We must not suppose that Abraham found the command an easy one. From the narrative in the Book of Genesis we should infer that he expected God to provide a substitute for Isaac: “And Abraham said, My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering; so they went both of them together.”[276] But the Apostle gives us plainly to understand that Abraham offered his son because he accounted that God was able to raise him from the dead. Both answers are true. They reveal to us the anxious tossings of his spirit, seeking to account to itself for the terrible command of Heaven. At one moment he thinks God will not carry matters to the bitter end. His mind is pacified with the thought that a substitute for Isaac will be provided. At another moment this appeared to detract from the awful severity of the trial, and Abraham’s faith waxed strong to obey, even though no substitute would be found in the thicket. Another solution would then offer itself. God would immediately bring Isaac back to life. For Isaac would not cease to be, nor cease to be Isaac, when the sacrificial knife had descended. “God is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him.”[277] Besides, the promise had not been withdrawn, though it had not yet been confirmed by an oath; and the promise involved that the seed would be called in Isaac, not in another son. Both solutions were right. For a ram was caught in a thicket by the horns, and Abraham did receive his son back from the dead, not literally indeed, but in a parable.
Most expositors explain the words “in a parable” as if they meant nothing more than “as it were,” “so to speak;” and some have actually supposed them to refer to the birth of Isaac in his father’s old age, when Abraham was “as good as dead.”[278] Both interpretations do violence to the Greek expression,[279] which must mean “even in a parable.” It is a brief and pregnant allusion to the ultimate purpose of Abraham’s trial. God intended more by it than to test faith. The test was meant to prepare Abraham for receiving a revelation. On Moriah, and ever after, Isaac was more than Isaac to Abraham. He offered him to God as Isaac, the son of the promise. He received him back from God’s hand as a type of Him in Whom the promise would be fulfilled. Abraham had gladly received the promise. He now saw the day of Christ, and rejoiced.[280]
FOOTNOTES:
[258] 1 Peter iii. 20.
[259] Chap. xi 8.
[260] Chap. xi. 9.
[261] Acts vii. 5.
[262] Chap. xi. 10.
[263] Rev. xxi. 10.
[264] τεχνίτης.