Genesis 22 · Story · Featured Study
The Binding of Isaac
Genesis 22:1 to 19 stands between the birth of Isaac in Genesis 21 and the death of Sarah in Genesis 23.
God asks Abraham for the one son He Himself promised, and on the mountain He stops the knife and provides a ram in the son's place. The whole gospel is rehearsed here, two thousand years early.
- Where
- Moriah, Beersheba
- Who
- Abraham, Isaac
Rembrandt, The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1635. Public domain.
Summary
Abraham, Isaac and two servants walk for three days to the mountain God showed Abraham, and Abraham comes back with the servants to Beersheba.
- The Hebrew word for the lad is used of Joseph at seventeen, and Sarah's age sets thirty-seven as the oldest Isaac can have been.
- Abraham names the place of the offering The LORD Will Provide (Genesis 22:14).
- God swears by Himself that all nations of the earth will be blessed through Abraham's offspring.
- Hebrews 11:17 to 19 reads the binding as faith that God could raise the dead.
The Command of Genesis 22:1 to 2
Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born (Genesis 21:5).
Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac, and God had promised him descendants like the stars and a blessing for every nation through his family.
Some time later God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. “Take your son,” God said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”God names the son three ways, as Abraham's son, his only son Isaac and the son he loves, and each name raises the cost.
“For the great source of grief to him was not his own bereavement, not that he was commanded to slay his only heir, the hope of future memorial and of name, the glory and support of his family; but that, in the person of this son, the whole salvation of the world seemed to be extinguished and to perish.”
John Calvin · Commentary on Genesis (1554), on Genesis 22:1Reformed
The Road to Moriah
Eight stops of Genesis 22, from the command to the oath.
Each stop opens its verse in the reader.
- The commandGod commands the burnt offering of IsaacGenesis 22:1 to 2
- Early next morningAbraham saddles the donkey and splits the wood himselfGenesis 22:3
- Three days walkingAbraham sees the place in the distanceGenesis 22:4
- Where is the lamb?Isaac asks where the lamb is, and Abraham answersGenesis 22:7 to 8
- The altarAbraham sets the wood in order, binds his son and raises the knifeGenesis 22:9 to 10
- The voiceThe angel of the LORD calls from heaven and stops his handGenesis 22:11 to 12
- The ramA ram caught by its horns is offered in place of his sonGenesis 22:13
- The oathGod swears by Himself to bless all nations through Abraham's offspringGenesis 22:15 to 18
The ram, The oath
The Question, the Voice and the Oath
The question on the road, the angel's words and the oath carry the turns of Genesis 22:7 to 18.
Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” “Here I am, my son,” he replied. “The fire and the wood are here,” said Isaac, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two walked on together.Abraham answers his son's question without telling him the command.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him,” said the angel, “for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.”The angel gives the outcome of the test that Genesis 22:1 announced.
In 1765, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, John Wesley read the angel of the LORD at Genesis 22:11 as God Himself, the eternal Word. Who that angel is arises again at Genesis 28:13 and Genesis 32:24 to 30, and the page on Jacob wrestling with the angel sets out the readings.
I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies. And through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”God gives this blessing of the nations again to Jacob at Genesis 28:14, so the oath sworn on Moriah runs through the next generation.
Four Places the Retellings Drift
Four things Genesis 22 says differ from the way the story is often retold.
GOD TESTS ABRAHAM
The first verse tells the reader what Abraham is never told, that the command is a test. James 1:13 says that God tempts no one.
ISAAC CARRIES THE WOOD
Isaac carries the wood for a whole burnt offering up the mountain and sees what the sacrifice is missing.
ABRAHAM SAYS BOTH WILL RETURN
Before any ram appears, Abraham tells the servants that he and the boy will go and worship and that both of them will come back.
ABRAHAM SAYS LAMB, AND GOD SENDS A RAM
Abraham says that God will provide the lamb (Genesis 22:8), but the animal caught in the thicket is a ram.
