Scripture: Genesis 22:1-18, Hebrews 11:12.

Everybody knows that Jews, when speaking of their faith and culture, refer to the patriarchs of their land and faith as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Isaac is the second of the patriarchs. He was the son of Abraham Genesis 17:18; 21:3 and the father of Jacob. Genesis 25:26 Isaac is mentioned seventy times in the book of Genesis. The Isaac story is in chapters 17,18, 22 and 26. Isaac is the link that connects the history of Abraham to that of Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel. This gives him his primary significance apart from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions about his presence on Mt. Moriah.

Genesis highlights the amused reaction that surrounds Isaac from before his birth. Both his mother and father burst out laughing Genesis 17,18 when they heard the unbelievable news that a hundred-year-old man whose wife was in her nineties, would father a son. Isaac was circumcised eight days after his birth. Genesis 21:3–5 At the time of his being weaned from his mother, his father gave a banquet. Genesis 21:8 He grew up among his kinfolk, playing with his half-brother Ishmael up to the very day that Sarah drove Ishmael and his mother Hagar Genesis 21:9–21 out into the desert.

We encounter Isaac again Genesis 22 in the event that took place on Mt. Moriah, an event often designated “the sacrifice of Isaac,” when it really deals with the “testing of Abraham”. Isaac was not a small child as often depicted in art, but a man of about 20 years of age. After this testing, Abraham decides to marry off his son and asks his servant to find Isaac a wife among his relations in the home country. Genesis 24:1–61

The servant returns with Rebekah. Isaac was forty years old at the time of his marriage and he and his wife would remain childless until twenty years later when Rebekah gave birth to twins Genesis 25:21–28 Esau and Jacob.

1. THE UNUSUAL MOUNT MORIAH.

In Jerusalem the Temple Mount, also known as Mount Moriah and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is the major religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem, treasured by both Jews and Muslims. It is of historical interest only to Christians.
Mt Moriah then, is absolutely sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Abraham was directed by God to take his son into the land of Moriah, and there to offer him for a burnt offering upon a mountain which God would show him. There is little to identify it. But the Jews and Muslims believe it was a mountain, now within the walls of Jerusalem on which Solomon’s Temple was built.
It is here that Jews believe Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. The Muslims agree that this was the spot where Abraham was tested to sacrifice Ishmael and so on top of the Temple mount where Herod’s Temple once stood, they have built “The Dome of the Rock” Mosque.

Judaism regards the Temple Mount as the location of Abraham’s binding of Isaac, and of two Jewish Temples. According to Israel the site should function as the centre of all national life – government, judicial, economical, and, of course, religious centre.
From that location the word of God came out to all nations. There, two important Temples were built. The first was built by Solomon the son of David in 957 BC, and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC. The second was constructed under the auspices of Zerubbabel in 516 BC and destroyed by the Roman Empire in 70 AD. Jewish tradition maintains it is here the Third and final Temple will also be built.

The location is the holiest site in Judaism and is the place Jews turn towards during prayer. Due to its extreme sanctity, many Jews will not walk on the Mount itself, to avoid unintentionally entering the area where the Holy of Holies stood, since according to Rabbinical law, some aspect of the Divine Presence is still present at the site. It was from the Holy of Holies that the High Priest communicated directly with God.

The Ark of Covenant and the Ten Commandment tablets may still be buried in one of the many underground cavities at the site. In other writings on the city of Jerusalem, I speak of my underground visits and why I think this is where the lost Ark of the Covenant may have been hidden.

Among Muslims, the Mount is widely considered to be the third holiest site in Islam. Revered as the Noble Sanctuary and the location where Muhammad ascended to heaven leaving his footprint in the rock, the site is also associated with Biblical prophets who are venerated in Judaism and Islam.

After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 637 AD, Umayyad Caliphs commissioned the construction of the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on the site. The Dome was completed in 692 AD, making it one of the oldest extant Islamic structures in the world, after the Kaaba. The Al Aqsa Mosque rests on the far southern side of the Mount, facing Mecca. The Dome of the Rock currently sits in the middle, occupying or close to the area where many believe the third Holy Temple will be built.
In light of the dual claims of both Judaism and Islam, it is the most contested religious site in the world. Controlled by Israel since 1967, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority claim sovereignty over the site. This remains a major focal point of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel has turned over management of the site to an Islamic council, known as the Muslim Waqf. In an attempt to keep the status quo, the Israeli government enforces a controversial ban on prayer by non-Muslim visitors. However, the Israeli army frequently practice maneuvers that would recapture the Mosque from Muslim armed soldiers.
This holy site is regarded as the site of the most important event in Abraham’s life. But Jews and Muslims have different accounts of the event.

