On Provision and Human Sacrifice

Perhaps one of the finest examples of puzzling accounts in the bible is that particular one where the patriarch Abraham was asked by none other than God himself to climb up a mountain and sacrifice his only son, Isaac. A premise that easily raises some eyebrows.

Naturally, many across the centuries, and especially many of us in the twenty-first century, have found this story to seem both absurd and cruel. Absurd because God happened to give Abraham that one son in a miraculous manner only to ask for him to be taken away. But even more so because it is God himself who we later see prohibiting human sacrifice with great fervor. Does that not seem contradictory? And then cruel because, well, ordering a father to kill his son is one of the cruelest things one can imagine.

Of course, we know what happened next: God halted Abraham in the nick of time and revealed that it was all a test and that his son did not have to be sacrificed. Unfortunately, this part only makes the story seem slightly better, doing little to repair the sense of absurdity and cruelty that it has already provoked.

And yet, upon close inspection, one can find that this story is full of hope and kindness. For the story of Abraham and Isaac is the story of the prohibition of human sacrifice. Truly, I have come to realize that the absurdity I used to find in this story was only so because of my own misplaced sense of understanding.

Today, it is rather easy to ignore the reason why human sacrifice seems so barbaric and absurd to us. And, in the same way, we often fail to take into consideration that, back in the old pagan world, human sacrifice was not so rare. In fact, it was almost as universal as animal sacrifice. When we look at the records of this now distant history, we can find horrific frenzies of human sacrifice by different groups of people at different corners of the Earth. Even with animal sacrifice being available to them (which was often their primary option), they would still resort to the sacrificing of humans in desperate attempts to obtain something worthwhile in return.

It is in this context, before the Mosaic law, that we find the story of Abraham. God’s call to this old man, from out of the pagan world, set in motion the most important story there is to tell. And when we pay close attention, we begin to see it all come together.

While God’s order might have seemed somewhat puzzling to Abraham, the old father moved forward with it because of his extraordinary faith. See, God had already promised Abraham a lengthy and world changing lineage through his young miracle child. Therefore, Abraham figured that, whatever was to happen at that mountain, the promise had to be fulfilled.

This is the reason why Abraham told his son, as they climbed up, not to worry as God would surely provide for the sacrifice. Those words were not the words of a father who was cynically hiding from his son a terrible fate. No, those were the words of a father who genuinely believed that God would indeed provide. And Abraham was so confident of this that he reasoned that, even if his son were to die at the mountain top, God would resurrect him and complete his promise.

By the time they had reached the top, Isaac had proved to trust his father akin to the way in which his father trusted God. For a young child always pays close attention to the example of his father, and carefully follows his footsteps when stepping into the unknown. And so, Isaac laid on the wood, without complaint, in preparation for the incoming sacrifice. But only shortly after, they were interrupted and Abraham was proven right.

God detained Abraham and there, right at the summit, an animal was discovered. God provided. And in this series of remarkable events, something of unprecedented greatness was revealed. That mankind does not need to endure the harshness of human sacrifice, and that a father does not need to give up his son. Because God himself has made the necessary arrangements to always provide. Certainly, it is God himself who would offer his only Son to give humanity something worthwhile in return.

And it is with this promised attached, that the horrific act of human sacrifice became prohibited. God never desired for mankind to go through something so dark. Actually, the misleading act of sacrificing others was defeated by the truly repairing act of self-sacrifice. This is so deeply true that, at the summit of a mountain, Christ obediently laid on wood in order to provide for the whole of creation. Only God could solve this equation, being The Father and The Son and fulfilling the pattern of sacrifice to its maximum expression. Thus, proving Abraham right, infinitely so, when he declared that God would provide.