Abraham says both will return, Abraham says lamb, and God sends a ram
The table gives six Hebrew words of Genesis 22 with the verses where each stands.
| Word | Hebrew | Verses | Sense |
|---|---|---|---|
| nissah | נָסָה | Genesis 22:1 | to test or prove, the verb Deuteronomy 8:2 uses of Israel in the wilderness |
| yachid | יָחִיד | Genesis 22:2, Genesis 22:12 and Genesis 22:16 | only one, said of Isaac three times |
| aqad | עָקַד | Genesis 22:9 | to bind; the verb stands only here in the Hebrew Bible and gives the account its name, the Aqedah |
| tachat | תַּחַת | Genesis 22:13 | in the place of |
| ra'ah | רָאָה | Genesis 22:4, Genesis 22:8, Genesis 22:13 and Genesis 22:14 | to see and to see to; the verb of God will provide (Genesis 22:8) and of the name of the place (Genesis 22:14), and of Abraham seeing the place and then the ram |
| ayil | אַיִל | Genesis 22:13 | ram |
“When God speaks, Abraham, no doubt, takes notice of every word, and listens attentively to it; and every word here is a sword in his bones: the trial is steeled with trying phrases.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Genesis 22:2Puritan
A World Where Gods Demanded Sons
The walk from Beersheba to the land of Moriah is roughly fifty miles, which fits an arrival on the third day.
In Genesis 22 the God of Abraham forbids the sacrifice of the son and supplies the offering Himself, and Israel's later law set that difference in writing.
Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. This was the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.This is the only other place Scripture names Moriah, and Solomon's temple rises there.
What the law, the kings and Carthage recordLeviticus 18:21, 2 Kings 16:3 and Jeremiah 32:35
The law forbids giving children to Molech (Leviticus 18:21 and Leviticus 20:2 to 5). Centuries after Abraham, kings of Judah still sacrificed their sons in the fire (2 Kings 16:3 and 2 Kings 21:6), and Jeremiah 32:35 places the practice in the Valley of Hinnom. Excavations at Carthage, a colony that carried older Phoenician practice, uncovered burial precincts of cremated infants with stelae bearing the consonants mlk, the root the Bible vocalizes as Molech.
Calvary and the hills of MoriahGenesis 22:13 and 2 Chronicles 3:1
At the temple in Jerusalem a substitute died in the sinner's place morning and evening for centuries. The tradition that Calvary stands in the same hills is old.
“And it is observable, that the temple, the place of sacrifice, was afterward built upon this mount Moriah, 2 Chron. iii, 1, and mount Calvary, where Christ was crucified, was not far off.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on Genesis 22:13Evangelical
What the Text Leaves Unsaid
Four questions the account leaves without an answer.
Genesis 22 is nineteen verses long and records what Abraham did on the road, and it does not say what he thought.
How old was Isaac?Genesis 22:5, Genesis 22:12 and Genesis 23:1
Genesis never states Isaac's age at the binding, but it leaves evidence. The word rendered lad at Genesis 22:5 and Genesis 22:12 is the word used of Joseph at seventeen (Genesis 37:2) and of Benjamin as a grown father (Genesis 44:22 to 34). The word itself allows a grown son. Sarah dies at 127 in the next chapter (Genesis 23:1), and she bore Isaac at ninety, which sets a ceiling of thirty-seven on his age at the altar.
The evidence allows three readings: a boy, a youth in his teens, or a grown man in his twenties or thirties. Josephus, in book 1, chapter 13 of his Antiquities of the Jews, gives twenty-five, and an age of thirty-seven would set the binding in the year of Sarah's death. If Isaac was a grown man, he was strong enough to resist his father, and the text records no resistance.
“Had not the patriarch been sustained by the full consciousness of acting in obedience to God's will, the effort would have been too great for human endurance; and had not Isaac, then upwards of twenty years of age displayed equal faith in submitting, this great trial could not have gone through.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Genesis 22:9Evangelical
Where is Sarah?Genesis 22 and Genesis 23:1
Isaac's mother is not named at the departure, on the mountain or at the return. The next chapter opens with her death, and the text draws no line between the two. The woman who laughed at Isaac's birth is absent from the story of his binding.
