And His Axe Was Made of Gold

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

In my last post I raised the question why Jews and Christians apply different standards to Abraham and Deanna Laney, praising one and condemning the other.

William Marina offers an answer:

unlike Laney, who killed her two sons, Abraham did NOT kill his son, Issac [sic], but instead made a Covenant with Yahweh. Tit for tat, monotheistic worship and rewards as a Chosen people, in exchange for no more human sacrifice.

The fact that Abraham didn't go through with it is a difference, certainly -- but hardly a relevant one. The point is that Abraham was prepared to kill Isaac, and relented only because God sent a reprieve at the last moment. Presumably Laney too would have relented if she had heard a voice giving her different instructions at the last minute. The only difference between Laney and Abraham lies in what they were (eventually) ordered to do, not in their willingness to obey immoral orders.

Hence I cannot agree with the correspondent who wrote me to say:"God was testing Abraham; if He hadn't intervened, we don’t really know whether or not he actually would have killed him." The entire story loses its point unless we assume that Abraham was prepared to go through with it; otherwise how could he be taken to have passed the"test"? In the Bible, God, upon relenting, says to Abraham:"now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me." Unless God has been hoodwinked by Abraham here, the clear implication is that Abraham was indeed prepared to kill his own son.

This correspondent also writes that the two cases differ because Abraham, unlike Laney,"had three whole days with his son ... to talk about it, and it was with his son's consent." This correspodent must own a different version of the Bible from mine; in my Bible (the text is Genesis 22) Isaac is still clueless at the last minute ("Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"), and nothing is said about his consent.

Another correspondent points out that Abraham, presumably unlike Laney,"had a history of communicating with God and receiving the fruits of those actions." But when a voice you have reason to trust tells you to kill your own son, surely that's a reason to stop trusting that voice. The test of a message's divine origin is its conformity to the moral law; as one of Abraham’s descendants famously remarked,"by their fruits ye shall know them."

As for William Marina's" covenant" interpretation, I can’t find that in Genesis 22 either. God doesn't say"sign onto the following list of odd dietary practices, and I'll stop demanding human sacrifices." (When had he ever demanded them in the first place?) Instead God says:

because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

In short, a vast and flourishing progeny is Abraham's reward for being willing to sacrifice his son. Nothing is said about an end to human sacrifice being part of the reward. (And if it had been, how would that help? On this reading of the story, the crucial fact remains that Abraham was prepared to kill his own son, and I do not see how this can be interpreted as an admirable intent on his part.)