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Feb 3, 2022Liked by Scot McKnight

I've often considered how powerful a role art has played in my understanding of this story. Images of Abraham and Isaac inevitably raise for me the question, "How old is Isaac?" Is he a young boy, like in Michelangelo, his gaze locked on his father's with that up pointing finger poised midway between them? Or is he hairy, bearded and grown, like in some 19th C Ashkenazi art? I tend for the latter understanding. Reading the text somewhat literally, Isaac is in his late 30's when this story takes place. So for me, I'm not so interested in what Abraham is thinking, as I am in what Isaac is thinking. Silently reproachful? Willing participant and equal partner? It is telling, as Middleton points out, there is no story that has Isaac coming back down the mountain and going home to live peaceably with his folks...Having said all this, I'm just starting the new translation of Fear & Trembling and it's gonna take more than this book to shake me loose from Kierkegaard.

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Feb 3, 2022Liked by Scot McKnight

I think the way we interpret this passage depends on what sort of people we believe God wants us to be. Is God looking for people who will submit no matter what to an instruction they believe is from God, whether it's an audible voice, a thought, a Bible verse, advice from a Christian leader, whatever - or is God looking for people who make every effort to be people of good character and good values and who will question that which goes against their values or asks them to act in ways which betray their character no matter what the source? I contend that the latter is safer for human communities than upholding unquestioning submission as the ultimate act of faith, because how can we know it is God asking us to submit, or as Middleton points out, even if it is, why would we believe this is a test of faithful unquestioning submission rather than a test of whether we will speak up or say no when something doesn't make sense, rather than betray our values? I believe this whole discussion is good because implicitly it is saying, yes, do question, don't just accept things. Because I believe to do so is our human responsibility.

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Thanks for the provocative comments about Abraham's relationship to his son Isaac. There's much to ponder in this story. For me a couple of factors have influenced my thinking in reading Genesis 22. The first is this: Abraham was 75 in Gen 12 when God promised that he would become a "great nation," blessing the world. But Abraham had to live with an unrealized promise for twenty-five years (!). He was 100 when Isaac was born: twenty-five years living with an unrealized promise. The birth of Isaac was so miraculous that Abraham could not attribute it to "natural causes." That had to impact his belief in God's promise. So when I get to Gen 22 it seems that Abraham had reason to trust God in this outrageous request that he sacrifice Isaac. A second thing in the biblical text, however, is the long periods of time (and place) that intervened in Abraham's life before this order to sacrifice his son. Gen 21 ends with the statement that "Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines a long time" and immediately moves to "Some time later God tested Abraham." So much is left out of the biblical account re: this "test" of Abraham's faith in God. Thanks for including the insights re: the "God" requiring this sacrifice. Which "God" seems to be very significant.

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The spiritual powers of evil were trying to cut off Abrahams's inheritance by tricking him into killing Isaac. https://www.kingwatch.co.nz/Hard_Scriptures/abraham_isaac.htm

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Let me begin by saying that I have not read Middleton's book, so I do not have the full context. There are many periods of silence in the OT. There is the 400 year silence, essentially, between Joseph and Moses; we are only told of the enslaving events, but the gap is massive. There is also the gap between the end of the OT and the NT. I would posit, that some of the greatest heroes of faith, those who kept the faith alive of the God of the Patriarchs, were those people living in that period of God's silence. There is much silence in the narrative of the book of Ruth. The book is silent, beyond the simple factor of the narrative is advanced, as to the reasons and circumstances surrounding the deaths of all the males in Naomi's family. Why these silences; it makes one wonder? Silence from Abraham? Was their a dialogue we are simply not privy to?

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I thoroughly was challenged by Middleton's book (he has a way of doing that, in really good ways) and appreciated the connections to Job and Jonah. What is our role as priests and mediators today? To intercede and plead for mercy and understanding, to give to others that which we've received, to trust that God is able to give life where we see only death....to perhaps not get so stuck in binary options or think we only have false choices. I probably need to come back to wrestle with Abraham's silence from time to time, as it does create a lot of thoughts for how I live daily as a broken person living in a broken world.

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Abraham was on a journey many of us make. A journey away from the God who requires a sacrifice to the God who provides the sacrifice.

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