Abraham’s Intentions Toward Isaac: Thoughts on the Akeidah
A D’var Torah Delivered to the
on the Second Day of Rosh Hashana 5770
September 20, 2009
By Joel Bassoff
The Binding of Isaac – the Akeidah. We read this story every year on the second day of Rosh Hashana and it never fails to disturb and perplex us. It raises – and fails to answer – disturbing questions: How could a parent be willing to sacrifice a child? What about the trauma to Isaac? How can God ask for blind obedience to a command that seems cruel and unjust?
And it perplexes us: What does this story have to do with Rosh Hashana? Why do we read it at this time of year?
We’re horrified by what Abraham did. The problem is – we’re supposed to revere him as our Patriarch, so we come up with all sorts of explanations to justify what Abraham did to Isaac and to ameliorate the horror of the story.
We say that that God commanded the Akeidah to teach us, “Don’t engage in child sacrifice.” But do we really believe that it’s because of this story that we don’t slit our kids’ throats? Moreover, God never says that the episode was about child sacrifice.
We say that the story teaches us that it’s meritorious to obey God without question. But we don’t admire blind obedience. We like the Abraham who challenges God about the destruction of
Then there’s the explanation that Abraham knew all along that God wasn’t really going to ask him to kill Isaac. But the Torah says that “God tested Abraham”. If Abraham already had the answer key, it wasn’t much of a test.
These explanations seem like rationalizations – so that we can retain our reverence for Abraham – and for God.
Moreover, none of the interpretations explain why – of all the Torah portions to choose from – it’s this one that we read on Rosh Hashana. The themes of Rosh Hashana are judgment, taking stock, teshuva – not about child sacrifice or blind obedience. So we remain perplexed.
Perhaps we’ve been so strongly conditioned by our tradition to revere Abraham, our perception to the Akeidah story has been obscured. So, let’s clear away all the midrash and commentary and strip the story down to its basics:
A man took his son to a lonely mountain-top, tied him up, raised up a knife, and stopped just short of slitting the boy’s throat.
If we read about this in the local newspaper, we’d be horrified. We’d insist that the authorities take this man into custody and figure out what motivated him.
Let’s be the court-appointed psychiatrists who have to evaluate Abraham. First, we have to establish a definition.
As professionals, we don’t accept “God made me do it” as an explanation. So, when the Torah tells us that God said something to Abraham, we’ll translate “God” as “the voice in Abraham’s head”. And, we’ll give the voice in Abraham’s head the same credibility as we’d give a voice in anyone’s head. In other words, we won’t read this as a Bible story – we’ll investigate it as a true story.
Next: if one person ties up another person and brandishes a knife at him, we assume that the person with the knife wants to kill the person he tied up. So, let’s start with the assumption that Abraham wanted to kill Isaac!
Of course, it’s far-fetched to think that our Patriarch, Avraham Avinu, would have wanted to kill his own son.
Except —
We have midrash and piyyutim that depict Isaac as having died on
In the Talmud, the question is asked, how did the Babylonian exiles know where to build the altar in the
A piyyut in the Rosh Hashana machzor says: “May God turn toward Isaac … whose limbs were bound behind him on
There’s something hidden in the story that stimulated the authors of midrash and piyyutim to kill off Isaac. We too have an urge to kill off Isaac. We’ve all heard people refer to the story as “The Sacrifice of Isaac”.
What’s hidden in the story that creates this impulse to think of Abraham as having gone through with the slaughter? Why, in some corner of our minds, is it plausible that Abraham would have gone through with the sacrifice?
Let’s dig into what the Torah tells us about this ben-Terah household.
Just before the outset to the previous day’s portion, Abraham’s life seems perfect. Abraham gets to sleep with the housekeeper, and he doesn’t have to sneak around to do it – his wife wants him to! And, Abraham ends up with a son – Ishmael. [Genesis 16]
Then, at the beginning of yesterday’s portion [Genesis 20], things get even better when Sarah has Isaac.