“He gets things ready for a sacrifice, and, as if he himself had been a Gibeonite, it should seem, with his own hands he cleaves the wood for the burnt-offering, that it might not be to seek when the sacrifice was to be offered. Spiritual sacrifices must thus be prepared for. It is very probable that he said nothing about it to Sarah.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 22:3Puritan
The walk down the mountainGenesis 22:19
Genesis 22:19 says that Abraham went back to his servants and does not name Isaac. Isaac speaks no recorded word again until Genesis 26:7, where he tells the men of Gerar that Rebekah is his sister. Nothing should be built on a silence, but after the substitute dies the text follows the father home and lets the son slip out of view.
What did they say to each other?Genesis 22:6 to 8
Scripture records one exchange between father and son on the road (Genesis 22:7 to 8). Twice the text closes with the line that the two of them walked on together (Genesis 22:6 and Genesis 22:8), and everything else on that road is silence.
“Therefore he brings his well-beloved son to be sacrificed, and offered promptly him whom he had received late; nor is he restrained by being called by the name of father, when his son called him ‘Father,’ and he replied, ‘My son.’ Dear pledges of love are these names, but the commands of God are loved still more. And so although their hearts felt for each other, their purpose remained firm.”
Ambrose of Milan · On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus, Book 2, Section 97 · on Genesis 22:7Patristic
The Mountain Rehearses the Gospel
The New Testament reads the binding through the Son the Father gave.
Then Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram in a thicket, caught by its horns. So he went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son.The chapter turns on this verse, where the ram is offered for the son.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!John 1:29 is the first verse of Scripture to call Jesus the Lamb of God.
Isaac and Christ, point by point1 table or figure
The table sets seven points of Isaac's story beside the life of Christ, and each row opens the verse in its second column.
| Isaac | The verse | Christ | The New Testament |
|---|---|---|---|
| A father's beloved, only son | Genesis 22:2 | The Father's beloved, only Son | John 3:16 |
| Carries the wood up the mountain | Genesis 22:6 | Carries the cross to Golgotha | John 19:17 |
| As good as dead for three days of walking | Genesis 22:4 | Three days in the heart of the earth | Matthew 12:40 |
| Abraham says God will provide the lamb | Genesis 22:8 | John names Jesus the Lamb of God | John 1:29 |
| The ram dies in his place | Genesis 22:13 | The righteous for the unrighteous | 1 Peter 3:18 |
| Mount Moriah, later the temple mount | 2 Chronicles 3:1 | One sacrifice, once for all | Hebrews 10:10 |
| Received back from death, in a sense | Hebrews 11:19 | Raised on the third day | 1 Corinthians 15:4 |
What the text claims, and what tradition added2 paragraphs
Isaac is the yachid, and the Greek translators rendered the word with the words the Father speaks over Jesus. Hebrews calls Isaac's return a parabole, an enacted parable of resurrection.
From Melito of Sardis in the second century onward, the church drew further parallels from the wood on the son's back, the three days and the silence. These belong to the church's devotional tradition, and the type stands on what the text says.
saying, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your only son,Hebrews 6:13 explains the oath: God had no one greater to swear by.
He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?Paul speaks of the Father in the language of Genesis 22:16, and the Father carried out the offering Abraham was spared.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Sacrifice of Isaac, about 1603, Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Public domain.
Caravaggio painted the angel gripping Abraham's arm with one hand and pointing to the ram with the other, and he set the ram's head beside Isaac's own at the same height.
“Abraham was ready to give up his son for a sacrifice to the honour of God, and, on that occasion, God promised to give his Son a sacrifice for the salvation of man.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Genesis 22:18Puritan
Genesis 22:16, Romans 8:32, Matthew Henry
How the Binding Has Been Taught
Eleven readings of Genesis 22, in the order of the verses.
died 253 · Origen of Alexandria
HOMILIES ON GENESIS 8.4
The third day and the resurrection
The quotation1 quotation
“The third day, however, is always applied to mysteries. For also when the people had departed from Egypt, they offer sacrifice to God on the third day and are purified on the third day. And the third day is the day of the Lord's resurrection. Many other mysteries also are included within this day.”
