(Genesis 18:1-22:24)
“Ambiguous…”
The Torah’s account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac has raised questions among readers since ancient times. Among other things, commentators wondered why God needed to test Abraham in the first place. Surely, He must have known how the test would turn out. Then why put Abraham through this ordeal?
In considering the matter, ancient interpreters thought of another biblical figure, Job. The biblical book of Job opens with Satan issuing a challenge to God: “You think this fellow Job is your faithful servant? Let me afflict him with a series of severe hardships and we will see if he remains faithful to You.” It seemed something similar might have occurred with Abraham: Satan must have challenged God to tell Abraham to kill his beloved son.
Indeed, the biblical text seemed to hint at such a challenge in the opening words of this story, “And so it was after these things…” The word for “things” in Hebrew is, as is well known, devarim, which can also mean “words.” If understood as “words,” this sentence could be hinting that certain words were spoken, words which then led God to put Abraham to the test. This interpretive tradition is found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 89b) and other rabbinic sources; in fact, it appears as early as the book of Jubilees, an ancient commentary composed around the start of the second century BCE.
In short, God knew in advance how this test would turn out. He only went through with it in order to prove Satan wrong.
And yet… There was one problem with such an explanation. After Abraham had tied up Isaac and placed him on the altar to be sacrificed, a voice called out from heaven: “Do not raise your hand against the boy or do anything to harm him, because now I know that you are someone who fears God, since you have not held back your son, your only one, from Me.” The words now I know seemed to imply: “I didn’t know before.” But if so, then these words seemed to contradict the whole idea that God knew in advance how this incident would end. This in turn might seem to undermine the whole principle of divine foreknowledge.
Two clever explanations of this matter have come down to us from ancient Jewish interpreters. The first focuses on the word yada‘ti, “I know.” As is well known, Hebrew spelling is often ambiguous: the same consonants can sometimes be pronounced in more than one way. Such is the case with “I know.” The letters that spell out yada‘ti can also be pronounced slightly differently, as yidda‘ti. This would mean, “I have made known” or “I have informed.” If so, God could be saying to Abraham at the conclusion of this episode, “Now I have made known”—to Satan, indeed, to the whole world—“that you fear God.”
The second explanation highlighted the fact that the words of this verse were not actually spoken by God at all. It was an angel who called out, “Do not lift up your hand against the boy or do anything to harm him, because now I know that you are someone who fears God.” God is omniscient, but perhaps angels are not. If so, God may have told the angel what to say, but the angel could not help inserting that little word “now” into his version of God’s order: “Don’t hurt the boy, because I know—in fact, I [the angel] just now have found out—that you, Abraham, are someone who fears God…” But God had known this about Abraham all along.