Brothas and Sistahs, gather 'round -- it's time for some Bible-reading!! (Part I of 2)
Perhaps I'm taking an online quiz a little far, but I've been doing some thinking about the results I posted about a couple of days ago. I mentioned at the time that I felt my results slightly justified, to some extent anyway, due to the company I shared in 'biting the bullet' on account of agreeing that God, or anything worth calling God anyway, could conceivably be understood as requiring someone to do something horrific. I've done some writing and lecturing on precisely this topic, so perhaps you'll indulge me a bit here. The prototypical texts when dealing with this problematic issue are Genesis 22 (called the Akedah) and Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I thought I'd offer a brief literary reading of the former, and then make my way, in Sunday or Monday's post, to the pretty scary implications of the latter. I warn you now, this could get a bit long. If none of this sounds like your cup o' tea, ignore the next two posts.
* * * * * *The Genesis 22 narrative begins ‘After these things’ referring, presumably, to the things that have just happened in the last chapter -– chapter 21, where Abraham has been forced to banish his son Ishmael because of the shrewish rivalry between his wife Sarah and his concubine Hagar. It may just be an innocent connecting phrase, but ‘After these things’ has the effect of deliberately reminding us of what has just happened (or making us look up what has just happened, if we don’t already know, and bearing it in mind). Then the narrator tells us that God ‘tested’ (the Hebrew word can also be translated as ‘tempted’) Abraham, but only the narrator, the reader and God know this. We as readers share with the narrator a God’s-eye view of events, while Abraham himself knows nothing at all about this being a test. There are no reasons given for why God tests Abraham (compare the first chapter of the book of Job, where it is clear that Job suffers because of a heavenly competition between God and his adversary, in which God agrees to let the adversary –- ha-satan -– try Job’s worth.) We are also not given any context—we’re not told where Abraham is when God speaks (is he in his tent, out in the hills) –- nor are we told how he experiences the presence of God.
It seems that the text is not concerned to tell us these things, but is more concerned to get straight to the point. The conversation is crisp –- simply ‘Abraham’, and ‘Here I am’ (essentially ‘I’m here, Go ahead’). But God’s command, when it comes, is very full, with lots of sub-clauses describing Isaac: ‘Take your son, your only son, 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’ (22.2). Referencing Isaac as ‘your only’ and ‘your beloved’ emphasizes the awfulness of the test. It is as if the narrator is making the test as difficult as possible –- or, as if God is ‘rubbing it in’.
Incidentally, ‘Your only son’ is a very strange phrase that may well raise a few questions. After all chapter 21, which the narrator has just directly recalled for us, makes it clear that Isaac is not Abraham's only son; he, in fact, has two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Not only is Abraham being commanded to burn his promise-child, the child he has waited so long for, but the text emphasises (exaggerates?) his preciousness by making him, for the intents and purposes of this narrative, the only son. Note also that Abraham is not told where he is going, but is simply told to go to the land of Moriah –- which the Greek version of the Old Testament / Tanakh translates as the 'land of seeing', or the 'land of vision'. Abraham is to be led to the place of vision, or revelation, but for now he has to follow as one blind.
And stil Abraham says nothing. The gulf between verse 2 and 3 is yawning. We would expect some reaction on the part of Abraham, some cry or protest that the command is too difficult (after all figures as prominent as Moses and Jeremiah are described as resisting the call of God, even though they want to obey it). It's not as if Abraham hasn't reacted with emotion before. Genesis 23.11 reports that he responds to the expulsion of Ishmael by being ‘very distressed’; he has also bartered and pleaded with God on behalf of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. Abraham's characterisation here is much more enigmatic; with this Abraham, we don’t know what he thinks or feels. Instead, we just get action and very meticulous preparation for the journey, which begins with Abraham rising early in the morning (22.3). This is a tantalising detail, since biblical authors always throw in details for a reason: i.e., we're compelled to wonder why it might be significant that Abraham gets up early. Is it to stress his obedience? his fervency to fulfil the command of God as urgently as possible? or to get the awful task over with as soon as he can?
