TRIALS AND QUESTIONS: GENESIS CHAPTERS 21 AND 22
On Rosh Ha-Shanah we read Genesis 21, which recounts the birth of Isaac, and Genesis 22, the tale of how Abraham, obeyed the voice of God, and set out on a journey to Mount Moriah to slaughter Isaac.
It’s a shocking story – and more complex than it appears at first reading. Apparently, God ‘tested’ Abraham (22:1). But Abraham was already a tested man: Genesis 21 relates how God told him to ‘listen’ to Sarah’s voice (21:12), and expel his eldest son, along with the son’s mother, Hagar (ibid.). We know from the previous parashah, Lech L’cha, that this first son was called Ishmael because when Hagar, pregnant with Abraham’s child, fled into the wilderness to escape her mistress’s harsh treatment, the Angel of the Eternal addressed her: ‘…. You shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Yishmael [God shall hear] because the Eternal has heard your affliction’ (16: 7-11).
So, when God told Abraham to offer up Isaac, he had already lost a son to the desert. And then after all this; after the first experiment in human surrogacy had ended in family break-down; after Sarah had finally been blessed with her own son, God was telling Abraham to kill Sarah’s child? What was Abraham thinking as he and Isaac made that three day journey? What was Isaac thinking as he asked his father: ‘Here is the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? (22:7).
And what of Sarah? She had borne the pain of her infertility; she had watched her maid-servant become pregnant with her husband’s child; she had finally been blessed with her own son, Yitzchak – meaning, ‘he shall laugh’ – and could now laugh joyously rather than wryly (18:10ff.). What was she thinking as Abraham and Isaac left home early that morning? (22:3). Genesis chapter 22 does not mention Sarah; but the opening of the next parashah, Chayyey Sarah (Gen 23:1ff.) tells its own story: Sarah died: Did she die of fear as she waited?
The Yamim Nora’im, the ‘Awed Days’ that begin on Rosh Ha-Shanah summon us to ask questions – mostly of ourselves – and to be tested. The tales of Genesis chapters 21 and 22 remind us that the Shofar that recalls the ram sacrificed in Isaac’s stead (22:13), calls us to interrogate our lives.
Shanah Tovah!
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah