Bill's Bible Blog

The old man raised his knife high and prepared to thrust it through his struggling son’s chest…

“ABRAHAM, ABRAHAM!”

The voice of God blasted across the mountain top like a windstorm, kicking up sand and debris, and staggering Abraham back from the altar. His hand dropped to his side and the knife fell from his nerveless fingers. Then it was like his joints failed him as he dropped to his knees and then prostrate on his face before his God. He was barely able to choke out a reply past the lump in his throat, “I am here.”

Then God continued, “DO NOT LAY A HAND ON THE BOY AND DO NOTHING TO HARM HIM; FOR NOW I KNOW THAT YOU REVERE GOD, SINCE YOU HAVE NOT WITHHELD YOUR SON, YOUR ONLY SON, FROM ME.”

Abraham lay there a moment longer after sensing the Presence had departed, then he shakily rose to his hands and knees and looked up at Isaac on the altar. The boy was staring up in the direction the voice of God had come from with a look of wonder. He had heard God too!

Getting to his feet, Abraham stumbled over to his son and undid the strap around his feet that he had just tied there, absently tucking it into his sash. Isaac swung around to sit and lifted his bound hands to his father. Abraham still couldn’t meet his son’s eyes as he undid the strap a little, then stepped back to allow Isaac to remove the strap the rest of the way on his own.

Isaac stepped up to his father, reached down and took his hands. Abraham slowly looked up, hoping to see understanding and forgiveness in his son’s eyes. When their eyes met, he saw that, and more.

What Abraham saw was something he had seen many times in the eyes of youth when they were allowed to accompany the flocks for the first time on their summer trek around the great valley and into the mountain meadows. He had seen this look in the eyes of the young shepherds after they had been attacked by a predator going after a tasty sheep and fought it off, or when they climbed down into a ravine to recover a fallen sheep and slipped with only the rope tied under their arms preventing their own plunge to the bottom, or when one jumped into a swollen mountain stream to recover a sheep that had fallen in and then almost drowned themselves, the look they all had afterward when they had faced their own mortality and realized they had dealt with it. What Abraham saw was a man looking back at him from his son’s eyes.

It wasn’t clear who moved first, but the two men met in a fierce embrace. They had almost lost each other! The beloved son, the beloved father… Only the shaking of their shoulders betraying their silent sobs, not even the emotion of the moment causing them to break the discipline of silence when alone out in the wilderness.

Rustle, rustle…