And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
Abraham had bound his consenting son upon the wood on Mount Moriah and lifted his hand firmly grasping the knife to slay him as a burnt offering when heaven stopped him at the last moment. His act proved a perfect obedience that let duty to God govern feeling, refusing to hesitate, murmur or reason out how the promise In Isaac shall thy seed be called could still stand. He had already made the sacrifice in heart purpose with trust that God who gave Isaac had right to recall him and was able to raise him even from ashes, and that faith was counted to him for righteousness. Isaac himself, grown and able to resist, submitted willingly and cheerfully, trusting his father's integrity and God's love and honor in being accepted as an offering. The scene was designed to prefigure God's own gift of His only Son, but where Isaac was spared by interposition and a ram offered in his place, Christ was not spared but died for the guilty race.
Words and Setting at Moriah
The moment is the last point of the test on Mount Moriah, reached after a three-day journey walking with Isaac while looking away from things seen to things unseen and hoping for a countermand. Along the way Abraham answered Isaac that God would provide the offering, and then he opened the whole matter to him. He did not use the journey to find excuses or to turn aside from obedience.
After Isaac consented he was bound and placed upon the wood, and Abraham stretched forth his hand uplifted and firmly grasping the knife or sword to slay his son as an offering to God. That uplifted hand followed last words of endearing love, last parental and filial tears, the last embrace, and the last pressing of his beloved son to his aged breast. The sacrifice was fully prepared and his consecration complete under the severe test.
He braced himself for the sad work without murmuring, strengthening his soul by past evidences of God's goodness and faithfulness, with the Lord going with him at every step. He desired no other witnesses and was witnessed by God alone. Then a voice from heaven said it was enough, and the angel's call from heaven commanded him to stay his hand and do Isaac no harm.
At God's command Abraham had waked Isaac to go with him to offer him as a burnt offering. The act took place near Salem, the central and elevated place on the border of Benjamin and Judah that eight hundred years later became David's capital. That same spot on Mount Moriah where Abraham built an altar later became Ornan the Jebusite's threshing-floor where David built an altar, was hallowed when the plague was stayed, and was afterward chosen as the site of the temple erected by Solomon.
Abraham's Tested Obedience
Abraham was old and feeble and deeply attached to Isaac, and his heart was full of anguish at taking his beloved son's life, yet he let duty to God govern rather than feelings. He did not stop to question how the promise could be fulfilled, question its justice, hesitate, murmur, complain, give up, or use his age as excuse, and when he could not reason out the command he stopped reasoning and obeyed. He did not use the three-day journey to find excuses or let grief and human attachments keep him from obeying, and he did not wait to reason the matter out before beginning the painful journey. His obedience continued fully to the point of taking the knife until God stopped him at the last moment.
He trusted that God was just and righteous and knew the end from the beginning. He held that He who graciously gave Isaac had perfect right to recall the gift, and that the same power that gave Isaac could raise him again even from the ashes of the burnt sacrifice to fulfill the promise In Isaac shall thy seed be called. This he believed himself and taught to Isaac, that God could see the end and was able to raise Isaac from the dead. He had verily made the sacrifice to all intents and purposes in his heart with perfect trust at every step, carrying out the fearful test in heart purpose as fully as if by his own hand he had taken his son's life. This faith was counted to him for righteousness.
His willingness to withhold nothing, not even his only son, proved his fear of God, reverence, and loyalty. Witnessed by heavenly beings, it disproved Satan's accusation that he had failed to meet the covenant's conditions. The test required proving willingness to endure and setting foot in the blood-stained path, not completing the death, for the angel stayed his hand before Isaac was slain and a ram was offered in Isaac's place. The stopped sacrifice and substitution helped open the plan of salvation more fully and reveal how God would provide salvation.
His obedience shows true faith is not belief alone but trust in God that produces fruits. He believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness, showing he was saved by faith in Christ just as the sinner today is. His faithfulness in this test made good his earlier lack of perfect trust that had led him to take Hagar as wife. The act stands recorded in Bible history as proof that obedience to God's law is essential to receiving His favor and blessing, bringing God's commendation and renewal of the promise that in his seed all nations would be blessed because he obeyed God's voice and did not withhold his son.
