Aqedah

In many churches, the Hebrew Bible reading will be preached on Sunday.  That well-known text is the aqedah, or binding, of Isaac.  In the story, God orders Abraham to burn his son alive.  Abraham meekly agrees and is about to off his offspring when God intervenes, says don't do it, and provides a sheep for sacrifice instead.  I cannot imagine a better example in all Scripture of why we do not take bible stories literally!  To read this story as history is to make a monster of God and a horrible father of the Father of Nations.  What kind of deity asks one of his beloved people to murder his own child? What kind of parent would comply?   Not me, I would have said, take my life if you wish, but I will not harm a hair on my son!

So what is going on here in our barbaric tale?  True. it does reflect the early Judaic vision of God as c capricious and bloodthirsty.  We've gotten past that.   But, more to the point, the story is a symbolic, aetiology, a tale conjured up to explain why something is the way it is.   Why do we Jews not practise human (and particularly child) sacrifice for atonement purposes, as our neighbours do?  How did we come to recognize such restriction as one of many ways in which we would rise to a higher level than other Canaanite peoples and help define ourselves as a "chosen people"?   Hence, this macabre story.