The text records for us that God called to Abraham, and gave him the most terrible command imaginable: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Genesis 22:2). It is a greatly troubling text, and commentators throughout history have struggled with it.

Among the challenges is the silence of Sarah. How is it that we hear no word from her, as Abraham and Isaac and two servants gather up provisions and firewood for this sacrifice? Some have suggested that God’s command needs to be understood as addressed to Sarah as well, or even Sarah primarily: after all, Abraham had two sons whom he loved, while Sarah was the one who had an only son Isaac whom she loved, and a stepson whom she did not love, and had cast out (21:10).

When Abraham and Isaac had come to Mount Moriah, and Abraham had built the altar and laid the wood on it, and bound his son Isaac and set him on top of the wood, and taken the knife to kill his son, then – and only then – the angel of the Lord stopped him (22:9-11). And it was then – and only then – that the voice said, “now I know that you fear God” (22:12). Isn’t that odd? “Now” God knows? Maybe Abraham has learned something from this encounter, and maybe Sarah and Isaac have, but isn’t it surprising to have the text suggesting to us that God learned something from this experiment?

So the story wraps up: there is a ram caught in the thicket, and it becomes the sacrifice (22:13), and the sureness grows that “the Lord will provide” (22:14) as God reaffirms the oath that Abraham’s family will be blessed, and will be the blessing for “all the nations of the earth” (22:18). Yet our hearts need to tremble: perhaps God will want to measure our faithfulness and trust as well, and will therefore ask of us a fearfully great deed, to find out.

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O Lord: we trust in you, but we are anxious about so many things, and so hesitant to put our lives, or our family’s lives, on the line in the midst of this troubled world. Grant us faith, and faithfulness, and grow our hearts in love and devotion, day by day.