Isaac's Willing Submission
Isaac had grown to manhood by the time of Moriah and could have resisted his aged father, yet he consented to be sacrificed and allowed himself to be bound and laid upon the wood. He submitted willingly and cheerfully to the knife, seeing in being accepted as an offering not wrath and displeasure but special tokens of God's love and honor. Having been thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of God, he held perfect faith in His promises and requirements, with full confidence in his father's integrity and in the divine command, so that he comforted his father and encouraged his almost nerveless hands to bind the cords upon the altar.
His readiness was the fruit of training that had taught him to love obedience. The authority he obeyed was not selfish or arbitrary, but grounded in love and aimed at the welfare and happiness of the children. At that uplifted hand the faith of Abraham and the willing submission of Isaac were tested together, showing that to yield one's life as an offering to God when He accepts it is a privilege and an honor.
Foreshadowing of Christ
The offering on Moriah was deliberately arranged to foreshadow the sacrifice of God Himself, and no more was required of Abraham than what divine compassion and infinite love had already given in surrendering the only begotten Son to a shameful death for the guilty race. Abraham acted in perfect faith and obedience under a command that human judgment calls severe and too great for human strength, his strength coming from God as he looked not at things seen with mortal vision but at eternal things. Taking the knife cost him three days of grief, agony, mental anguish and torture of soul such as no other trial could have caused, yet the Lord went with him at every step, that believers might better comprehend the reality of the Father's self-denial and infinite sacrifice.
Isaac represented the Son of God given to die for the sins of the world, and his near-sacrifice made the cost of redemption real to Abraham. Through anguish Abraham was permitted to understand something of the great sacrifice and to grasp God's self-denial in giving His Son to rescue humanity. As he grasped God's promise he saw by faith the coming incarnate Christ, the Just One and the Lamb whose sacrifice would atone for human sin, and rejoiced. God permitted the experience so Abraham would know in his own life about the Father accepting the death of His beloved Son to ransom a guilty rebellious race that had fallen through disobedience and could never rescue itself. Christ took the sinner's place, the guiltless suffering for the guilty, and the measure of that divine compassion exceeds the love of an earthly father.
Unlike Isaac, for whom interposition was permitted and a voice stayed the sacrifice, Jesus was not spared at the last moment but endured humiliation, mockery, insult, derision, soul-anguish, and crucifixion and died. Legions of angels witnessed but were not permitted to interpose, giving the greatest proof of divine love and pity, and the Creator Himself suffered with His Son. The scene of Abraham raising the knife is echoed by the priest standing with lifted knife over the sacrificial lamb at Christ's death. Christ's long fast and suffering in the wilderness follows the same pattern of testing to prove perfect obedience through willingness to endure self-denial and suffering, for the test required proving willingness to endure and setting foot in the blood-stained path, not completing the death.
Satan falsely claimed to be the angel who stopped Abraham, using the event to urge Christ to leave the path of suffering and self-denial. He used that event to persuade Christ that He need not endure suffering and could be spared the path of sacrifice. Christ rejected this temptation and remained steadfast in carrying out the plan of redemption in every particular.
Instruction and Application Today
The uplifted hand with the knife was put on record for the sake of believing children to come, to give them strength and courage and faith, and for that fidelity Abraham was named Father of the faithful and called God's friend. It teaches implicit confidence in God and perfect obedience to His requirements however severe, close, cutting and painful they may be, even when human judgment calls them too great for human strength. Strength for such obedience comes from God as the believer looks away from things seen with mortal vision to eternal and unseen things. The lesson is complete surrender of the whole will and entire consecration under sore trial, laying all possessions upon the altar with no Isaacs held back as too precious to sacrifice for God. Such surrender by faith places the soul under the protection of Jehovah.
