later then the Mosaic

period.

He

5. There

are

some disagreements

on the

exact delineation

of the

formative

period. Most scholars agree that the latest texts of the Bible were written during the

second century B.C.E., while

the

earliest texts date

from the

tenth century

B.C.E. If

this

view is adopted, the shaping of the biblical text continued for some eight

hundred

years.

For

more details,

see A. Demsky,

"Literacy

in

Israel

and

Among

Neighboring Peoples in the Biblical

Period"

(Ph.D.

diss.,

The Hebrew University,

1976 [Hebrew]).


22/160

Pre l im inary

Me thodo log ica l Remarks 1

seems to suggest, though not in explicit language, that these passages are

in fact later interpolations, incorporated into the text by hum an authors.

6

In

1670 Spinoza published

his

Tractatus

Theologico-Pol i t icus

(The

Theological-Pol i t ical T reat ise),

contesting the authority of Scripture and

insisting that the sacred text must be subjected to scientific methods of

examination. It was only in 1753, however, six hundred years after Ibn

Ezra's commentary

on the

Torah, that

a

modern critical approach

was

explicitly pronounced, in Astruc's "First Documentary Hypothesis."

Astruc observed that some narratives

in

Genesis consistently

refer

to the

Deity

as

(YHWH) iTliT

while others equally consistently

use

(God)

DTD^X,

and suggested that Genesis w as composed of two originally inde-

pendent sources. The first he titled Eloh is te (E), the second Jeho viste (J).

Ever since Astruc first proposed the criterion of divine names for dis-

tinguishing

different

sources

of the

biblical texts, scholars have argued

and disagreed about its correct elaboration and implication in biblical

exegesis.

7

In

1823 Stahelin offered

his

"Supplementary Hypothesis,"

arguing that

the

Torah

is

basically

an E

text into which

J

passages were

only inserted. In 1853

Hupfeled

revisited this assumption, pointing out

that

what

had

generally been recognized

as the

"Elohiste"

should

in

fact

be analyzed into tw o sources,

differing

in their style of writing,

worldviews and age of com position (he recognized the first as the author

of the basic text,

identified

today as E , the second as a much later source,

identified

today as the Priestly source [P]). In 1876 these hypotheses

received a more stable articulation in the so-called Graf-Wellhausen

"critical

hypothesis." Graf

and

Wellhausen agreed that

the

text

of

Genesis basically belonged to two parallel sources, E and J, w hich were

incorporated into

one

composite text

by a

later redactor (referred

to

today

as RJE). They suggested that the

latest

source was P (dating to the exilic

or

post-exilic period), interpolated into the composite

text

of Genesis that

had previously been redacted.

In recent years there is a growing disagreement among biblical schol-

ars

as to the correct implications of the "documentary hypothesis," the

"critical hypothesis" and the like. The uncertainty involved in them has

even caused some

scholars

to

suggest

that they

are

inadequate

for

bibli-

cal criticism and should be abandoned altogether,

8

It is beyond the scope

6. See R. H.

Pfeiffer,

Introduct ion to the Old Tes tament (New York: Harper,

1941),

43.

7. For

instance,

J.

Skinner's Introduction

to his Crit ical

and

Exegetical

C o m -

mentary on Genesis

(Edinburgh:

T. & T.

Clark, 1910).

8.

For

instance,

T. D.

Alexander, "Gen

22 and the

Covenant

of

Circumcision,"

J S O T 2 5

(1983):

17-22;

G. W. Coats, "Abraham's Sacrifice of Faith: A Form-

Critical Study of Genesis 22," In t 27 (1973): 389-400.


23/160

8 T he

Binding

of Isaac

of the present study to address these controversies here, which are not

intimately related to my purpose. In what follows I shall briefly sketch

the

critical

assumptions that

are

related and,

it

seems

to me, can be

generally agreed upon.