The Jews and the Muslims have conflict between the Qur’an’s version of Abraham’s ultimate test, the offering of his son to God and the Jewish version in the Torah. Muslims believe it was Ishmael their father, not Isaac, the Jews’ father, whom Abraham took up Mt Moriah.

In the Qur’an, Abraham tells his son of God’s command, and the boy replies, “O my father! Do that which thou art commanded. Allah willing, thou shalt find me of the steadfast.” The Koran adds “They had both surrendered,” using the verb whose noun is the word “Islam.”

The Old Testament says Isaac was taken up the mountain. The Qur’an does not specify which son God tells Abraham to sacrifice. Muslim interpreters a generation after Muhammad concluded that the prophet was descended from the slave woman Hagar’s boy, Ishmael. Later scholars confirmed Ishmael was the son who went under the knife. That decision effectively removed the Jews from Mt Moriah. Not only was the Jewish claim rejected, but their forefather lost his role in the great drama of surrender of Mt Moriah.

It is important for us to take into account the news of important Jewish scholars. For example, Rabbi J. H. Hertz (once Chief Rabbi of the British Empire), questions that child sacrifice was ordered by Abraham’s God but rather God interposed to prevent the sacrifice. Child sacrifice, was known “among the Semitic peoples,” and suggests that “in that age, it was astounding that He should have asked for it.”

Hertz interprets the Akedah as demonstrating to the Jews that human sacrifice is abhorrent. “Unlike the cruel heathen deities, it was the spiritual surrender alone that God required.” In Jeremiah 32:35, God states that the later Israelite practice of child sacrifice to the deity Molech “had [never] entered My mind that they should do this abomination.”

Other rabbinic scholars also note that Abraham was willing to do everything to spare his son, even if it meant going against the divine command: while it was God who ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, it was an angel, a lesser being in the celestial hierarchy, that commanded him to stop. However, the actions and words of angels are generally understood to derive directly from God’s will.

Some scholars state that the real meaning is not the sacrifice of Isaac but rather, at the binding the main one tested was Abraham. It was a test of faith to see whether he would doubt God’s words. Abraham had been assured by God that “Your seed will be called through Isaac” (Gen. 21:12), i.e., Isaac (and not Ishmael) would father a great nation—the Jewish people.
However, Abraham could apparently have asked a very glaring question: At the time that God commanded him to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice, Isaac was still single, and if Isaac would die now, how could he possibly father the nation which was to be born from Abraham? Moreover, isn’t God eternal and unchanging, as God declares: “I have not changed” (Malachi 3:6), implying that He does not change His mind?

Yet Abraham paid no attention to this altogether logical question. Instead, he dismissed it totally from his consciousness, and believed with pure and simple faith that if this is what God was telling him to do now, this was surely the right thing to do. It was passing this test that was remarkable even for someone of Abraham’s stature.

The Christian view follows a similar interpretation. The Binding of Isaac is mentioned in the New Testament Book of Hebrews among many acts of faith recorded in the Old Testament: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.” (Hebrews 11:17–19)

The Author of Hebrews here considers Abraham’s faith in God to be of such a magnitude that he felt reassured that if God would allow him to perform the task which he’d requested, God would be able to resurrect the slain Isaac, in order that his prophecy (Genesis 21:12) might be fulfilled. Such faith in God’s word and in his promise lead this particular Old Testament passage to be regarded by many Christians as an incredibly significant one.

Early Christian preaching sometimes simply received Jewish interpretations of the binding of Isaac without elaborating on them. For example Hippolytus of Rome says in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, “The blessed Isaac became desirous of the anointing and he wished to sacrifice himself for the sake of the world” (On the Song 2:15). Since other Christians from the period saw Isaac as a type of the “Word of God” who prefigured Christ (Origen, Homilies on Genesis 11–13), it is easy to see how early Christian interpreters might have made sense of this Jewish tradition.

The majority of Christian Biblical commentators hold this whole episode to be an archetype of the way that God works; this event is seen as prefiguring God’s plan to have his own Son, Jesus, die on the cross as a substitute for humanity, much like the ram God provided for Abraham.

