Here’s the challenge in Genesis 22, and don’t rush your reading of this text please. Feel what you feel. Think what you think. Wonder in your wonders.
Gen. 22:1 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash
The challenge is for the reader and can be asked in a question: Why the silence? (In those italicized words.) Why no protest?
Once in our church Genesis 22 was the lectionary reading for the day. Lay people read the lessons. As the man was reading this text he began to cry and had to pause more than once to finish.
Now, why the silence on Abraham’s part?
Long ago I learned from reading Meir Sternberg and Robert Alter to ask about the textual gaps in such texts.
All this is addressed with theological and exegetical finesse in J. Richard Middleton’s new book, Abraham’s Silence. I hope you buy it. I hope you read it. Most of all I hope you read it carefully, slowly, ponderingly, wonderingly.
Questions for you: Have you ever asked or wondered why Abraham was silent? Why did he not protest? Or run and hide? Or walk away from a God like that?
Middleton opens his book examining lament and protest prayers in the Psalms as paradigms for how God is willing to interact with God’s people. Israel’s God approves “vigorous” prayer, that is, prayers that engage back and forths with God.
What about Abraham’s silence? Was it the silence of protest?
Job, which is the second part of his book (but pressed into quick service in the 1st part of the book), protested. Vigorously. They are “voices from the ragged edge,” these pray-ers in the Bible. Unafraid to tell God what they think of what God is or is not doing. Vigorous is the right word.
Middleton, with others, refuses the “greater good” theory that evil is real but there’s a greater good in God’s plan. The prayers of the Psalms go through orientation into disorientation and at times into reorientation.
Lament is how people in disorientation respond. Lament is a kind of prophetic protest from the ragged edge of human experience and expectation of a good God.
In Exodus 32 Moses goes toe to toe with God. Protesting vigorously.
Some prophets stand in the breach as did Moses: Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.
Our God of overflowing love welcomes vigorous prayers of lament and protest.
Join me in reading this book.
"Israel’s God approves “vigorous” prayer, that is, prayers that engage back and forths with God." - I've noticed this in the Bible. I don't think I've ever seen a Christian negotiate with God the way that some OT characters did. So do you think God wanted Abraham to argue back and say "Hey, this is not a good idea!" God provided a lamb but - was he hoping Abraham would have asked for one? This does seem like God, that God wanted plan A but Abraham didn't realize he could have said "Hey God, you gave me this son, it makes no sense to ask for him back already!", and even so God gave him a plan B and told him to stop just in time. It's interesting that God didn't say "look, there's a ram over there". He just said "Stop!" - Abraham still has to find the ram and decide to use it instead of Isaac. Anyway, I shudder about the collateral damage caused to Isaac by Abraham not questioning God. Did they have to have years of father/son therapy after Abraham bound Isaac and literally stood over him with a knife? Should they have had? And speaking of silence, why didn't Isaac complain about this plan to Abraham? Was it because he was raised in a 'don't talk back' household, in which Abraham doesn't question God and Isaac is not allowed to object to Abraham's very cruel and weird plan? Does this incident have repercussions later with Isaac and his own children? Later on Isaac loves Esau because he gets tasty game to eat. That's not a very spiritual reason is it? Anyway Scot, unless I missed it, everything you said about the book (which does sound intriguing) is about people who protest vigorously to God. You didn't say what it says about Abraham. But maybe that's the point - you want us to read it for ourselves!
"Middleton, with others, refuses the “greater good” theory that evil is real but there’s a greater good in God’s plan." Not meaning to be obtuse, but how does this statement square with the idea of the victory of the cross and the resurrection?