At this point, everything should be idyllic. Sarah has everything she could want – a son; a rich husband; a live-in maid. And, if everything is perfect for Sarah, life should be perfect for Abraham.
But then things go wrong. Sarah tells Abraham, “Drive out this slavewoman with her son, for the son of that slavewoman shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac.” [Gen. 21:10]
Look at how horrible this statement is. Sarah’s not saying, “Y’know, Abe, Hagar should visit her mom and Ishie should spend some time with his granny. Let’s put them on the next bus to
Consider where Abraham and Sarah live. What Sarah is saying is, “Abe, let them die in the desert.”
God – that is, the voice in Abraham’s head – tells Abraham to listen to Sarah. Instead of arguing with Sarah, Abraham does what the voice in his head tells him to do. He sends a women and a teenage boy into the desert with nothing more than some bread and a skin of water.
Abraham had options. He could have had a servant bring Hagar and Ishmael to a safe place. He could have given them a donkey or camel loaded with supplies. But instead, he sent them out on foot, with enough bread and water to get them far enough away so that when they died, he wouldn’t have to see the corpses.
We find out that Hagar and Ishmael survive; but Abraham doesn’t know that. The most likely scenario is that, as far as Abraham is concerned, Hagar and Ishmael died in the desert. Yes, there’s that voice in Abraham’s head that said, ‘Don’t worry – I’ll make Ishmael into a great nation.’ [Gen. 21:13] But a voice in your head is no substitute for a donkey loaded with food and water. And let’s not forget, we don’t accept the “God told me to” defense. As far as we can tell, at this point, Abraham thinks he’s killed Hagar and Ishmael.
We don’t know how Abraham felt about Hagar, but the Torah indicates that he loved Ishmael. When Sarah told Abraham to drive out Hagar and Ishmael, the Torah tells us, “The matter greatly distressed Abraham regarding his son.” [Gen. 21:11]
There’s another proof-text for Abraham’s love of Ishmael. When the angel told Abraham that Sarah will have a son, Abraham didn’t say, “That’s great! I was hoping for another kid!” He said to God, “O that Ishmael might live before You.” [Gen. 17:18].
So, every time Abraham would look at Isaac, what would he think? Abraham would think, “Oh my God – I murdered my darling son Ishmael just because my wife told me to – and it’s all because of Isaac.”
Is it plausible that Abraham now hates Sarah?
But can he hate Isaac, too? After all, Isaac is now Abraham’s only son – or so Abraham thinks.
Or does he?
Consider this:
In the chapter just before the previous day’s portion, Abraham had settled in Philistine country [Genesis 20]. Abraham identified Sarah as his sister, and the Philistine king, Abimelech, took Sarah into his harem.
Then, at the very beginning of the next chapter, without even an intervening “and Abraham knew Sarah,” it says, “Sarah conceived …” [Gen. 21:2]
The Torah says that Abimelech didn’t touch Sarah, but Abraham didn’t have the Torah, so he didn’t know that. (And, one could loosely translate Abimelech’s name as “King Daddy”.)
Is it far-fetched to question Isaac’s paternity? Here’s what Rashi says: “It became necessary to state ‘Abraham begot Isaac’, for the scorners of the generation were saying, ‘from Abimelech did Sarah conceive’.” [Rashi on Gen. 24:19]
The Torah itself seems to express doubt. When Abraham is distressed over Sarah’s order to drive out Ishmael, God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah, “since through Isaac will seed be called yours. But the son of the slavewoman as well will I make into a nation for he is your seed.” [Gen. 21:12-13]
Now let’s do an evaluation of Abraham’s mental state as of the beginning of today’s Torah reading [Genesis 22].
Abraham thinks he’s been pushed into killing Ishmael because of Sarah and Isaac. He thinks that Isaac might not really be his son. In fact, since Isaac was born, Abraham’s been a laughing-stock. And the sexy Egyptian housekeeper who made Abraham feel virile and who provided him with a son? The woman that Abraham once made love to is now dead the desert, or so Abraham thinks.
We can conclude that that Abraham now hates Sarah, resents Isaac, and loathes himself.