Origen of Alexandria · Homilies on Genesis 8.4 · on Genesis 22:4Patristic
died 253 · Origen of Alexandria
HOMILIES ON GENESIS 8.6
Isaac carries the wood as victim and as priest
The quotation1 quotation
“That Isaac carries on himself ‘the wood for the burnt offering’ is a figure, because Christ also ‘himself carried his own cross,’ and yet to carry ‘the wood for the burnt offering’ is the duty of a priest. He therefore becomes victim and priest. But what is added also is related to this: ‘And they both went off together.’ For when Abraham carries the fire and knife as if to sacrifice, Isaac does not go behind him but with him, that he might be shown to contribute equally with the priesthood itself.”
Origen of Alexandria · Homilies on Genesis 8.6 · on Genesis 22:6Patristic
died 253 · Origen of Alexandria
HOMILIES ON GENESIS 8.6
Abraham answers in the future tense
The quotation1 quotation
“Abraham's response, sufficiently accurate and cautious, moves me. I do not know what he saw in his spirit, for he does not speak about the present but about the future: ‘God himself will provide himself a sheep.’ He responded to his son's inquiry about present things with future things. For ‘the Lord himself will provide himself a sheep’ in Christ, because also, ‘Wisdom herself has built herself a house,’ and ‘He himself humbled himself unto death.’”
Origen of Alexandria · Homilies on Genesis 8.6 · on Genesis 22:8Patristic
died 253 · Origen of Alexandria
HOMILIES ON GENESIS 9.1
The second call from heaven
The quotation1 quotation
“These words require a concerned and attentive hearer. For this part of the statement is new: ‘And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven.’ But what the text adds is not new. For ‘I shall certainly bless you’ has already been said earlier, and ‘I shall certainly multiply you’ has been promised earlier, and ‘your seed shall be as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea’ also had been announced previously. What therefore is there now in addition which is declared a second time from heaven?”
Origen of Alexandria · Homilies on Genesis 9.1 · on Genesis 22:15Patristic
296 to 373 · Athanasius of Alexandria
FESTAL LETTERS 6
Isaac's death could not free the world
The quotation1 quotation
“Thus the sacrifice was not for the sake of Isaac but for that of Abraham, who was tested by being called upon to make this offering. And of course, God accepted his intentions, but he prevented him from slaying Isaac. The death of Isaac would not buy freedom for the world. No, that could be accomplished only by the death of our Savior, by whose stripes we are all healed.”
Athanasius of Alexandria · Festal Letters 6 · on Genesis 22:13Patristic
died 397 · Ambrose of Milan
On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus, Book 2, Section 97
The father's hand over his son
The quotation1 quotation
“The father's hand stretched out the knife over his son, and the father's heart struck the blow that the sentence might not fail of being carried out; he feared lest the stroke should miss, lest his right hand should fail. He felt the movings of fatherly affection, but did not shrink from the work of submission, and hastened his obedience, even when he heard the voice from heaven.”
