Ethical issues raised by this story:
1. Is Abraham aware God is testing him?
2. God asks Abraham to sacrifice one of his children. Does it matter whether the story is a polemic against children/human sacrifice?
3. Phyllis Trible argues parent 'obsessiveness' (protectiveness, dismissal of Hagar) is idolatrous - Akedah seeks to 'destroy' the idol but shows God's mercy in the end.(Visotzky, Genesis of Ethics, p. 105) or is it a polemic against the hardships children endure 'outside demands' (p. 106)
4. How old is Isaac? Does a separate 'moral code' apply to Isaac 5-8 year old, teenager, 36-37 year old man? Parental responsibility vs. willing adult participant
5, Nahum Sarna "...the value of an act may lie as much in the inward intention of the does as in the final execution. God valued the readiness of Abraham to make the extreme sacrifice even though it was not completed." (Understanding Genesis, p. 163)
6. Just because Isaac survived the ordeal, there was an emotional impact: "God may have eventually saved Isaac physically, but He crippled him emotionally, killing his mother in the process."(Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice, p. 125-126 - A midrash suggests Sara dies in the next chapter as a result of hearing what (almost?) happened.
7. Dershowitz: Legal process suggests 'if a person changes his mind without the intervention of an outside force - the police or the angel - he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. The law will presume that his change of mind was internally generated. But if he withholds his hand as the result of an outside source - the police or the angel - the law will presume that he would have completed the crime but for the intervention of that outside source.
Yehuda Amichai
The real hero of The Binding of Isaac was the ram,
who didn’t know about the collusion between the others.
He was volunteered to die instead of Isaac.
I want to sing a memorial song about him—
[5] about his curly wool and his human eyes,
about the horns that were so silent on his living head,
and how they made those horns into shofars when he was slaughtered
to sound their battle cries
or to blare out their obscene joy.
[10] I want to remember the last frame
like a photo in an elegant fashion magazine:
the young man tanned and pampered in his jazzy suit
and beside him the angel, dressed for a formal reception
in a long silk gown,
[15] both of them looking with empty eyes
at two empty places,
and behind them, like a colored backdrop, the ram,
caught in the thicket before the slaughter,
the thicket his last friend.
[20] The angel went home.
Isaac went home.
Abraham and God had gone long before.
But the real hero of The Binding of Isaac
is the ram.
Heritage - Haim Gouri
The ram came last of all. And Abraham
did not know that it came to answer the
boy's question – first of his strength
when his day was on the wane.
The old man raised his head. Seeing
that it was no dream and that the angel
stood there – the knife slipped from his hand.
The boy, released from his bonds,
saw his father's back.
Isaac, as the story goes, was not
sacrificed. He lived for many years,
saw what pleasure had to offer,
until his eyesight dimmed.
But he bequeathed that hour to his offspring.
They are born with a knife in their hearts.
The poems below come from a lesson plan by Jackie Metzger through the International School for Holocaust Studies: "Your Son, Your Only One" - The Sacrifice of Isaac as a Motif in Holocaust Poetry
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/lesson_plans/sacrifice_of_isaac.asp
Jewish Travel 5 - Amichai
Every year our father Abraham would take his sons to Mount Moriah
The way I take my children to the Negev hills where I once had a war.
Abraham hiked around with his sons. “This is where I left
The servants behind, that’s where I tied the donkey to a tree
At the foot of the mountain, and here, right here, Isaac my son,
you asked:
Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt
offering?
Then, up a little further, you asked for the second time.”
When they reached the mountaintop, they rested a bit, ate and drank,
And he showed them the thicket where the ram was caught by its horns.
After Abraham died, Isaac started taking his sons to the same place.
“Here I lifted the wood, this is where I got out of breath,
here I asked, and my father answered: God will see to the lamb
for the offering. Over there, I already knew it was me.”
And when Isaac’s eyes were dim with age, his children
Led him to that same spot on Mount Moriah, and recounted for him
All that had come to pass, all that he might have forgotten.
The Sacrifice - T. Carmi
Even though Isaac did not die, Scripture honors him as if he had died and his ashes had been strewn upon the alter.
MIDRASH HAGADOL[2]
Last night I dreamt that my son did not return.
He came to me and said:
When I was little and you were,
you would not tell me
the story of the binding of Isaac,
to frighten me with knife, fire, and ram.
But now you have heard her voice.
She whispered, didn’t even command –
(her hand full of voices and she
said to your forehead, to your eyes:)
is it
so?
And already you ran to the hiding-place,
drew out the knife, fire, and ram
And in a flash
Your son, your only one.
Last night I dreamt that my son did not return.
I waited for him to come home from school,
and he was late.
And when I told her,
she put her hand upon me
and I saw all the voices
he had seen.
Isaac - Amir Gilboa
Early in the morning the sun took a walk in the forest
Together with me and with Father
And my right hand in his left.
Like lightning a knife flamed between the trees.
And I fear so the terror of my eyes facing blood on the leaves.
Father, hurry and save Isaac
And no one will be missing at lunchtime.
It is I who am being slaughtered, my son,
And my blood is already on the leaves.
And Father’s voice was stifled.
And his face pale.
And I wanted to cry out; writhing not to believe
And tearing open the eyes.
And I woke up.
And bloodless was my right hand.
On a Night of Rain in Jerusalem - Uri Zvi Greenberg
The few trees in the yard moan like forest trees,
Heavy-rivered [are] the thundered clouds,
The angels of peace [are] at the head of my children’s bed,
In the moaning of the trees and the thickness of the rain.
5 Outside – Jerusalem: city of the father’s glorious trial,
The binding of his son upon one of the mountains,
The fire-from-dawn still burns on the mountain,
The rains have not put it out: fire between the [ritual] pieces.
“If God commands me now as He commanded
10 My ancient father – I shall surely obey,”
My heart and my flesh sing on the night of rain;
And the angels of peace [are] at the head of my children’s bed!
What of glory? What is like unto this miraculous feeling
Alive ever since the ancient dawn until now [and] toward the mountain of myrrh (Moriah)?
15 The blood of the Covenant in [this] father’s prayer-full body sings,
Ready to make the sacrifice on the Hill of the Temple at dawn.
Outside – Jerusalem…and the morning of God’s trees
Cut down there by enemies in all generations…
Heavy – rivered clouds: within them lightnings
20 And thunderings, that to me on a night of rain [are] tidings
From the mouth of the Almighty till the end of generations.
English
Jewish Travel 5 - Amichai
Every year our father Abraham would take his sons to Mount Moriah
The way I take my children to the Negev hills where I once had a war.
Abraham hiked around with his sons. “This is where I left
The servants behind, that’s where I tied the donkey to a tree
At the foot of the mountain, and here, right here, Isaac my son,
you asked:
Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt
offering?
Then, up a little further, you asked for the second time.”
When they reached the mountaintop, they rested a bit, ate and drank,
And he showed them the thicket where the ram was caught by its horns.
After Abraham died, Isaac started taking his sons to the same place.
“Here I lifted the wood, this is where I got out of breath,
here I asked, and my father answered: God will see to the lamb
for the offering. Over there, I already knew it was me.”
And when Isaac’s eyes were dim with age, his children
Led him to that same spot on Mount Moriah, and recounted for him
All that had come to pass, all that he might have forgotten.