Abraham’s willingness to give up his own son Isaac is seen, in this view, as foreshadowing the willingness of God the Father to sacrifice his Son; also contrasted is Isaac’s submission in the whole ordeal with Christ’s, the two choosing to lay down their own lives in order for the will of God to be accomplished, as no struggle is mentioned in the Genesis account.
Indeed, both stories portray the participants carrying the wood for their own sacrifice up a mountain.

The Qur’an states that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son. The son is not however named in the Qur’an (e.g., 37:99–113). In early Islam, there was a dispute over the identity of the son.

However, Muslim scholars came to endorse that it was Ishmael. The argument of those early scholars who believed it was Isaac rather than Ishmael was that “God’s perfecting His mercy on Abraham and Isaac” (12:6) referred to his making Abraham his friend and saving him from the burning bush, and to his rescuing Isaac.

The other parties held that the promise to Sarah was of a son, Isaac, and a grandson, Jacob (11:71–74), excluded the possibility of a premature death of Isaac. The early dispute was more concerned with Persian rather than Jewish rivalry with Arabs, since the Persians claimed to be of descendants of Isaac. Al-Masudi, for example, reports a Persian poet (902 AD.) who claimed superiority over Arabs through descent from Isaac.

Muslims consider that visions experienced by prophets are revelations from God, and as such it was a divine order to Abraham. The entire episode of the sacrifice is regarded as a trial for Abraham and his son, and both are seen as having passed the test by submitting to God and showing their awareness that God is the Owner and Giver of all that we have and cherish, including life and offspring.

The submission of Abraham and his son is celebrated and commemorated by Muslims on the days of Eid al-Adha Sacrifice festival. During the festival, those who can afford and the ones in the pilgrimage sacrifice a ram, cow, sheep or a camel. Part of the sacrificed meat is eaten by the household and remaining is distributed to the neighbour and the needy.

The festival happens in the pilgrimage hajj season. The well-known site of Marwah may be identified with the biblical Moriah. Marwah being the mount just outside the perimeter of the Kaaba. However, it should be noted that the Hebrew Bible identifies the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as Mount Moriah, as early as the First Temple period.

On this rock where the testing of Isaac occurred, Muslims believe Mohammad stepped and ascended into heaven. Therefore the foundations which include the famous Western Wall is the most sacred spots of Jews, and on top of it, the Mosque which is sacred to Muslims.

One further complication. When Abraham journeyed from the land of the Philistines, on the 3rd day he saw the place afar off. Genesis 22:4 This a mountain farther north than Jerusalem. So the Samaritans say the scene of sacrifice was actually on their Mt Gerizim.

2. THE UNIQUE SACRIFICE.

So this is one of the world’s most sacred sites, to both Jews and Arabs, the site of a Temple where animals were sacrificed on an altar. The blood of those animals was offered for the forgiveness of sins. Just outside those temple walls, 2000 years ago, another sacrifice was made that affects your future. The man who tried to kill Jesus shortly after his birth in Bethlehem – Herod the Great – was the great architect of the Jerusalem that Jesus came to know. The Temple had been rebuilt by Herod over a period of 60 years, from 19 B.C., using 10,000 labourers and 1000 priests trained as masons.

It was totally destroyed forty years after the death of Jesus just 7 years after its completion. All that remains is the Temple Platform on which the Temple was built. It was built on the highest point of Jerusalem, Mt Moriah. At a crisis point in the life of Abraham, God called on him to sacrifice his young son, Isaac. As they climbed, young Isaac looked around and saw their donkey laden with wood, the bowls of burning coals, and his father with the sacrificial knife.

Isaac said, “Father, we have the wood, I see the knife, and we have the fire, but where is the sacrifice?” Abraham said, “Son, God will provide.” As they neared the mountaintop, the lad spoke again. “Father, we have the wood, we have the knife, we have the fire. Where is the sacrifice?” His father said, “Put your hands behind you, son,” and he bound the lad, laid him on the wood, and took the knife. A voice called, “Abraham, stay your hand. Look in the thicket.” There in the bush was a ram, caught by its horns. Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it. He gave the mountain a special name, “Jehovah-Jireh.” The name means, “The Lord provides.”

In the Scriptures we read that for our sin, loneliness, and helplessness, “God will provide.” Jehovah-Jireh! God will provide whatever you need. Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, “My God will supply all your needs.” Philippians 4:19 The Psalms Psalm 37:5 say: “Give yourself to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will help you.” Peter wrote: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 God provides for all our anxiety, and for our need for a sacrifice for our sins.
The concept of offering sacrifices is foreign to our understanding, but to Israel it was central to her worship. Israel had an agreement with God called a Covenant. God would be their God and bless them as a nation if they obeyed his laws. Their failure to be obedient meant they had to offer gifts of produce from the farms and vineyards, and the sacrifice of animals. The Patriarchs – Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses – all built altars and made sacrifices. The Temples of Solomon and Herod had huge altars where animal sacrifices were made.

