How could a loving God demand child sacrifice? (Genesis 22)
Gen 22:1-19
A question that is particularly difficult for modern readers in the story of Genesis 22 is how God could demand human sacrifice and a child’s at that. Isn’t this the kind of thing that gives the OT and God a bad reputation? Doesn’t such a story encourage neurotics to do crazy things in God’s name? After all, if God could demand this in the OT, why not now? What can we say to someone today who says that God told him to kill his son in a sacrifice to God? Moreover, why did Abraham not protest at such a demand? Some commentators propose that he should have argued with God just as he did not simply accept Sodom’s judgment but engaged the Lord in conversation about it. These interpreters say that the fact that Abraham obeyed without objections was a sign that he failed the test. How can we answer these questions and reflections?
A different perspective on children
First, it is helpful to note why we feel a particular discomfort around this story. It does not necessarily answer our questions but alerts us to the differences in culture and ways of thinking between the ancient world and ours. Child sacrifice is particularly horrific for us because children are viewed so highly today within family life, their wishes and emotional needs are often put above their parents’. Not that every family lives this way, but there are societal pressures in this direction, so that parents often exert considerable time, money, and energy in catering to their children’s desires and creating an environment in which they are emotionally engaged with them. Moreover, children today have a wide range of choices regarding their future career, where they are going to live, whom they will marry or if they will marry at all, so the idea that their parents can be disposed of their lives willy-nilly is shocking to us.
In the ancient world, children, particularly sons, were considered an asset with little say about the shapes of their lives. They would inherit from the father and carry on the family name and the family’s business. They were also an insurance for aging parents that someone would look after them in their infirmity. The kind of childhood where children are encouraged to play and enjoy themselves and where they can develop emotional bonds with parents was unknown. It is not that ancients did not love their children. It is human nature that some would have those close love connections with their offspring, but it was not considered necessary. Children had to grow up faster and responsibilities came to them much sooner than they do today. The loss of a son, then, would have primarily been seen as a loss of an important asset. The issue of psychological damage to a child put under such a test as Isaac would not have occurred to ancient people, nor would the lack of the child’s choice in the matter bother them.
A different view of God
A second issue that modern readers find difficult is the idea of God sovereignly demanding what He wants. Although Christians would recognise God’s right to do so, there is strong counter-pressure in the culture to view God as someone who is there for our needs. If He does not meet those needs, we are justified – it is thought – to reject Him. Our priorities and the perceived damage that obedience to God might entail for us trump God’s demands. Such divine commands that are harmful for human well-being are also suspect because of past human history in which awful atrocities were committed in God’s name. Once again, this question would have looked very different for ancient peoples. Humans were subject to the gods so that human needs and priorities had to yield to the deity’s. The gods came first.
Animal and child sacrifice
Animal sacrifice was a common way to worship and was practised by peoples of the ancient Near East. While there is little evidence that human sacrifice was commonly offered in Mesopotamia, where Abraham came from, I am not aware of moral objections to it in pagan literature. In other words, how would Abraham know that such action was wrong? Sacrifice was an act of devotion to the gods that had a financial cost – animals were part of people’s livelihood and wealth. Child sacrifice took this one step further. If you wanted to show a god how earnest you were, say, about a request you had, you offered what was most precious to you. This would have been a firstborn son, symbol of the continuation of the family line, an extension of the worshipper’s own life and a security for the future. Willingness to give that up counted as high commitment indeed.
Abraham’s possible perspective
Thus, Abraham, who did not have God’s law, which was revealed to Moses and Israel later, had no reason to question God’s command on moral grounds of taking a life (does not the Giver of all life have a right to take what He has given?). Neither would he have been attuned to our priorities of human needs first above God’s demands (the lack of choice for the child and the psychological damage caused even if the sacrifice was aborted). What God asked for would have translated to the patriarch as a question of commitment. Was he willing to give to God what was most precious? God’s test in the context of the story is not about Abraham’s moral discernment – will he realise that child sacrifice is wrong? Rather, as I explained in my post Why did God test Abraham? the nature of the test becomes evident from God’s affirmation at the end, ‘Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son’ (Gen 22:12). To suggest that the issue is the moral evaluation of child sacrifice and that Abraham failed the test goes against the grain of the text (i.e. its pronounced intent) and imports our modern ideas into the passage that are simply not there.
