raises his knife
to kill Isaac, and at the last moment God’s angel stays Abraham’s hand and
tells him not to kill his son. Spying a ram caught in a thicket, Abraham offers the ram for
the sacrifice and calls the place “The Lord will provide,” in Hebrew,
YHWH yireh,
literally, “God will see to it.” God then confirms the promise
of universal blessing to
Abraham and raises the promise to
p 46
a covenant by swearing an oath: “By myself I
have sworn … by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves” (Gn
22:16–18). Here again it is important to pay attention to detail. Earlier in Genesis 22,
Abraham had said that God will provide a
lamb for the sacrifice. But it is actually a
ram,
not a lamb, that Abraham sacrifices. In light of this fact, Abraham specifically names this
place
using the future tense, “The Lord
will provide.” In fact, the text notes that “on the
mount of the L
ORD
it
shall be provided” (Gn 22:14; emphasis added). As Genesis 22
ends, the Lord still needs to provide the lamb for the sacrifice.
This place, “YHWH yireh,” eventually is named “yireh-salem,” or “Jerusalem,” which
means “the Lord will see to the peace.” Much later, after Jerusalem is established as the
capital of Israel, King Solomon will build the Temple on this same mountain, Mount
Moriah (see 2 Chr 3:1–3; Gn 22:2), and every morning and every evening the priests in
the Temple will offer up a lamb to remind God—on the very spot where he promised
universal blessing—that he has yet to provide a lamb for the final atoning sacrifice for sin.
In this ceremony, the
shofar, the ram’s horn, is blown, calling to
mind that God provided
a ram, not a lamb. It is here that God finally does provide a lamb, bringing a worldwide
blessing, the forgiveness of sin and true peace. On this very place where Isaac was almost
sacrificed, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, beloved son of the heavenly Father, is
sacrificed to fulfill the promise to Abraham, “By your seed, all the families of the
earth
will bless themselves” (see Gn 12:3).
This climactic story of the sacrifice of Isaac, which prefigures and finds its fulfillment
in the sacrifice
of Christ, brings the story of Abraham back full circle to Abraham’s call
in Genesis 12. God promised to bless Abraham and, what is more, to bless all the families
of the world through Abraham (Gn 12:3). Now that
Abraham has trusted God
completely with the life of his beloved son, God elevates that promise to a solemn
covenant oath (Gn 22:16–18), which he will fulfill by sacrificing his own son, Jesus
Christ. The author of Hebrews, reading Genesis 22 in light of Christ, states that
Abraham willingly obeyed God’s command to sacrifice Isaac because he trusted that if
Isaac died, God could raise him up from the dead (Heb 11:17–19). That is the faith that
made Abraham the father of Israel and the father of faith.
p 47
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