The more evil the sin, the more expensive the sacrifice. The wealthier the person, the more expensive the sacrifice. The Priest who sinned, or the wealthy man, had to sacrifice a bull, a chief had to sacrifice a he-goat, an ordinary citizen a female lamb, a very poor person a dove, such as Mary and Joseph gave after the birth of Jesus. Part of the slain animal was burnt on the altar and the smoke was a sign of the person’s repentance.

The person who had sinned deserved to die, but a sacrifice was made instead – the blood of the animal being given in place of the blood of the person who deserved to die. The animal’s life was the sinner’s substitute.

Jesus was seen as the Lamb of God, sacrificed for the sin of the world. Paul said: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” 1 Corinthians 5:7 “God offered Him, so that by His death, He should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven through their faith in Him.” Romans 3:25 Christ’s death became an atoning sacrifice to enable the forgiving of our sins through His blood. Jesus was to replace the old sacrificial system with a unique sacrifice: His own death was as the Lamb of God.
Jesus would be the unique sacrifice. His blood was powerful in its effect, cleansing all from sin. “His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood avails for me.” We think of Jesus dying upon the Cross, shedding His blood as the sacrifice for our sins. His death upon the Cross is powerful in how it cleanses us from our sin. He was the unique Temple sacrifice for our sins, made once and for all.

3. THE ULTIMATE DIFFERENCE.

Jesus was to replace the old sacrificial system with the unique and ultimate sacrifice, His own death as the Lamb of God. Isaac Watts put it: “Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain, could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain. But Christ the heavenly Lamb, takes all our guilt away; A sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.”
Here is the ultimate difference between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. In Islam Abraham offers Ishmael his son, on Mt Moriah for the sake of Allah. Today multitudes of Muslins would offer their sons to die for the sake of Allah.

In Judaism, Abraham had the faith to offer his son Isaac on Mt Moriah, but God provided a substitute, a ram, whose blood was shed in the place of Abraham’s son. So the animal sacrifices continued in the Temple.

In Christianity, on Mt Calvary, God offers His Son to die for us, the Lamb of God who takes away our sin. God gives His son for us, not we give our sons for Allah. He died for us a perfect sacrifice. No other sacrifice is required. His was the unique and ultimate sacrifice. By faith we believe that Jesus died in our place, a substitute for each of us.
Where Jesus died is marked today by The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The grey rock mass of Golgotha (or Calvary) inside is the most Christian place in the world.

Just above the rock is a chapel shared by the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Catholic side boasts three mosaics. In the centre is Mary; to the left is Christ, lowered from the Cross; and to the right is Abraham, about to slay Isaac who is bound on the altar in an image of Jesus sprawled on the Golgotha’s rock. The Apostle Paul proposed Isaac’s binding and release was a prophetic foreshadowing of the Resurrection.

The Apostle Paul reminds us of Abraham’s original response to God’s Call and through the old man’s embattled faith, or “hope against hope,” as Paul famously put it, that God would bring him a son. Such faith, Paul wrote, made Abraham “the father of all who believe.” This means a believer no longer needs be Jewish or to follow Jewish law to be redeemed—the way now lay through faith in Christ.

Because Abraham predated the Jewish law as brought down from the mountain by Moses, “the promise to Abraham and his descendants … did not come through law.” Nor, Paul argued, did it come through tribal inheritance. The God of the Hebrew Bible deemed Abraham to be “righteous” years before his circumcision, and years before he had a son.

Abraham’s children are people of faith and Baptism in faith brings you into God’s family. It was Abraham’s faith that God would provide a sacrifice that led him to take Isaac to the top of the Mount. God did provide the sacrifice and on the top of Mt Calvary, God in his great love provided His own son as a sacrifice for our sin. Like Isaac, Jesus was bound at the place of sacrifice and God provided the sacrifice for our sin. Our faith in Jesus Christ enables us to have our sins forgiven and to receive the promises first made to Abraham.

References: The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. F E Gaebelein Ed 1981.
J. OSCAR BOYD, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths. William Morrow

REV HON DR GORDON MOYES AC MLC

Monday, 9th August, 2010, 12:17 pm | Abrahams Legacy, Bible Studies