Chapter 5
Good Monday morning to this week 5 of 2022
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And
he said “Here I am.” He said “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you
love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one
of the mountains that I will show you” (22:1-2).
So how does Abraham respond? Does he get angry, worried, doubtful, upset?
Does he ask for a second opinion? None of the above. He is silent.
Why is Abraham so strangely silent here? Why doesn’t he speak up and try to
save his son? Why is he silent?
The conventional answer is – Abraham had great faith and therefore he was silent.
And indeed Abraham has been a model of faith for the people.
The problem is, when we look at the whole story of Abraham in Genesis, we find
plenty of places where he doesn’t show such automatic faith at all.
Earlier still, when he feels his life threatened in Egypt, he doesn’t turn to his God
for help, but instead, has Sarah lie for him, claiming she’s his sister instead of his wife
In this case, he takes matters into his own hands. So this is very much in his character.
Three reasons why he should speak up:
1. Personally which father would rush to obey without first asking and talking back to God to spare his son?
2. The lament psalms, model modes of speech, asking God for help to intercede for something or for a situation.
3. In Gen 18 and other chapters Abraham does engage in such speach talking back to God.
So yes, something unusual is going on here.
Jawhwe mostly spoke to Abraham .. but here it is Elohim – It is Ha-Elohim. So is the narrator of this text signaling to us, that this instruction to sacrifice Isaak couldn’t really be what Yahwe wanted?
What then does Yahwe want to happen through the testing of Abraham?
1. For his discernment of God’s character?
2. For his trust in God yet without the blind faith?
3. A new relationship between God and man to begin? A relationship between the divine and the human?
4. For Abraham to keep posing many questions to God as he did before?
5. A new willingness to speak up to God?
6. Or does God want Abraham to bargin as he did in the other passages where he bargained all the way down to 10 people? Often Yahwe accepted what Abraham proposed !
Back to the basic question of the story:
1. Why doesn’t Abraham speak out to God ? Why doesn’t he get the conversation going?
Does he think that God is a harsch master?
2. Why different this time, when he knows Yahwe as God who listens?
3. Why does Abraham loose his voice to his son?
4. We don’t want to put his motives in question and only think the best of him but yes it’s different here.
5. Could this be a big moment of fear, fear of God in the life of Abraham?
6. Why is his grappling with God not applied this time?
7. Abraham knows how to lament. Lamenting is a petition for something that God has promised.
8. Did he no longer know the promises of God due to fear of him?
9. His actions or lack of showed his heart in this moment.
Many of the answers we will not know but we experience and learn
from God in many passages that He is a God that answers.
When our fear or dread of God is gone , we can lament without a disrespect of God.
We can even complain like Job did, and our relationship with God will blossom. When we know the character of God we can call on him as in the Psalms … my God, my God why have
you forsaken me .. and God will answer and he will grow in mercy. God is willing to hear us and is open to our suffering and lament. Even our protest he can handle. Jesus in the New Testament promoted the vigorous prayer as well.
No, silence is not always bad, it has it’s time is sometimes very appropriate. We just learn from this story the the family history of Abraham remained quite messed up, all the way down to Jacob speaking of his father Isaak as the father of fear. Did this fear come from the way he got to know God on the mountain with his father Abraham? Did his silence cause this fear to be passed on over generations?
Today, the story of Abraham to work on our image of God, it’s worth it!
Wishing you a good start to this week!
Philemon
Quotes from the message and book of Dr. J.R. Middleton; ‘Abraham’s Silence’