Abraham finally reaches the breaking point. He hears the voice in his head, and the voice mocks him.
The voice says, “Please take your son” — and Abraham thinks, ‘what son?’
“Your only one” — yeah, the reason he’s my ‘only one’ is because Sarah made me kill Ishmael.
“Whom you love” — the son I loved is dead.
“Isaac!” — Right, Sarah’s son, whose name – Yitzchak – is a joke on me: because of him, everyone laughs at me.
When Abraham set out for
So we come to our second question: of all the portions in the Torah, why is this what we read every Rosh Hashana? Where’s the lesson?
What are the themes of Rosh Hashana? It’s is a time to take stock of our lives, a time to be judged by God, a time to judge ourselves. At times, it’s superficial. You go to a friend or acquaintance or relative and say, “I said something hurtful to you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” And they do. Or you forgive them for some slight that, in the scheme of things, was inconsequential.
But then there are the deep, important issues. Maybe there’s someone who was truly cruel or evil to you. How do you forgive that? Maybe they’re not even asking for forgiveness.
What if you’ve done something unforgivable? Maybe there’s no way to repent.
How do you keep the really bad demons from consuming you, whether it’s hatred of someone else, or self-hatred? How can you go into Yom Kippur in just eight days and expect to be atoned?
What if you’ve been so angry at someone that you’ve wished they were dead? What if it was someone you’re supposed to love? Perhaps you’re consumed by guilt at having those emotions.
Now look at Abraham. He’s consumed by hatred for Sarah, hatred for Isaac, and hatred for himself. He wants to hurt Sarah by killing her son Isaac. Abraham is at the brink of slitting Isaac’s throat, but then, at the very last second, he controls himself. He holds back the knife. And then – he goes on with his life.
Perhaps we identify with Abraham, and the Akeidah gives us a catharsis that we crave before we go into the intense self-reflection of Yom Kippur.
On Yom Kippur, we read about the scapegoat ritual instead of actually sending a goat into the desert. We read the Akeidah and then we don’t feel like we need to lure our own enemies onto
The Akeidah story is vivid in that it doesn’t end with “they lived happily ever after.” Abraham comes down from the mountain alone – not with Isaac. Isaac never walks with Abraham again.
Nor does Abraham’s marriage survive. After Abraham came down from
The story moves us because of its realism. The bad deeds aren’t fully rectified because, realistically, they can’t be. The past can’t be undone. Abraham has to live with an imperfect redemption and with the indelible consequences of his actions.
The Akeidah story reaches into that dark corner of your mind that wants to come to grips with the unforgivable things that have been done to you, and the unforgivable things you’ve done. You imagine, what if it was me on
Now let’s give God back his voice. What was His test of Abraham? The test was not to see if Abraham would be willing to slaughter Isaac on an altar. Abraham was already predisposed to do that. No – the test was this: once Isaac was bound helpless on the altar, would Abraham have the strength to hold back the knife? God says, “I now know that you are a God-fearing man because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” – that is: I have plans for a living Isaac, and you did not withhold him from Me by killing him. Offering Isaac to God did not mean being willing to kill the boy, it meant being willing to let him live.
In the Zichronot section of the Musaf Amidah, we implore God:
Let there appear before You the Akeidah when Abraham … bound Isaac … and he suppressed his mercy to do Your will wholeheartedly. So may Your mercy suppress Your anger … [ArtScroll Machzor for Rosh Hashanah, p. 463]
I’m loathe to criticize our liturgy – the authors of our prayers displayed enormous insights into human nature. But here, the liturgist may have gotten it backwards. The logic is unsatisfying, for it suggests that there’s a finite amount of mercy in the world. Perhaps we should implore of God: Just as Abraham’s mercy finally suppressed his anger at Isaac, so may Your mercy suppress Your anger toward us.
Abraham can’t undo the past. But, in that last crucial second, he overcomes his hatred of Sarah, hatred of Isaac, and hatred of himself. Abraham holds back the knife – and goes on with life. The Akeidah tells us that that we can, too.
© 2009 Joel Bassoff
