The Binding of Isaac

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It is hard to believe that there are only 19 verses in chapter 22 of Genesis, the chapter that tells the story of the Binding of Isaac, or Akedah in Hebrew. More commentaries have been written on this chapter—by medievals and by moderns, by Jews and by Christians, by poets and by playwrights, by historians and by philosophers—than there are letters in its words. It is a chapter that has continued to appeal to and appall generations of readers, for it raises some of the central questions of human life, such as: what does it mean to be a son and what does it mean to be a father, and what does it mean to serve God and what does it mean to say no to God?

In this profoundly disturbing story, God, for unstated reasons, decides to test Abraham’s faith, and orders Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac as a burnt offering on an as-yet unspecified mountain in the land of Moriah. The biblical text hammers home the emotional devastation this would surely cause Abraham: “Take your son,” God says, “your only son Isaac, whom you love….” God’s promise of a mighty nation arising from Abraham and Sarah through Isaac will never be realized and Abraham’s great journey, begun so many years before, will come to a cruel and seemingly pointless end in some unknown place.

And Abraham obeys.

No arguments with God are recorded in the text, as they are in Genesis 18, where Abraham himself tries to talk God out of destroying Sodom, no attempts to flee God’s command, as the prophet Jonah was to do many years later.

Instead, Abraham rises early the next morning, cuts the wood he will need for the burnt offering and begins a three-day journey with Isaac and two assistants. When they find the place where the sacrifice is to take place, Abraham instructs the assistants to stay behind; Abraham has Isaac himself carry the wood while Abraham carries a knife and a torch. When Isaac notes that there is no lamb for the offering, Abraham ambiguously replies that God will provide the lamb.

As the story turns out, God does indeed provide a lamb for the offering: As Abraham raises the knife to slay Isaac, an angel intervenes and orders him not to go through with the deed. At the last second, Isaac is spared. Abraham notices a ram caught in a nearby thicket; he offers the hapless animal as the sacrifice in place of his cherished son.

Jo Milgrom of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, has added one more voice to the continuing discussion of the Akedah. Her book,^a which is based on her doctoral dissertation, does three things, two of which have been attempted by others before, the third of which is something new.

The first thing she does is offer a study of what the story meant in its original setting. Making use of all of the tools of biblical scholarship (especially the sensitivity to key words and to motifs that repeat), she illuminates the story for us in many ways, she catches some nuances and ironies that have been overlooked, and she helps us understand better what the text meant in its own time and place.

The second thing she does is trace what has been read into and out of the story by the sages of the Midrash and the authors of the New Testament and the extra-biblical sources, both Jewish and Christian.

These two things have been done by others before. What is new in this book is her study of the Akedah in art. The Index to Christian Art at Princeton University lists no less than 1,450 entries for the Akedah in Christian art alone—just up to the 15th century! And later generations of artists up to and including our own time have been 027just as attracted to this tale as were the sculptors and painters of previous generations. What Dr. Milgrom does in this book is study very carefully the Akedah from the third-century wall paintings in the Dura-Europos synagogue in Syria, the Bet Alpha synagogue mosaic Akedah from Israel, the drawing by Michelangelo and three works by Rembrandt, the gouache painting by Chagall, the encaustic by David Aronson, the serigraphs of Israeli artist Shraga Weil, and a number of other responses to the Akedah by medieval and modern artists. She finds that these artists, who were so different from each other in their upbringing, their faith and their orientation, each saw in the Akedah a mirror reflecting his own innermost concerns. Their treatments of the Akedah expressed their private struggles with suffering, fear, rebellion, submission, hope and harmony.

Consider, for example, the Akedot (plural of Akedah) that were done by Rembrandt. His first, at right, was completed in 1635 when he was living through a period of buoyant success. He was the leading portrait painter of Holland, receiving coveted commissions, married to the daughter of a mayor, living the life of a well-to-do citizen. The painting of the Akedah that he did in this period is baroque. It is characterized by strong emotions expressed in movement and lighting. There is a powerful, two-way diagonal movement in this work, pointed out in detail in the caption. So intent is Abraham on fulfilling God’s decree, that the angel has to call him twice before he will release the knife; stunned at the moment of realization, Abraham’s left hand still grips Isaac’s face.

And then 20 years later, Rembrandt did another Akedah, this time a small etching (opposite), wholly other in its conception. This time, Abraham, drained of all will and purpose, turns toward the divine presence, his eyes, darkened holes, his mouth a formless opening. The turning is not in surprise or in relief or in joy—only in exhaustion.

The artist who did this Akedah was not just 20 years older. Rembrandt has lived through the death of his wife and of four of his children. He identifies with Abraham. The soft, curly hair and beard of Abraham in the first work are now the tired wisps that mount a craggy, ravaged face in the second. The drama of the Akedah has become the pathos and the poignant suffering of the second.

This is the kind of commentary that Jo Milgrom gives us in her treatment of each work of art that she discusses. She helps us catch nuances of light and darkness, of size and detail, of angle and perspective in each painting that allow us to understand how each artist perceived the biblical story and how each work of art reflects, not only the biblical tale, but the travail and the search of the artist himself.

What an unusual way to study art Jo Milgrom provides us within this book! It is a demonstration of how this ancient tale, so brief, so cryptic, so unexplained in the original, continues to have the power to speak to us and for us in every generation up to and including our own. Sometimes the language in Milgrom’s book is too technical for the general reader and sometimes the pictures are not clear enough. But I hope that this work finds a publisher soon who can afford to reproduce the art in color, who can rewrite the text just a bit to make it more understandable to the general reader and who will make it available to the wide audience that it surely deserves.

It is hard to believe that there are only 19 verses in chapter 22 of Genesis, the chapter that tells the story of the Binding of Isaac, or Akedah in Hebrew. More commentaries have been written on this chapter—by medievals and by moderns, by Jews and by Christians, by poets and by playwrights, by historians and by philosophers—than there are letters in its words. It is a chapter that has continued to appeal to and appall generations of readers, for it raises some of the central questions of human life, such as: what does it mean to be a […]