“Take your son, your only son...”

I’ve been listening to a sermon about the nature and goodness of God. The pastor pointed out that, as James 1:13 says, God will never tempt us with evil, that the only test that comes from God is the test of obedience – Will you obey Me?

One of the examples he used to illustrate his point was God’s command that Abraham sacrifice his son Issac. And that got me thinking... killing your son... that’s pretty, well... evil.

Yet the Scripture says that God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else.

I’m confused...

So I got to thinking, the very idea of doing such a thing in this day-and-age, in our culture, is so despicable, so horrifying, that it defies the senses to imagine God telling anyone to do such a thing.

But let’s put it into it’s proper context – how Abraham would have seen it, that is.

Human sacrifice was a very ancient custom. Among those who practiced it in Biblical times were the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Canaanites, the Scythians, the Egyptians, and the Persians, to name a few.

In his 1893 work, The Early Religion of Israel as Set Forth by Biblical Writers and by Modern Critical Historians, James Robertson makes this point:

To Abraham, not unfamiliar with various ways in which among his heathen ancestors the deity was propitiated, the testing question comes, “Art thou prepared to obey thy God as fully as the people about thee obey their gods?” and in the putting forth of his faith in the act of obedience, he learns that the nature of his God is different. Instead, therefore, of saying that the narrative gives proof of the existence of human sacrifice as an early custom in Israel, it is more reasonable to regard it as giving an explanation why it was that, from early time, this had been a prime distinction of Israel that human sacrifice was not practiced as among the heathen.

To rephrase this in 21st Century vernacular, Abraham would not have found it as appalling as we do, because it was not uncommon for heathen deities to demand human sacrifices, so why not Yahweh? So, in context, God’s test of obedience to Abraham was, Will you obey me as fully as those around you obey their gods?

To put it in a modern-day context (and perhaps this is a poor analogy), it would be like God telling you to take your only son and heir, the one he promised you, put him up for adoption, change his name, relinquish all ties to him, and remove him from your will.