Ambrose of Milan · On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus, Book 2, Section 97 · on Genesis 22:10Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
Abraham loved God better than his son
The quotation1 quotation
“Here is the trial of Abraham's faith, whether it continued so strong, so vigorous, so victorious, after a long settlement in communion with God, as it was at first, when by it he left his country: then it was made to appear that he loved God better than his father; now that he loved him better than his son.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 22:1Puritan
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
The deliverance comes at the last moment
The quotation1 quotation
“The more imminent the danger is, and the nearer to be put in execution, the more wonderful and the more welcome is the deliverance. Abraham is not only approved, but applauded. He obtains an honourable testimony that he is righteous: Now know I that thou fearest God.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 22:11 to 12Puritan
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament
Abraham carries the knife and the fire
The quotation1 quotation
“Isaac's carrying the wood was a type of Christ, who carried his own cross, while Abraham, with a steady and undaunted resolution, carried the fatal knife and fire.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament · on Genesis 22:6Evangelical
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament
God Himself found the ransom
The quotation1 quotation
“Christ the great sacrifice of atonement was of God's providing: when none in heaven or earth could have found a lamb for that burnt-offering, God himself found the ransom. All our sacrifices of acknowledgement are of God's providing too; 'tis he that prepares the heart. The broken and contrite spirit is a sacrifice of God, of his providing.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament · on Genesis 22:8Evangelical
1834 to 1892 · Charles Spurgeon
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1803: “Jehovah-Jireh” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Jehovah-jireh ruled Abraham's thoughts
The quotation1 quotation
“I believe that the Truth of God contained in the expression, ‘Jehovah-jireh,’ was ruling Abraham's thoughts long before he uttered it and appointed it to be the memorial name of the place where the Lord had provided a substitute for Isaac. It was this thought, I think, which enabled him to act as promptly as he did under the trying circumstances. His reason whispered within him, ‘If you slay your son, how can God keep His promise to you that your seed shall be as many as the stars of Heaven?’”
Charles Spurgeon · The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1803: “Jehovah-Jireh” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) · on Genesis 22:14
Origen of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Athanasius of Alexandria, Ambrose of Milan, Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry, John Wesley, John Wesley and 1 more
How Two Faiths Read One Mountain
The church reads the binding toward Christ, and Israel reads it as the merit of the fathers.
Hebrews 11 explains the obedience by faithheld by the writer of Hebrews and in Protestant commentary
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac on the altar. He who had received the promises was ready to offer his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “Through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and in a sense, he did receive Isaac back from death.The writer of Hebrews finds in this chapter the reason for Abraham's obedience.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read Abraham's words to the servants as trust that Isaac would be restored, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871). Adam Clarke reads Abraham's hand at the altar the same way, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832). Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (1843) retells the three days four times to ask what Abraham's faith cost him.
The objection in its holders' terms: Adam Clarke asks how Abraham could truthfully say that both would return. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown allow that the words may have been spoken evasively to his son.
The Aqedah in Jewish lifeRosh Hashanah and the merit of the fathers
Jon D. Levenson's The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (1993) traces the binding in Jewish life as the supreme test of Abraham and of Isaac. Genesis 22 is read in the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, and the shofar, the ram's horn, recalls the ram caught in the thicket. The liturgy pleads the zekhut, the merit, of the binding on behalf of Isaac's descendants. Levenson traces how the son offered and restored shaped both Judaism and Christianity, two readings of one mountain that each claim the pattern.
Rashi, in the translation of Rosenbaum and Silbermann (1929 to 1934), reads the binding as Isaac's hands and feet tied together behind him. He reads Genesis 22:8 to say that Isaac then understood he was going to be slain. He reads the name of Genesis 22:14 as the place the LORD would choose for His presence and for the sacrifices offered there.
The objection in Christian terms: salvation rests on the offering of Christ, which the binding foreshadows.
Books to Read Next
Four works on Genesis 22, two free to read online.
Commentary on Genesis
John Calvin · 1554
Calvin weighs what the command cost Abraham, and the quotation on the whole salvation of the world comes from these pages.
Read it free at CCELCommentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
Henry walks the chapter verse by verse with an eye on both the father's anguish and the gospel beneath it.
Read it free at CCELFear and Trembling
Søren Kierkegaard · 1843
The book is a philosophical study of Abraham's obedience in Genesis 22, and its English translations remain in print.
The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son
Jon D. Levenson · 1993
It is the standard scholarly study of the Jewish reading of the offered son.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
YHWH-Jireh, the Name the Mountain Kept
And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”The verse adds that the saying of the mountain was still in use when Genesis was written.
The chapter ends with a name in the future tense, the LORD will provide. A ram was provided for Isaac that morning.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Rashi on Genesis, translated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann (1929 to 1934)
- Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (Yale University Press, 1993)
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (93 to 94), translated by William Whiston (1737)
- Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843)
- Rembrandt, The Sacrifice of Isaac (1635)
- Caravaggio, Sacrifice of Isaac (about 1603), Uffizi Gallery.
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