Mastodawn

previously: https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/116337653344022974

I heard the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac many times growing up, usually with an emphasis on Abraham's determination to follow the LORD's command despite the anguish it causes him. But it's striking that the text itself depicts no anguish or hesitation. Modern retellings infer anguish because it feels ethically and psychologically necessary, a form of apologetic.
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⁂ L. Rhodes (@[email protected])

Content warning: reading Genesis (Sodom and Gomorrah)

Merveilles

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⁂ L. Rhodes 1d ago

There are hints that the Binding of Isaac is a separate tradition from that of the earlier covenants. The angel of the LORD speaks to Abraham "a second time," despite at least four previous interviews. And Abraham is promised numerous descendants in return for his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, despite that promise having already been made twice before as the terms of two covenant rituals. The text is synthesizing traditions.
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⁂ L. Rhodes 1d ago

Why include the binding promise at all, if the basis for Abraham's lineage is already established by the covenants? Maybe because it's more Isaac-specific. The two Hagar/Ishmael stories provide a basis for distinguishing the Israelites from the Ishmaelites, but the covenant could still be —and likely was by some — interpreted as applying to Ishmael's descendants. Refounding the covenant on Isaac's near-sacrifice provides a kind of poetic logic for making him the sole conduit for the covenant promise.
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⁂ L. Rhodes

This is purely speculative, but it seems plausible that the interrupted sacrifice was a prior tradition suspending the practice of child sacrifice to a mountain-god version of the LORD, and that the repetition of the national promise at 22:15-18 was added to integrate the tradition into the covenant narrative.
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⁂ L. Rhodes 1d ago

There are some genealogical additions to the broader family of Abraham — notably, they're mentioned only AFTER the episode binding the inheritance promise to Isaac specifically — then the burial of Sarah, which seems very much concerned with a question of land ownership. 🤔 That's one interesting thing about the Torah narrative: it's this expansive fabric of diverse traditions, woven together in support of a grand covenant narrative, but also detouring to assert much more specific claims that no doubt felt urgent to contemporaries, but that have largely lost their context over the centuries.
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