No. Both were perfectly lucid and aware, in control of their senses. They had time to prepare themselves, to think, to consider alternatives, to imagine the event in all its horror.

On the morning of the third day, says the Midrash, Abraham could distinguish the appointed place from afar—just as the people did later before Sinai. He turned to his son and asked: Do you see what I see? Yes, replied Isaac, I see a splendid mountain under a cloud of fire. Then Abraham turned to his two servants and asked: And you, what do you see? The servants, passive onlookers, saw nothing but the desert. And Abraham understood that the event did not concern them and that they were to stay behind. And that the place was indeed the place.

And so the father and the son walked away together—ze laakod veze léaked, the one to bind and the other to be bound, ze lishkhot veze lishakhet, the one to slaughter and the other to be slaughtered—sharing the same allegiance to the same God, responding to the same call. The sacrifice was to be their joint offering; father and son had never before been so close. The Midrashic text emphasizes this, as if to show another tragic aspect of the Akeda, namely, the equation between Abraham and Isaac. Abraham and Isaac were equals, in spite of their opposing roles as victim and executioner. But Abraham himself, whose victim was he? God’s? Once more the key word is yakhdav, together: victims together. Together they gathered the wood, together they arranged it on the altar, together they set the stage for the drama to unfold. Abraham, says the text, behaved like a happy father preparing to celebrate his son’s wedding, and Isaac like a groom about to meet his bride-to-be. Both were serene, at peace with themselves and each other.

But then, suddenly, for a brief moment, Isaac reentered reality and grasped the magnitude and horror of what was to come: Father, what will you do, Mother and you, afterward? — He who has consoled us until now, answered Abraham, will continue to console us. — Father, Isaac went on after a silence, I am afraid, afraid of being afraid. You must bind me securely. And a little later: Father, when you shall speak to my mother, when you shall tell her, make sure she is not standing near the well or on the roof, lest she fall and hurt herself.

Our attention thereafter is centered on Isaac stretched out on the altar. We watch him as Abraham gazes straight into his eyes. Abraham was weeping, his tears streaming into the eyes of his son, leaving a scar never to be erased. So bitterly did he weep that his knife slipped from his hands and fell to the ground. Only then, not before, did he shout in despair, and only then did God part the heavens and allow Isaac to see the higher sanctuaries of the merkava, of creation, with entire rows of angels lamenting: Yakhid shokhet veyakhid nishkat—Look at the slaughterer, he is alone and so is the one he is about to slaughter. All the worlds in all the spheres were in tumult: Isaac had become the center of the universe. He could not be allowed to die, not now, not like this. And die he would not. The voice of an angel was heard: Do not raise your hand against the boy, Abraham. Isaac must live.