The act tests professed Christians whether they will follow Abraham in yielding their beloved Isaac, their dearest treasure and darling treasures, denying self and obeying God's voice instead of hesitating and clinging to earthly things and the world while boasting of sacrifice for truth. Abraham's readiness to give his only son, the child of promise, stands in contrast to those unwilling to give up earthly possessions for others or for God's cause. It is an example of obedience and self-sacrifice in service to God, to be followed with undaunted courage and living faith. That following means sowing beside all waters, meeting opposition from selfish motives, bigotry and prejudice, not confining labor to one's own country but going out to the unbelieving world, for the field is the world, to convert souls to the truth.
A solemn duty rests on Christian parents to educate and mould their children to high respect and exalted reverence for God and everything sacred and holy, to regard God's claims first, to feel nothing too precious to sacrifice for Him, and to exemplify faith by works. The image of a child bound on an altar applies to parents' earnest prayer and living faith in committing their children to God, seeking His care and guidance for them through the dangers of the last days. Children in turn are taught perfect submission to parents and to God, with confidence in God and in His commands even when obedience is painful. To yield life as an offering to God when accepted by Him is a privilege and an honor.
God has right to everyone and gives His children important experiences in His own way for their present and eternal good, so His requiring this of Abraham must never be questioned or excused. Those with perfect confidence never question His dealings but trust Him as the very best friend, believing and delighting to obey even when the command cannot be reasoned out. Abraham so obeyed and came off conqueror, though no one could have been more severely tested. His people today will likewise be tested and tried, with the Lord putting His purposes in the place of their devising, often contrary to human desires and inclinations and contrary to the dictates of the flesh, requiring patient acceptance of His requirements.
Laying a child upon the altar can mean a parent giving up a one-year-old child to another to do a mother's duty and give a mother's care, in order to give oneself fully and unreservedly to God's work without excuse. The sacrifice follows many prayers, many tears, and severe soul conflict because the heart is bound up with the child, and the conflict ends when the sacrifice is made for Jesus. Though tears come there is then peace and rest in Jesus, with firm confidence that He who called to the work will accept the child and guard and love him as a lamb of His fold. The parents visit only occasionally when it does not interfere with duty.
Abraham had bound his consenting son upon the wood on Mount Moriah and lifted his hand firmly grasping the knife to slay him as a burnt offering when heaven stopped him at the last moment. His act proved a perfect obedience that let duty to God govern feeling, refusing to hesitate, murmur or reason out how the promise In Isaac shall thy seed be called could still stand. He had already made the sacrifice in heart purpose with trust that God who gave Isaac had right to recall him and was able to raise him even from ashes, and that faith was counted to him for righteousness. Isaac himself, grown and able to resist, submitted willingly and cheerfully, trusting his father's integrity and God's love and honor in being accepted as an offering. The scene was designed to prefigure God's own gift of His only Son, but where Isaac was spared by interposition and a ram offered in his place, Christ was not spared but died for the guilty race.
Words and Setting at Moriah
The moment is the last point of the test on Mount Moriah, reached after a three-day journey walking with Isaac while looking away from things seen to things unseen and hoping for a countermand. Along the way Abraham answered Isaac that God would provide the offering, and then he opened the whole matter to him. He did not use the journey to find excuses or to turn aside from obedience.
After Isaac consented he was bound and placed upon the wood, and Abraham stretched forth his hand uplifted and firmly grasping the knife or sword to slay his son as an offering to God. That uplifted hand followed last words of endearing love, last parental and filial tears, the last embrace, and the last pressing of his beloved son to his aged breast. The sacrifice was fully prepared and his consecration complete under the severe test.
He braced himself for the sad work without murmuring, strengthening his soul by past evidences of God's goodness and faithfulness, with the Lord going with him at every step. He desired no other witnesses and was witnessed by God alone. Then a voice from heaven said it was enough, and the angel's call from heaven commanded him to stay his hand and do Isaac no harm.
At God's command Abraham had waked Isaac to go with him to offer him as a burnt offering. The act took place near Salem, the central and elevated place on the border of Benjamin and Judah that eight hundred years later became David's capital. That same spot on Mount Moriah where Abraham built an altar later became Ornan the Jebusite's threshing-floor where David built an altar, was hallowed when the plague was stayed, and was afterward chosen as the site of the temple erected by Solomon.
