The Binding Of Isaac

Abraham then sees a ram and sacrifices it instead. This episode has been the focus of a great deal of commentary in traditional Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources, as well as being addressed by modern scholarship. According to the Hebrew Bible, God commands Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham looks up and sees a ram and sacrifices it instead of Isaac. The passage states that the event occurred at "the mount of the LORD" in "the land of Moriah".2 Chronicles 3:1 refers to "mount Moriah" as the site of Solomon's Temple, while Psalms 24:3; Isaiah 2:3 and 30:29; and Zechariah 8:3 use the term "the mount of the LORD" to refer to the site of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, the location believed to be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In The Binding of Isaac, Religious Murders & Kabbalah, Lippman Bodoff argues that Abraham never intended to actually sacrifice his son, and that he had faith that God had no intention that he do so. God's commandment to Abraham was very specific, and Abraham understood it very precisely: Isaac was to be "raised up as an offering", and God would use the opportunity to teach humankind, once and for all, that human sacrifice, child sacrifice, is not acceptable. In The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides argues that the story of the binding of Isaac contains two "great notions". Second, because Abraham acted on a prophetic vision of what God had asked him to do, the story exemplifies how prophetic revelation has the same truth value as philosophical argument and thus carries equal certainty, notwithstanding the fact that it comes in a dream or vision. In Glory and Agony: Isaac's Sacrifice and National Narrative, Yael S. Feldman argues that the story of Isaac's binding, in both its biblical and post-biblical versions , has had a great impact on the ethos of altruist heroism and self-sacrifice in modern Hebrew national culture. As her study demonstrates, over the last century the "Binding of Isaac" has morphed into the "Sacrifice of Isaac", connoting both the glory and agony of heroic death on the battlefield. In Legends of the Jews, rabbi Louis Ginzberg argues that the binding of Isaac is a way for God to test Isaac's claim to Ishmael, and to silence Satan's protest about Abraham who had not brought up any offering to God after Isaac was born, also to show a proof to the world that Abraham is the true God-fearing man who is ready to fulfill any of God's commands, even to sacrifice his own son: When God commanded the father to desist from sacrificing Isaac, Abraham said: "One man tempts another, because he knoweth not what is in the heart of his neighbor. Spiegel has interpreted this as designed to recast the biblical figures in the context of the Crusades. The Book of Genesis does not tell the age of Isaac at the time. Levenson notes that the biblical text never depicts them speaking before the binding, either. The narrative of the sacrifice and binding of Isaac is traditionally read in synagogue on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. The binding of Isaac is mentioned in the New Testament Epistle to the 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." Abraham's faith in God is such that he felt God would be able to resurrect the slain Isaac, in order that his prophecy might be fulfilled. 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" . Other Christians from the period saw Isaac as a type of the "Word of God" who prefigured Christ.