The story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac is familiar to me, but I'm only beginning to plumb its depths. What a test this was of Abraham and Isaac's character, faithfulness, and love. Both of them knew that El-shaddai was not a god who demanded sacrifice of human beings, and both of them knew the promises that were to be fulfilled in Isaac. Each step they took toward Moriah (note here - Calvary is one of the hills of Moriah. Spooky, no?) required even more trust than the step before.
Many people focus so hard on the asking for sacrifice that they forget to read on...this is a God who returns the sacrifice! God appears to demand a sacrifice, then He uses the process to transform the entire idea of sacrifice...after which he returns that which was sacrificed in a new, blessed state. Jesus, like Isaac, was offered in sacrifice on the Cross, but by his Resurrection, he returned himself to our midst, and then returned himself to God in the Ascension, both times in a glorified state. The Eucharist bread and wine we offer are taken to his altar in heaven and return as the very Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Christ. Whatever he asks of us, he will give back in even better condition. "What kind of cruel God would ask for Isaac to be sacrificed? What kind of cruel God would sacrifice his son?" The kind who returns and glorifies the sacrifice, who doesn't keep it for his own. That's the kind of God I worship.
Isaac, like Jesus, willingly walks to the hill, carrying the wood on his own back. Isaac is thought to have been a young adult at this point, even perhaps roughly the same age as Jesus. In stopping to think about the sacrificial sheep, he seems to almost believe that it will be his own sacrifice. Abraham's answer indicates trust either way, that he will move forward whether God provides a sheep or whether the necessary sacrifice is already there. Isaac, "He laughs", is a type of the man who would make the whole world laugh either in joy or disbelief and derision when He laid out God's plan for the world.
I've never seen God swear before, but here he indeed swears an oath, on His own Name. He makes a third covenant with Abraham, completing the process of making his promises into real covenants. He would father a great nation, in him and them the world would find blessing, and the land He promises will be the homeland of this nation. These promises would be the root of how Jesus understood himself and his people.
Rebekah's pedigree, presented here, foreshadows the woman who will carry Abraham and Isaac's promises forward. She is presented as being consummately qualified for this, being of a righteous lineage, Shem's family, and a member of a community that would later be known as Arameans. She is the daughter of a wife (not a concubine), just like Isaac, and in many ways parallels him. I almost get the sense that she is born for this and is being unconsciously groomed for it, almost in the way Mary would later be. Interestingly, I begin to get a sense that wherever patriarchs aren't actively punished for having plural wives (this isn't explicitly forbidden yet, as the Law of Moses hasn't been given to the people), the flame of righteousness is carried via the offspring of the first wife, implicitly indicating that concubines and plural wives are not practices of which the Lord wholeheartedly approves. As much as Jacob loves Rachel and her son Joseph, it is Judah, Leah's child, who will become the ancestor of the Messiah. Ephraim, Joseph's line, will become the leader and shining light of the ten tribes of Israel that get lost and scattered.
With Sarah's death, Abraham seems to recognize that his own future is short and that he must lay down groundwork for those promises to continue to bloom and be fulfilled. He buys the very first portion of the Promised Land, the "down payment on the promise" to ensure that he and Sarah would sanctify and claim the land from the very beginning by being buried there. The Hittites of the area try to twist this and screw him in a couple of different ways. First, by trying to give him the land as a gift, making him debtor to them. Then, when he insists on buying only the cave, they insist that he buy the entire land plot, thereby making a man who held himself apart, obligation-free, a landowner who is now subject to certain obligations and responsibilities among them. He may have even become the vassal of their king via this route. Finally, they charge him what a footnote in my NAB describes as an exorbitant amount...I suppose figuring that if they were unable to make this rich chieftain their subordinate in any other way, at least they could shake him down a little. Abraham finally succeeds, winning himself a free and clear foothold for eternity in the land promised to him.
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