The next part of the text is very pedantically practical. Abraham takes everything you need for a sacrifice, and you can almost see him with his checklist. Donkey? Check. Two young men? Check. Wood (which, of course, must first be chopped)? You betcha. Oh, and the beloved son. But even as it gives us these practical details, the narrative again omits the human details: what Abraham told Isaac to get him to go along with him; what Abraham said to Sarah (and if indeed Sarah knew anything about this). Again, everything is stripped down to a bare skeleton. Similarly, we get no information about the journey -- nothing, not the direction they went in, not the scenery they passed through. A narrative second is spent on the three days of the journey, a blink of an eye and he looks up and sees the place from afar (22.4).
Leaving behind the the young men at this point of the journey increases the story's tension, as father and soon go off alone up the mountain. It’s interesting, by the way, to ask why the narrator even includes the young men in the first place. There are a lot of journeys in the Bible, in Genesis even, that don't go out of their way to describe practical details like who it is that's carrying the bags. It seems to me that the narrator mentions them because leaving them behind is a way, as I just mentioned, of increasing and the tension; it also, though, requires that Abraham provide some kind of explanation about what it is he's doing. That is, maybe the narrator chooses to take them along so that Abraham must say something to them, and in doing so emphasize the unspeakability of what he is about to do. The fact that he says ‘I and the lad will go yonder, and sacrifice, and come back to you’ (22.5) suggests perhaps that this is something so awful that he cannot speak it directly (what would the young men do if they knew? – would they try to hold him back, reason with him? –- or, the horror, what if Isaac overheard?). However, Abraham’s enigmatic speech serves only to increase the mystery and leaves us with more ambiguity. Is this a necessary (or white) lie, or a statement of faith, or something simply practical (if he says what he is about to do won’t they try and pull him back)? Perhaps the fact that Abraham cannot tell anyone further emphasizes his loneliness -– the impossibility of him speaking and sharing the task.
As Abraham and Isaac go up the mountain, again there is an emphasis on tools. As if to stress the purpose of the journey, Abraham puts the wood on Isaac’s back, and Abraham carries the knife and the fire. The detail of the wood placed on the back of Isaac (22.6) is significant because it anticipates the reversal that is yet to come, when Isaac will be placed on the wood of the pyre. Then we get ‘so the two of them walked on together’; a line that is repeated again, for emphasis in verse 8. The repetition stresses the bond between father and son, but it also stresses the awfulness of the situation: father and son are one, they are together -- but one is to slaughter and the other to be slaughtered (and one knows this while the other does not). Then comes the conversation between Isaac and Abraham that begins ‘Father’ . . . ‘Here I am,’ which obviously echoes the conversation between Abraham and God at the beginning.
The parallel deliberately compares Abraham’s obligation to God and his obligation to his son, as he says ‘Here I am’ to both of them. The conversation that follows is ambiguous and euphemistic, just like Abraham’s conversation with the young men. Isaac says ‘Here is the fire and the wood but where is the lamb’; and Abraham answers ‘God himself will provide’. Again this can be read as a necessary evasion, a white lie, maybe even a statement from which Isaac is to infer the real meaning without his father having to say it directly. This raises the question: Does Isaac know, or doesn’t he know? If Abraham’s phrase is meant to keep the secret from isaac, does this once more emphasize the terribleness of what is going to happen? Can Abraham not tell Isaac for (related) pragmatic reasons because he might then resist or run away?