The Bible is a composite text, created by several authors of

different

schools and different world views. These authors can sometimes be iden-

tified

and distinguished by their usage of divine names, their style of

writing and the manner in which they

represent

the Deity. If applied with

caution, these criteria may be valid; some biblical texts do persistently

prefer

one divine name to another (this principle is somewhat asymmet-

ric: E is particularly

persistent

in avoiding the term

J T B T

while J may at

times use DVrfPK). The different sources were assimilated and fitted into

one composite narrative (sometimes referred to as JE) by an act of gen-

eral redaction; the relatively ''young source," P, was inserted into this

composite text only

after

it had been redacted (actually there is some

disagreement

on

this last point; however, this disagreement

is

irrelevant

to my discussion of Gen 22).

Even though they should not be taken uncritically, these assumptions

are important; if applied

responsibly

they may adequately explain many

biblical phenomena that otherwise cannot be accounted for (such as

interpolations, repetitions

of

stories,

different

versions

of the

same story

and so

forth).

But what, then, would count as a responsible application?

To

the best of my knowledge there has not been much methodological

reflection on

this matter

by

biblical critics.

I

shall

briefly

offer

tw o

necessary, though admittedly

not

sufficient,

criteria.

a. The Ockham 's razor

cri ter io n

is originally an ontological imperative:

"Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." One must not

believe in the existence of more objects than a minimum necessary, since

no entity exists without reason and hence would not

be

if it were not

necessary. But it is the epistemological

version

of this reasoning and its

methodological application that are of interest for the biblical scholar.

When

explaining

a

given phenomenon,

one

must appeal

to the

smallest

number of factors required. That is, any phenomenon must be explained

by

the least number of explanatory elements.

This criterion, which is frequently appealed to in the empirical

sciences, can easily be made to apply to biblical interpretation: when

explicating

the

meaning

of a

biblical text,

a difficulty in it or any

other

biblical phenomenon, the interpreter should attempt to do so by the

smallest number of explanatory factors

possible

(indeed, only the


24/160

Pre l im inary M e thodo log ica l Rem arks 9

absolutely necessary ones). This

is not

only

a useful

restriction

to

apply

when

interpreting a text, but it may also guide when choosing among

different

alternatives: when

facing

several competing interpretations of a

given text, all attempting to explain the same phenomenon (a

story's

meaning, a textual difficulty in it and so forth), the simplest explanation

(i.e. the one using the least number of explanatory elements) is the one to

be

preferred.

As

W enham has

observed, this simplicity criterion

is often

violated

in

biblical scholarship.

9

Many biblical stories receive complex explanations,

dissected into different parts that are ascribed to a different source.

Unfortunately,

the present literature on Gen 22 is a good exam ple of such

a case; there lacks

one

simple interpretation that elegantly resolves

the

various

difficulties

found in the text. Von Rad writes that "in a case of a

narrative like this one, which obviously went through many stages

of

internal revision, whose material was,

so to

speak,

in

motion

up to the

end,

one

must from

the first

renounce

any

attempt

to

discover

one

basic

idea

as the

meaning

of the whole."

10

Caution,

of

course,

is

due.

In

view

of the

Ockham's razor criterion, however, such

a

remark

is

problematic.

In

particular when

facing

a

complex narrative

an

economic interpreta-

tion— bringing to a simple solution a w ide range of difficulties— has all

the chances of being a plausible one.

b. The Chari ty Principle, as it was originally defined by W . Quine, states

that when a speaker's utterances can be interpreted in more than one

way, one

should p refer

the

interpretation that maximizes

the

number

of

statements which come

out

true (i.e. maximize

its

logical

value).

11

For

instance,

if a

speaker's utterances

are

self-contradictory

and

meaningless,

their contradictory character should,

if

possible,

be

interpreted

by his/her

hearer so that it makes sense and becomes logical. If my friend tells me

that

she is

feeling

"good and bad" I should not assume that her words are

contradictory but, rather, interpret her to say that "sometimes she feels

good

and

other times bad"

or

that

at the

moment

of

speaking

she has

"mixed feelings."

Since

the

articulation

of the

Charity Principle

was

designed originally

to deal with logical problems of m eaning and translation, having to do

9. G. J. W enham, Genesis 16-50 (WBC 2; Dallas: Word Books, 1994).

10. G. von Rad,

Genesis:

A Com ment ary (trans. H. Marks; London: SCM Press,

1961), 238 (italics in original).

11.

For

Quine's

original discussion, see W. V. O. Quine,

Word and Object

(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT,

1960), 58-59.

The principle was, in

fact,

first elaborated

by Neil W ilson,

"Substances

W ithout

Substrata,"

Review

Of

Metaphysics

12(1959):

521-39.


25/160

10 The Binding of

Isaac

with the truth values of judgments and utterances, it

does

not appear

usefully

applicable for textual problems of biblical interpretation. It was

elaborated on by Ronald

Dworkin,

however, who extended it to account

for a wider range of interpretational questions.

12

Dworkin

writes that

when a

text

has

more than

one

alternative interpretation,

the one to be

preferred

is

that yielding

the

most excellent literary work. This means

that, pace Quine, logic should not necessarily be the only criterion of

charity

but may be

supplemented

by

literary, aesthetic

and

other criteria.

The

best interpretation would be the one covering all aspects of the text

(aesthetic, verbal

and

logical), maximizing their merits

to the

highest.

It is

interesting

to see

that

the

traditional exegetes

of the

Bible,

on the

assumption that

the

text

is

divine, actually applied

the

Charity Principle

in their works quite

persistently.

They often comment

not

only

on

stories,

words

or

phrases,

but

also

on the

significance

of

parts

of

speech

and

letters,

not permitting the text to have even one logical error, flaw of

formulation or even redundancy of words. Abrabanel, for instance, in his

commentary on Gen

22:13 ("and Abraham went,

and

took

the ram and

offered

it up as a

burnt offering instead

of his son...")

points

out

what

appears

to be an

extremely minor literal

flaw:

How did A braham know that the ram that he saw was

there

in

order

to be

sacrificed "instead

of his

son"

031

nnn)?

He

[God] did

not

command

him

[to slay the ram]. This ram could

have

belonged to another person's flock,

so that the

burnt

offering

would turn

out to be a theft.

13

This

gap of

information—Abraham sacrifices

the ram

without

first

receiving a direct order—is not a minor deficiency in Abrabanel's eyes,

making possible some uncharitable meanings

in the

text (for instance

that the ram was a

"theft"

and

therefore impure).

On the

assumption that

the

text is divine, this cannot be possible, and must be interpreted away.

Abrabanel expends much

effort

to show that there was some satisfying

reason to be

found

in the text, a good argument explaining why Abraham

sacrificed the ram

instead

of his

son, even though

God had

never com-

manded

him to do so.

It

is not by coincidence that another aspect of this verse was criticized

by a traditional interpreter. R. Yaacov

Kuli,

a well-known collector of

Hagaddah stories, notes that the verse contains slightly more information

than

what is necessary: "Why does the text say

'and

he offered it up as a

burnt offering ins tead o f his son' " He asks, "Obviously it was ins tead o f

12. See R. Dworkin, Law's Empire

(Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1985),

51-62.

13.

I.

Abrabanel,

A

C om m e n ta ry

on the

T or

ah

(Jerusalem:

Bnei Abrabanel, 1964

[Hebrew]):

Parashat Wayyera.


26/160

Prel iminary

Methodologica l

Remarks 11

his son,

so w hy

does

the

text have

to explain?"

14

A s

Abrabanel found

it

perplexing that Abraham sacrificed the ram instead of his son without

being specifically ordered

to do so,

Kuli

could

not

agree that

the

verse

might be redundant. In his view, there must be a reason why the text

mentions that the ram was sacrificed "instead of (in nnn)

Isaac:

by this

time Isaac supposedly had already been saved by the angel (v .

12);

why

then is it explained that the ram was sacrificed

"instead"

of him?

To modern eyes, this meticulousness

may

often seem exaggerated

or

even obsessive. As will become clear in the following chapters, this is

actually a fruitful systematic application of the Charity Principle, yield-

ing

some

of the

most precise explanations

of the

biblical text;

in

this

case, a most accurate one of Gen 22.

Most biblical scholars no longer share the assumption that the text is

sacred

and

divine, tending

to

analyze

it

according

to

("higher"/"lower")

critical methods, thus emphasizing the assumption that it is only man

made. This tendency is problematic.

Dworkin's

Charity Principle reminds

us

that,

man

made

or

not,

if we

wish adequately

to

interpret

the

Bible,

we

must assume that

it is of the

highest possible perfection.

A responsible interpretation, then, strives to discover the objective

meaning of the biblical stories by asking: How did the author intend to

influence the reader's mind? In answering this question a biblical inter-

preter should consider the possibility that the text may have more than

one

author (thus carrying with

it

more than

one

intention),

and be

able

to

account for such a phenomenon. Sometimes, this can be done by dis-

tinguishing different authors from each other according to their usage of

divine names, their style

of

writing

and

other philological criteria. How-

ever, since these methodological assumptions are not definitive, any

interpretation should be evaluated by the criteria of Ockham's razor and

the Charity Principle. Among competing interpretations, that which

observes them more successfully

is the one to be

preferred.

I

would like to emphasize that even though this book employs (par-

ticularly in the first two chapters) methods of biblical source criticism, it

is

by no means committed to them. A s pointed out in the Introduction,

this

fact

should be made clear in Chapters 6 and 7, dealing

with

Maimon-

ides'

and Ibn Caspi's interpretations. Clearly, Ibn Caspi and Maimonides

did

not approach the Bible with a modern-critical perspective. Yet, as I

shall argue, their interpretations of the Binding come extremely close to

the one elaborated in this book.

14. Y.

Kuli,

Yalqut

M e

'am

Lo

r

ez:

A

Collection

o fAggada,

Commentaries,

and

H alak h a . Genesis (Jerusalem: H. Wagshall, 1967 [Hebrew]), 430.


27/160

Chapter 1

ABRAHAM: A MODEL OF OBEDIENCE?

Abraham,

don't

let your thoughts grow proud You built one altar and did

not offer up your son, but I built seven altars and offered up my sons on

them ("The Woman and her Seven

Sons,"

Yalkui)

It

is usually thought that the purpose of the Binding was to put Abra-

ham's obedience to the test. In order to examine him, God commands

that he makes the most terrifying sacrifice conceivable. Is his faith strong

enough? From this conception follows

the

common appreciation

of

Abraham's religious conduct; namely, that in his readiness to sacrifice

his son he

performed

an

exceptional

act of

obedience, presenting

a

model

of unprecedented devoted

faith.

"The founding father's willingness to

sacrifice

his son as a

proof

of

devotion,"

says

Sarna,

"created

an

inex-

haustible store

of

spiritual credit upon which

future

generations

may

draw."

1

Vermes similarly writes that by consenting to offer his son

"Abraham proved his perfect love [for God], and his example became the

cornerstone

of the

whole Jewish theology... "

2

If we look more carefully, however, it appears that this common

understanding cannot be adopted without reservations. The obedience

Abraham displays in the narrative w as in fact nothing out of the ordinary

in the

Near East, where stories

of

child

sacrifice— in

which

the son is

actually slain by his

father— are

frequently encountered. His sacrifice

was no more tremendous, to give only one example, than that of Mesha

the king of Moab who, observing that a battle was going against his city,

"took

his son who was to reign in his stead, and sacrificed him for a

burnt offering upon the wall" (2 Kgs 3:26-27). W hy not acclaim Mesha

as a religious ideal, a "knight of faith"?

1. N. Sarna, The JPS Torah C o m m e n ta ry :

Genes i s

(Philadelphia: The Jewish

Publication Society of America, 1989), 51.

2. G. Vermes, Scripture and Tra di tion in Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 193.


28/160

1.

A

b r a ha m :

A

M o d e l o f Obed ience

?

13

As we shall presently see, Gen 22 is formulated as a paradigmatic

narrative, intended

to

present

a

significant model

of faith to the

reader.

Yet

if the

narrative

is to

have such exceptional religious value,

it

cannot

consist of the founding father's willingness to obey.

1

God's command to Abraham, that he sacrifice his only son Isaac is a

distressing order on the personal level, that of a father's love for his son.

As S0ren Kierkegaard puts

it,

Abraham's relation

to

Isaac

is

"simply

expressed

by

saying that

a

father should love

his son

more dearly than

himself."