Abraham's Tested Obedience
Abraham was old and feeble and deeply attached to Isaac, and his heart was full of anguish at taking his beloved son's life, yet he let duty to God govern rather than feelings. He did not stop to question how the promise could be fulfilled, question its justice, hesitate, murmur, complain, give up, or use his age as excuse, and when he could not reason out the command he stopped reasoning and obeyed. He did not use the three-day journey to find excuses or let grief and human attachments keep him from obeying, and he did not wait to reason the matter out before beginning the painful journey. His obedience continued fully to the point of taking the knife until God stopped him at the last moment.
He trusted that God was just and righteous and knew the end from the beginning. He held that He who graciously gave Isaac had perfect right to recall the gift, and that the same power that gave Isaac could raise him again even from the ashes of the burnt sacrifice to fulfill the promise In Isaac shall thy seed be called. This he believed himself and taught to Isaac, that God could see the end and was able to raise Isaac from the dead. He had verily made the sacrifice to all intents and purposes in his heart with perfect trust at every step, carrying out the fearful test in heart purpose as fully as if by his own hand he had taken his son's life. This faith was counted to him for righteousness.
His willingness to withhold nothing, not even his only son, proved his fear of God, reverence, and loyalty. Witnessed by heavenly beings, it disproved Satan's accusation that he had failed to meet the covenant's conditions. The test required proving willingness to endure and setting foot in the blood-stained path, not completing the death, for the angel stayed his hand before Isaac was slain and a ram was offered in Isaac's place. The stopped sacrifice and substitution helped open the plan of salvation more fully and reveal how God would provide salvation.
His obedience shows true faith is not belief alone but trust in God that produces fruits. He believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness, showing he was saved by faith in Christ just as the sinner today is. His faithfulness in this test made good his earlier lack of perfect trust that had led him to take Hagar as wife. The act stands recorded in Bible history as proof that obedience to God's law is essential to receiving His favor and blessing, bringing God's commendation and renewal of the promise that in his seed all nations would be blessed because he obeyed God's voice and did not withhold his son.
Isaac's Willing Submission
Isaac had grown to manhood by the time of Moriah and could have resisted his aged father, yet he consented to be sacrificed and allowed himself to be bound and laid upon the wood. He submitted willingly and cheerfully to the knife, seeing in being accepted as an offering not wrath and displeasure but special tokens of God's love and honor. Having been thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of God, he held perfect faith in His promises and requirements, with full confidence in his father's integrity and in the divine command, so that he comforted his father and encouraged his almost nerveless hands to bind the cords upon the altar.
His readiness was the fruit of training that had taught him to love obedience. The authority he obeyed was not selfish or arbitrary, but grounded in love and aimed at the welfare and happiness of the children. At that uplifted hand the faith of Abraham and the willing submission of Isaac were tested together, showing that to yield one's life as an offering to God when He accepts it is a privilege and an honor.
Foreshadowing of Christ
The offering on Moriah was deliberately arranged to foreshadow the sacrifice of God Himself, and no more was required of Abraham than what divine compassion and infinite love had already given in surrendering the only begotten Son to a shameful death for the guilty race. Abraham acted in perfect faith and obedience under a command that human judgment calls severe and too great for human strength, his strength coming from God as he looked not at things seen with mortal vision but at eternal things. Taking the knife cost him three days of grief, agony, mental anguish and torture of soul such as no other trial could have caused, yet the Lord went with him at every step, that believers might better comprehend the reality of the Father's self-denial and infinite sacrifice.
Isaac represented the Son of God given to die for the sins of the world, and his near-sacrifice made the cost of redemption real to Abraham. Through anguish Abraham was permitted to understand something of the great sacrifice and to grasp God's self-denial in giving His Son to rescue humanity. As he grasped God's promise he saw by faith the coming incarnate Christ, the Just One and the Lamb whose sacrifice would atone for human sin, and rejoiced. God permitted the experience so Abraham would know in his own life about the Father accepting the death of His beloved Son to ransom a guilty rebellious race that had fallen through disobedience and could never rescue itself. Christ took the sinner's place, the guiltless suffering for the guilty, and the measure of that divine compassion exceeds the love of an earthly father.
