he immediate emotional conflict this must have presented to Abraham is observed by all commentators. He is asked to deliver back to God that which God miraculously gave to him. The test (like God explains to Moses in Deuteronomy 8:2) was "to know what was in his heart."
However, the writer of Genesis leaves much to the reader's imagination just how severe the anguish must have been. Travelling some 40 miles across the Palestinian wilderness, three days' time elapses in the space of one verse! "On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw . . . ." (v. 4)--but what did he feel? As he leaves the two servants behind, he casually tells them, "We will go and worship, and then we will come back to you" (v. 5). Yet once within sight of the mountain, verses 6-8 "show how strong a conflict every step produced in the paternal heart of the patriarch."
In verse 7, Isaac seems to speak for the first time in three days: "Father, where is the lamb?" What torment strikes at the spirit of Abraham, knowing that Isaac and the lamb are one and the same, as he replies, "God himself will . . ." and they continue up the mountain? The answer "is ambiguous, but it contains a truth of which Abraham himself is not yet aware."
The altar is complete, the wood in place, and Isaac apparently willingly, silently bound and placed upon the altar. In total submission to God's will, Abraham readies the knife. Instantly, the test has been fulfilled; in his mind, his heart, his soul, Abraham has offered the life of his son to God. An angel of the Lord--revealed as the Lord himself at the end of verse 12--intervenes: "Do not raise your hand against the boy . . . I know that you fear God . . . you have not withheld your son . . . from Me."
The phrase "fear God" ("fear of God") is often freely paraphrased by the use of "religion," but so paraphrased "[it] says almost nothing directly about a special disposition of the soul, a special feeling for ...