• • •

And the miracle took place. Death was defeated, the tragedy averted. The blade that could have cut the line—and prevented Israel from being born—was halted, suspended.

Was thus the mystery resolved? Hardly. As one plunges into Midrashic literature, one feels its poignancy. It leaves one troubled. The question is no longer whether Isaac was saved but whether the miracle could happen again. And how often. And for what reasons. And at what cost.

• • •

As a child, I read and reread this tale, my heart beating wildly; I felt dark apprehension come over me and carry me far away.

There was no understanding the three characters. Why would God, the merciful Father, demand that Abraham become inhuman, and why would Abraham accept? And Isaac, why did he submit so meekly? Not having received a direct order to let himself be sacrificed, why did he consent?

I could not understand. If God needs human suffering to be God, how can man foresee an end to that suffering? And if faith in God must result in self-denial, how can faith claim to elevate and improve man?

These were painful questions, especially for an adolescent, because they did not fit into the framework of the sin-punishment concept, to which all religious thought had accustomed us. The only exception is one Midrash, which asks: Why was Abraham tested on Mount Moriah? And it answers: Because he favored his son Isaac over his eldest, Ishmael. This hypothesis has the merit of “justifying” the order that Abraham received from God and which otherwise would seem incomprehensible. Let us reread the command. God told Abraham: Kakh na eth binkha eth yekhidkha asher ahavta eth Yitzhak—Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and bring him to Me in holocaust. Only son? But that’s a mistake! What about Ishmael? Forgotten by Abraham, was he equally forgotten by God? To introduce the possibility of guilt of the father toward his eldest son—a guilt that carries its own punishment—we have but to change the emphasis of the sentence: Kakh na eth binkha—Take your son, comma, eth yekhidkha asher ahavta, the only one that you love, Isaac, and bring him to Me: I want him as an expiatory sacrifice. The term yekhidkha—the only one—would no longer be contrary to the facts.

But we are not here concerned with punctuation or even with immanent morality. Had it been a simple matter of expiating a sin or an injustice, the sacrifice would not have been so exceptional a test: in those days this kind of immolation was current practice among the peoples of the region.

Even were we to assume for a moment that God wished to punish a sinful father, why would he inflict a worse—and supreme—punishment on the son? Abraham could have asked the question, he could have spoken up just as he had done when trying to save Sodom and Gomorrah. Why didn’t he? According to the Midrash, he knew and observed the laws and commandments of Torah; didn’t he know that by killing, he would mutilate the very image of God? Didn’t he know, he who knew everything, didn’t he know that in Jewish tradition God is bound to obey His own Law, including the most urgent of all: Thou shalt not kill! Or should we imagine a more human motivation for Abraham’s strange behavior? The repressed resentment of a father toward a son who will survive him? Or else man’s need to kill that which he loves?