Unlike Isaac, for whom interposition was permitted and a voice stayed the sacrifice, Jesus was not spared at the last moment but endured humiliation, mockery, insult, derision, soul-anguish, and crucifixion and died. Legions of angels witnessed but were not permitted to interpose, giving the greatest proof of divine love and pity, and the Creator Himself suffered with His Son. The scene of Abraham raising the knife is echoed by the priest standing with lifted knife over the sacrificial lamb at Christ's death. Christ's long fast and suffering in the wilderness follows the same pattern of testing to prove perfect obedience through willingness to endure self-denial and suffering, for the test required proving willingness to endure and setting foot in the blood-stained path, not completing the death.
Satan falsely claimed to be the angel who stopped Abraham, using the event to urge Christ to leave the path of suffering and self-denial. He used that event to persuade Christ that He need not endure suffering and could be spared the path of sacrifice. Christ rejected this temptation and remained steadfast in carrying out the plan of redemption in every particular.
Instruction and Application Today
The uplifted hand with the knife was put on record for the sake of believing children to come, to give them strength and courage and faith, and for that fidelity Abraham was named Father of the faithful and called God's friend. It teaches implicit confidence in God and perfect obedience to His requirements however severe, close, cutting and painful they may be, even when human judgment calls them too great for human strength. Strength for such obedience comes from God as the believer looks away from things seen with mortal vision to eternal and unseen things. The lesson is complete surrender of the whole will and entire consecration under sore trial, laying all possessions upon the altar with no Isaacs held back as too precious to sacrifice for God. Such surrender by faith places the soul under the protection of Jehovah.
The act tests professed Christians whether they will follow Abraham in yielding their beloved Isaac, their dearest treasure and darling treasures, denying self and obeying God's voice instead of hesitating and clinging to earthly things and the world while boasting of sacrifice for truth. Abraham's readiness to give his only son, the child of promise, stands in contrast to those unwilling to give up earthly possessions for others or for God's cause. It is an example of obedience and self-sacrifice in service to God, to be followed with undaunted courage and living faith. That following means sowing beside all waters, meeting opposition from selfish motives, bigotry and prejudice, not confining labor to one's own country but going out to the unbelieving world, for the field is the world, to convert souls to the truth.
A solemn duty rests on Christian parents to educate and mould their children to high respect and exalted reverence for God and everything sacred and holy, to regard God's claims first, to feel nothing too precious to sacrifice for Him, and to exemplify faith by works. The image of a child bound on an altar applies to parents' earnest prayer and living faith in committing their children to God, seeking His care and guidance for them through the dangers of the last days. Children in turn are taught perfect submission to parents and to God, with confidence in God and in His commands even when obedience is painful. To yield life as an offering to God when accepted by Him is a privilege and an honor.
God has right to everyone and gives His children important experiences in His own way for their present and eternal good, so His requiring this of Abraham must never be questioned or excused. Those with perfect confidence never question His dealings but trust Him as the very best friend, believing and delighting to obey even when the command cannot be reasoned out. Abraham so obeyed and came off conqueror, though no one could have been more severely tested. His people today will likewise be tested and tried, with the Lord putting His purposes in the place of their devising, often contrary to human desires and inclinations and contrary to the dictates of the flesh, requiring patient acceptance of His requirements.
Laying a child upon the altar can mean a parent giving up a one-year-old child to another to do a mother's duty and give a mother's care, in order to give oneself fully and unreservedly to God's work without excuse. The sacrifice follows many prayers, many tears, and severe soul conflict because the heart is bound up with the child, and the conflict ends when the sacrifice is made for Jesus. Though tears come there is then peace and rest in Jesus, with firm confidence that He who called to the work will accept the child and guard and love him as a lamb of His fold. The parents visit only occasionally when it does not interfere with duty.