3

What

is

actually

at

issue

in

this narrative, however, goes

far

beyond the personal. The trial is set in order to pose a matter of principle:

God

is the monotheistic deity, Abraham the symbol of the monotheistic

believer,

and the sacrifice of the son constitutes a pagan ritual, where a

grave moral sin is inherent. The impossible meeting of the three (God,

father and son) presents a paradigmatic dilemma: "Must the father of

monotheism obey

his

God?"

4

That Abraham is a symbol of the monotheistic believer is recognized

in a wide range of traditional texts, both in and outside the Bible. The

clearest biblical expression

is

found

in Gen

12:1, where

God

commands

Abraham

to leave his country and his father's house, and travel to a new

land which

he

shall point

out to

him: "Go-you away [^7 * ] * ? ]

from

your

country and your kindred and your father's house, to the land that I will

show you."

5

This command marks the moment at which Abraham, who

at

that time

still

followed

his

father's pagan tradition,

is

ordered

to

break

away and make a new

beginning.

6

3. S0ren Kierkegaard, F e a r and

Trem bling (trans, and ed. H.

Hong

and E.

Hong;

Princeton: Princeton University

Press,

1983),

59.

4.

Ibid. Problem one: "Is there such a thing as a teleological suspension of the

ethical?"

5. Translations do not do justice to the Hebrew, ]* ? "]*?. This is an unusual

rhyme,

which echoes again

in Gen 22:

ITmQn f H K * ?

]* ? "]bl

(translated

in the K J V as

"go to" and in the NSV as "Go from"). In both instances I have opted to read "go-you

away."

6.

Abraham's sort

of

"natural" monotheistic tendency

w as

also

reflected

in a

famous M idrash,

describing

the ten

years

old

Abraham

as he

searches

for his

God:

"Then

he

[Abraham] arose

and

walked about,

and he left the

cave,

and

went along

the

edge

of the

valley.

When the sun

sank,

and the

stars came forth,

he

said, 'these

are

the gods ' B ut the

dawn came,

and the

stars could

be

seen

no

longer,

and he

said

'I

will not pay worship to these, for they are no

gods.'

But again the sun rise, and he

said, 'He is my god, him will I extol.' But again the sun set and he said 'He is no


29/160

14

The Binding of I saac

This symbolic reputation is repeated in Gen 22. God commands

Isaac's sacrifice

(v. 2) in the

following words:

"Take

your son, your only

son

Isaac, whom

you

love,

and

go-you

away

[ J*7

*]^]

to the

land

of

Moriah.. ,"

7

The phrase "go-you away" takes us back to its first (and only

other) appearance, when God commanded Abraham to leave his

father's

land and move to an unknown one: ".. .to a land that I will show you"

(Gen 12:1).

The

similarity between

the

commands

is

expressed also

in

their structure, which is formulated along a parallel rhythm. In Gen 12

God says "Go-you

away from

your country, and from your kindred, and

from your father's house,

to the

land that

I

will show you," while

in

the

Akedah his command reads: "Take now your son, your only son,

your only son Isaac, whom you love and go-you

away

to the land of

Moriah..." Moreover, in both cases Abraham is ordered to start a

journey, but the precise destination is withheld

from

him (".. .to a land

that I will show you" [Gen 12:1];"...

.upon

one of the mountains which I

will

tell

you" [Gen

22:2]).

Thus,

as we

read

of

Abraham's reaction

to

God's command, we are reminded not only of his role as the

father

of

Isaac but of his role as the father of monotheism.

Isaac too is a symbol, and his part in the story cannot be merely that of

Abraham's 'only son'. He was not chosen as the subject matter of this

trial simply as being the most precious sacrifice that could be demanded

from a father. Isaac was chosen because the

future

of God's promise to

Abraham— the future existence of the Israelite

people—depended

on his

life.

As we recall, at the time of the command Abraham was an old man;

Isaac's slaying, indeed horrifying

on the

personal level,

is

thus incon-

ceivable

in its

public consequences, contradicting

God's

earlier promise

to

make Abraham

the

"ancestor

of a

multitude

of

nations" (Gen 17:5).

This contradiction

too is

expressed

in

God's command "go-you away"

("[̂

*]b). When God first said these words to Abraham, instructing him

to leave his father's house, he related them to the promise to multiply his

seed:

"go-you away...

I will make

you a

great nation,

I

will bless

you

and make your name great.. .and

in you all the

families

of the

earth shall

be

blessed" (Gen 12:1-3) Using

the

same phrase,

he

commands

the

slay-

ing

of

Isaac.

Thus,

as

Speiser points out, while

the first

time Abraham

is

commanded "go-you away" he is ordered to leave behind his past

god,' and beholding the moon, he called her his god to whom he would pay Divine

homage. Then the moon was obscured, and he cried out:

'This,

too, is no god There

is one who

sets them

all in motion.'" See L.

Ginzberg's The

Legends

of th e Jews

(trans.

H.

Szold; Philadelphia:

The

Jewish Publication Society

of America,

1909),

189.

7.

See also von Rad, Genes i s , 234.


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1.

A

b r ah a m :

A M o d e l

of Obed ience

? 15

(sacrifice

it, if you

will),

the

second time

he is

ordered

to

sacrifice

his

Israelite future.

8

Since the command of sacrifice sets

forth

a paradigmatic trial, it is

reasonable

to

expect that

the

narrative presents

an

exceptional moment

of

faith.

Since Abraham

was

ready

to do the

inconceivable—checked

by the

angel at the very last moment and praised for not

"sparing"

his son— this

paradigm has often been interpreted in terms of obedience. Indeed, to

modern eyes this

may

seem obvious:

a

father's readiness

to

sacrifice

his

beloved son presents an exceptional act of submission. To earlier readers,

however, this was not quite as obvious. On the contrary, as I already

said, stories

of

child sacrifice were

frequently

encountered

in the

Near

East;

there was nothing out of the ordinary in Abraham's readiness to

sacrifice Isaac.

The

Near Eastern stories all share a common pattern: they tell of a

noble leader of a people or a city who, in a time of impending danger of

destruction, sacrifices his son in order to appease the gods. The act of

sacrifice and the death of the leader's son (who is often termed, like

Isaac, his "only son," TIT

9

) are thus the key to the survival of the people:

because the son was sacrificed, the people are saved.

Isaac's

case,

indeed, is very similar in this respect. A s the child of the promise, he too

is the key to the

survival

of the

people, though

in a

different

way

than

that common

in the

Near Eastern tradition.

If the

people

of

Israel

are to

exist, Isaac has to

live.

This un-coincidental similarity indicates that the

Akedah

is not only similar to the Near Eastern traditions but must be

somehow connected to them. I shall explore this relation in detail in

Chapter

5.

Suffice

it to say

here that

in

light

of

this association, Abra-

ham's obedience, his readiness to go to the last moment, becomes quite

immaterial. In the Near Eastern stories, the father is not only willing to

slay

his son but, unlike Abraham, eventually does so.

4

Maccabees reports an incident (167-164

B.C.E.)

which later became

known

as the case of "the woman and her seven

sons."

A Jewish woman

had to choose between eating from the meat of the Roman sacrifices or

dying together with

her

sons,

and

chose death (4

M ace 14:26). A

later

8.

See also ibid., 239: "Above all, one must consider Isaac, who is much more

than

simply

a 'foil' for A braham,

i.e.,

a

more

or less

accidental object

on

which

his

obedience

is to be

proved. Isaac

is the

child

of the

promise.

In him

every saving

thing

that God has promised to do is invested and guaranteed."

9. See J.

Levenson,

T he

Death

and

Resurrect ion

of the Beloved Son

(New

Haven:

Yale University

Press,

1993),

25-31.


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16 The

Binding

o f I saac

midrash puts the following words in her mouth:

"Children,

do not be

distressed... Go and tell Father Abraham: let not your heart swell with

pride

You

built

one

altar,

but I

have built seven altars

and on

them have

offered

up my seven

sons..

."

10

These words are well known and frequently cited. Yet one element in

them

often remains overlooked, namely, that they are genuinely to the

point. Through the mother's death speech, the midrash conveys an

uneasy feeling that

the

paradigmatic instance

of

monotheistic

faith,

Abraham's "Last

Trial,"

is not at all exceptional. Her act, as Spiegel

writes, "could make the biblical hero blush: 'Yours was a tr ial , mine was

the

per form ance^"

11

Indeed, in her story there was no angel.

The same feeling is probably the explanation of the following aggadah,

describing Abraham's reaction

to the

angelic command

to

desist:

"When

Abraham had been forbidden to lay a hand on Isaac, he said: Let me

extract from him one drop of blood and let this be regarded as though I

had slaughtered him"

(Gen. Rab.

56:7). H ad the read iness to

perform

the

sacrifice been as noteworthy as modern readers usually assume, asking

for

a drop of blood would not have been necessary; Abraham would have

sufficiently

demonstrated his devotion without voicing such a request.

This aggadah struggles to add to the Binding something that is actually

missing in it. More traditions confirm the same impression; the following

is from Don Isaac Abrabanel:

And

Abraham cried

to his God...

"Let

now Thy

mercy note well what

all

manner

of men

will

say

this day, namely, that

I did not sacrifice my

son,

and

that all of my intention was vain and a

lie..."

.. .The whole purpose

of

Abraham's prayer

and

supplication

was

that

God

would

not

prevent

him

from offering up oflsaac as a sacrifice

even

after the

sacrifice

of the

ram, for

otherwise

his

intention

and

wish

to

serve

God

would

not be

believed...

12

A

discourse

in

which Abraham's intentions

are

doubted

is

surely very

different

from

our

own, where stretching forth

one's

hand

to the knife

seems more than convincing. But evidently it was not: for earlier readers

what

is

exceptional about

the

Binding

was not

that Abraham

was

ready

to perform the sacrifice, but that eventually he did not do so. Thus if

Abraham

is to be presented as a religious ideal in this story, he cannot be

one

of obedience. A perplexing suspicion even arose; was Abraham

faithful?

The following prayer is put in his mouth in an aggadah quoted

from Hezekiah bar

Manoah:

10. Yalkut, Deu te ronom y , 26 #938.

11.

S.

Spiegel,

The Last Trial

(New York:

Behman, 1964), 16.

12.

Quoted in

ibid.,

129.


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1. A b r a h am : A M o d e l o f

Obed ience

? 17

When they see my son returning with me, they will say that I proved the

liar

to God on

high

and

despised

His

words,

and

they will

not

believe that

the cause [of restraint] was the

Lord's.

Then let the Holy one, blessed be

He,

take no te

that

I have no t rebel led against His com m ands and may H e

be my

Witness.

1

^

As we

have seen,

the

Akedah

is

formulated

as if to

introduce

a

model

of

faith, putting the father of monotheism to a paradigmatic

test.

W e may

justifiably assume, therefore, that the narrative was designed to present

an exceptional moment of religious conduct. Yet the perplexity

expressed

by

generations

of

readers excludes

the

usual understanding.

This

is not a

paradigm

of

exceptional obedience.

Philo of Alexandria, polemicizing with Hellenistic critics w ho ridiculed

Abraham's obedience, invested much effort in dismissing such claims.

14

There is a crucial

difference

between Abraham's "sacrifice" and those of

other Near Eastern fathers, he argues. Whereas they served God to

achieve a definite purpose, Abraham served God purely, with no inten-

tion of gaining anything in return. In the Near Eastern traditions fathers

did indeed sacrifice their sons in order to gain something in return,

namely, the rescue of their people.

15

Thus Abraham, who

does

not embark

on a

sacrifice

to

rescue

his people

(but

on the

contrary

jeopardizes

their

existence), is unique. His is a pure religious sacrifice.

Kierkegaard adopts

the

same line

of

argument.

He too finds

himself

defending

Abraham's

obedience,

comparing

it to the

apparently superior

religious conducts of noble fathers who actually sacrificed their sons (he

calls them "tragic heroes"). The crucial difference, Kierkegaard says, is

that while they were acting in an

"ethical

dimension" (that is, in so far as

they sacrificed their sons

for the

purpose

of

saving their people their

conduct was not murder but could be deemed "good") Abraham was not.

His

is not an ethical sacrifice made in order to save the public. It is solely

religious, performed out of duty to God:

The difference

between

the

tragic hero

and

Abraham

is

very obvious.

The

tragic hero is still within the ethical. H e allows an expression to have its

telos in a

higher expression

of the

ethical;

he

scales down

the

ethical rela-

tion between father

and son or

daughter

and

father

to a

feeling that

has its

13.

In

Hezekiah bar-Manoah, Hizkuni (Lwow, 1859)

(m y

emphasis).

14.

Philo,

D e A br a h a m o

33.178.

15. Ibid.


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18

The

Binding of Isaac

dialectic

in its

relation

to the

idea

of

moral

conduct...

Abraham's situa-

tion is different. By his act he transgressed the ethical altogether and had

a higher

telos

outside it, in a relation to which he suspended it... It is not

to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the state that Abraham does it;

it

is not to

appease

the

angry gods.

16

Thus Abraham's trial is an instance of sharp collision between an ethi-

cal dimension and a religious one. "Ethically speaking," says Kierke-

gaard, "Abraham was going to murder his son." Religiously, he adds, "he

was

going to sacrifice

him."

It is in this tension that the

Akedah

is differ-

ent from any

other story

of

child sacrifice,

and in

this respect (namely,

the

"teleological

suspension

of the

ethical")

that Abraham's

act of

faith

is

exceptional. With this explanation (which has a strong echo of Philo),

Abraham is supposed to regain his incomparable character, justify ing his

place

as the

"father

of

monotheism";

in Kierkegaard's

words,

his

place

as

the

"Knight

of

Faith."

Kierkegaard's line of defense is very attractive. It is, nevertheless,

insufficient

and

inconsistent with

the

simple text.

As the

angel

of

YHWH

explains in w. 11-12, it is by

obedience—and

nothing else—that Abra-

ham

has

demonstrated

his

great

act of faith:

"for

now I

know that

you

fear God, since

you

have

not

withheld your son, your only son, from

me." There

is

nothing

in

these words

to

suggest Kierkegaard's argument

that

Abraham's willingness

to

slay

his son was

exceptional

in

being pure

of

purpose,

a

clean religious conduct;

the

angel acclaims

the

merits

of

Abraham's act of obedience with no

further

explanation. If anything, his

words actually contradict Kierkegaard's argument, emphasizing that

Abraham's

obedience would receive

a

reward: "Because

you

have done

this thing, and have not withheld your son..

.blessing

I will bless you"

(w. 15-19).

The difficulty in

explaining

the

religious significance

of the

Akedah

has

led

more recent scholars

to

suggest other alternatives.

The first

thing that

strikes

the

reader

as

exceptional

in

this story

is the

fact

that Isaac

was not

eventually killed. It has therefore been suggested that the story is

intended as a polemic against the ritual of child sacrifice: it presents the

well-known

tradition of the noble father who sacrifices his son, but

changes the outcome. The son survives; God does not will the death of

the son. Thus Spiegel writes that "Quite possibly the primary purpose of

the Akedah story may have been only this: to attach to a real pillar of the

16. Kierkegaard, F e a r and Trem bl ing , 69-70.

4


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1. A b r ah a m : A M o d e l of

Obed ience

? 19

folk

and a revered reputation the new norm— abolish human sacrifice,

substitute animals instead."

17

Paul Mosca similarly argues that the

original purpose

of the

story,

"may

well have been

to

explain

why

YHWH

no longer— or never— demanded the sacrifice..."

18

If this line of inter-

pretation were

to be

adopted,

the

story would have regained

its

religious

significance,

marking a turning point in the history of religious thought.

However, this view

too is

untenable. "Here

is the fire and the wood,"

says Isaac, "but where

is the

lamb

for a

burnt offering?"

(v. 7).

Indeed,

the story already assumes animal, not human sacrifice, prior to

Isaac's

rescue. Levenson comments here that,

as an

etiology

of the

redemption

of

the firstborn son, G en 22 is "Most in

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