The full revelation of Scripture
God will later make clear to Israel that He finds child sacrifice abhorrent and does not wish it (Exod 13:15; Lev 20:2; 2 Kings 16:2-3),[1] and the first intimations of this is evident in Abraham’s story. God tests Abraham’s commitment in a context that makes sense to him, but he is stopped before he can go through with it and God provides instead an animal sacrifice. The biblical narrator also draws a parallel to the later Jerusalem Temple where sacrifices were offered and where just as in this case God provided (Gen 22:14 cf 2 Chron 3:1).[2] In other words, there is a reflection on the meaning of the sacrificial system. Just as God asked for what was most precious here, later sacrifice expressed that same willingness to give God the very best and what is valued most.[3] However, God was willing to accept the lesser offering of an animal in exchange for human life. Just as He provided the ram for Abraham instead of his son, Isaac (see my post How do we see God in testing times?), so He provided the sacrificial system with animals offered to express that same commitment. This is comparable to the practice of tithing. We give God a token of what we have as an expression that all belongs to Him and that it is only because He has provided us with that all that we can give back some of it to Him.
As Christians re-reading Abraham’s story, we recognise that God’s provision went one step further. Not only did He give us the means to show our devotion to Him, but He showed His utter commitment to us by giving His own Son, Jesus Christ, the ultimate sacrifice. As we celebrate Good Friday today, it is particularly appropriate to remember Him. Moreover, this sacrifice not only expressed God’s love, i.e. that He would not withhold from us what was most precious to Him, but it also achieved redemption and the forgiveness of sin and gave us new life and the right to be called children of God. What an amazing gift and provision! Jesus’ final sacrifice also led to the abolishment of the sacrificial system. As Christians, we no longer express devotion to God through offering up animals (let alone human beings), neither is it necessary for the cleansing of our sins.
The willingness of the son to do his father’s will
One more aspect is worth considering and that is the question of how Isaac must have felt. Would he have been traumatised for life? There is nothing explicit in the story, but there is a curious phrase that is repeated twice that father and son walked together, i.e. in unison (yaḥad, Gen 22:6, 8). Hebrew narrative is generally terse, and any detail given is significant, all the more so when repeated (a sign of emphasis). Isaac may not have known the plan but he trusted his father and walked with him, united in purpose to worship God. Later Jewish interpretation argued, based on the above, that Isaac was willing to be sacrificed, so that there was no struggle between father and son, the latter desperately trying to resist the father’s will. By comparison, Jephthah’s daughter, whom her father was to sacrifice to God due to his foolish oath, likewise acknowledges the binding nature of that oath and the appropriateness of doing so given that God has granted victory to Jephthah (Judg 11:36). Misguided as Jephthah’s sacrifice was, we encounter here a very different mindset in which God’s perceived priorities come first. Thus, it is plausible to assume that Isaac similarly acknowledged God’s right to take his life. This point becomes particularly illuminating when we think of Jesus’ sacrifice. He is not abused by His Father when He goes to the cross: Father and Son walk in unison. Jesus is giving His life freely and willingly (John 10:17-18).
Why God would not ask anyone to kill their son today
What can we say to someone today who claims that God has told him to sacrifice his son, just like Abraham was meant to? It should be clear by now that only if you read the story out of context would you come to such a conclusion. In other words, such a statement assumes that we live in the same cultural world as Abraham, so that there is no difference, no gap between his world and ours. We can take the command in his time and automatically apply it to our own lives. As we have seen, this is impossible. There is a considerable difference in worldview and culture between Abraham’s world and ours, so a command in his world needs to be re-contextualised into ours. In Abraham’s world, sacrifice and even child sacrifice was known, and it was not revealed to him beforehand that his God, our God, objects to child sacrifice. In our world, we are familiar with the rest of the revelation in Scripture that child sacrifice is abhorrent to God and, in any case, the sacrificial system is no longer to be practised now that Jesus has offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice. Neither are firstborn sons valued above all as they were in the ancient world. The principle in Abraham’s story that God tests our commitment for Him is still valid today, but how we express our love for Him will look different based on what we value most in life and in the light of the full revelation of God’s Word.
[1] The expression to make someone ‘pass through the fire’ means to offer them up as a human sacrifice.
[2] Walter Moberly explains in detail why the ‘mount of the LORD’ should be identified with Jerusalem and the Temple there. The other alternative for a sight would be Sinai but that is a long journey from Beersheba (1 Kings 19:3-4, 8), the same location where Abraham returned afterwards (Gen 22:4, 19). The later book of Chronicles also identifies the Temple with a place of ‘seeing’, Mount Moriah. The Bible, Theology and Faith: A Study of Abraham and Jesus (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 108-116.
[3] Moberly argues that Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram at the end of the incident is a whole burnt offering and the story also acts as a commentary on the meaning of this most common sacrifice of the later sacrificial system (Lev 1:1-9, esp. v.9). Ibid., 116-118.
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