If we are familiar with the story already, most of us are through the Christian version, where Isaac is equated with Jesus, and vice versa, and where Isaac carrying the wood on his back becomes a sign of Jesus carrying his cross. Because Jesus is a willing sacrifice –- the lamb who willingly goes to the slaughter –- it is generally assumed that Isaac also willingly takes on the role of lamb. In reading the text this way, though, one conveniently forgets that the Isaac of Genesis is never explicitly told of his sacrificial role, only, enigmatically, that ‘God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice’. The verb ‘to provide’ in Hebrew sounds very like the verb ‘to see’ and so links into the theme of seeing and not seeing; it also anticipates verse 22.14, where Abraham says ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be seen’, or ‘On the mountain of the Lord God will provide’. (Note: In the version of the sacrifice in the Qur’an Abraham [or Ibrahim] does specifically ask his son’s opinion, and the son explicitly gives him permission to obey the will of God).
In verses 9-10, the story suddenly slows to slow-motion. Abraham builds the altar, lays the wood, binds his son Isaac, and lays him on the altar on top of the wood (where else?). The building up of detail seems laborious and is in total contrast to the instant spent on the three-day journey in 22.3. The purpose of the build up of detail may be to retard the action and increase the suspense; or perhaps to communicate, indirectly, Abraham’s reluctance. Note that Isaac, like his father, says nothing, and the absence of the speech of Isaac is even more haunting than the absence of the speech of Abraham between verses 2 and 3. Presumably, one would imagine anyway bound on the woodpile and with a knife set to strike him, Isaac has gathered that this is more than a father and son bonding day ou; and yet in our text he still says nothing. There are many ways of interpreting Isaac’s silence -- as a sign of obedience, as a sign that he is so shocked that he is struck dumb, or maybe as a sign that the narrator realizes that the text works better if Isaac does not speak. (If the narrator added ‘Isaac screamed and screamed’, or ‘Isaac said My father, I willingly go as a lamb to the sacrifice’, or ‘Father what are you doing?’ we would have a very different story). Maybe the narrator feels that silence is best, and that silence makes the text more haunting and mysterious.
Crucially it is at the very last moment, when Isaac’s life is literally hanging on a knife edge, that the messenger of God intervenes. The narrator takes us to the very last moment, when it is almost too late –- the Christian Reformation theologian Martin Luther rightly said that ‘if God had blinked, Isaac would be dead.’ The sacrifice of the son is suspended, but some kind of sacrifice of a living thing is still required, so a lamb tangled in a thicket is miraculously provided. God is clearly pleased by Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice: verse 12 ends ‘for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son’, and in verse 16 ‘Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and give you descendants (or seed) as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore and your descendants will surely possess the gates of their enemies’. The promise of descendants has been given to Abraham before in Genesis but now it is given in emphatic form and amplified form.
* * * * * *So, for those who've read it as well those of you who haven't, there's the story. You can probably see the direction I'm going to be heading with the implications that somebody like Kierkegaard draws from this, but stay tuned anyway.
Had an all-Dutch, all-the-time long, holiday weekend. I went from wandering around Eindhoven on a surprisingly chilly Saturday, in search for the 
The close literary reading of Genesis 22 in my post on Friday suggests that what we're given here is a skeletal narrative where, generally speaking, detail is stripped down to the bare bones. The narrator says nothing about the characters and the characters say barely anything to each other -- i.e., hardly any words are spoken between Abraham and Isaac or between Abraham and God. This suggests to me that silence is as important as speech, and the white spaces between the words are as important as the black marks on the page. The point about the silence of this narrative was first made by a German Jewish scholar, Erich Auerbach, in a famous article written when he was living in exile from the Nazis in Istanbul during World War II. Auerbach was not a biblical scholar, but a professor of what we would now call comparative literature, and the essay ‘Odysseus’s Scar’ is a comparison of the style of Homer’s Odyssey and the style of Genesis 22. Basically what he says is that Homer knows no background, that he cannot resist telling us everything, that with Homer there is ‘never a lacuna, never a gap, never a glimpse of unplumbed depths’. But Genesis 22, in contrast, is ‘fraught with background’: in Genesis everything is hidden, as though buried. Some of Auerbach's observations include: