Study in Judaism. Abraham and his sons

Commonly accepted translation of Torah says that God tested Abraham:
“Chapter 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God tested Abraham, and He said to him, "Abraham," and he said, "Here I am." 2And He said, "Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, yea, Isaac, and go away to the land of Moriah and bring him up there for a burnt offering on one of the mountains, of which I will tell you."”

God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son to him, and this was supposed to be a test. 

There is no universally accepted understanding of this story in Judaism.  Take, for example, a Jewish magazine’s recent commentary (https://tabletalkmagazine.com/
article/2023/08/the-testing-of-abraham/) on this passage:

«The fact that God throughout the Bible unequivocally condemns child sacrifice (Deut. 12:31; 18:10; Ps. 106:37–38; Jer. 32:35) certainly makes His command to Abraham surprising».
Here is how they try to make sense of it:
«The God who knows all things, who knows the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10), certainly knew the nature and character of Abraham’s faith. But God tested Abraham to reveal, strengthen, and prove the reality of his faith when he was called to trust God’s word of promise over his own fallible human reason. »
They do not sound convincing.

The main problem here is that God does not have any justification for testing Abraham in such a brutal, inhumane way. Another problem is that Abraham has no justification for obeying this unlawful order without at least asking a question, as it was his habit.
 
The problems are further exacerbated  by the fact that an attempt on his son here was not the first for Abraham. Abraham had two sons: Ishmael (from a servant Hagar) and Isaac (from his wife Sarah). And he almost got rid of both of them. According to the commonly accepted translation of Torah, God approved expelling Hagar with Ishmael into the wilderness, where they almost certainly should die. And God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. God prevented the murders in both cases at the last moment.

To shed a light on these painful problems I read the Torah in the translation, where the names of God are preserved: Tabor, James D. The Book of Genesis: A New Translation from the Transparent English Bible. Genesis 2000. Kindle Edition.
The translation does not have the word “God” per se. The most common word there for God is Elohim. However, the word Elohim may have wider meaning, which includes some other spiritual beings different from God of Abraham, as I discussed here http://proza.ru/2024/07/24/1485. It turns out that this is the key here.

This text allowed me to find a difference between the passages, when Elohim speaks with Abraham about a murder of his sons and all other passages when Elohim had contact with Abraham.
In each passage where there was an encounter of Abraham and Elohim, the Elohim is called by his name: YHVH. There are only two exceptions. And those are exactly the cases when Elohim speaks about potential murder of Abraham’s son. In these cases, the name of Elohim is omitted.

Here are three typical examples of the encounters between Abraham and Elohim:

Chapter 12:1And YHVH said toward Abram, “Walk for yourself, from your land, and from those brought forth of yours, and from the house of your father, toward the land that I will make you….4 And Abram walked, as YHVH spoke toward him, and Lot walked with him,...

Chapter 17:1 And Abram was a son of ninety years and nine years, and YHVH was seen toward Abram, and said toward him, “I am el shaddai, walk about before my face and be whole; and I will give my pact between me and between you, and I will make you abundant, in exceedingly, exceedingly measure.”

Chapter 18:1 And YHVH was seen toward him by the oaks of Mamre, and he was sitting in the opening of the tent in the heat of the day.

And here are the two cases, which concern the murder of the Abraham sons.

Chapter 21: 9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had brought forth to Abraham, laughing. 10 And she said to Abraham, “Drive out this house-servant and her son, for the son of this house-servant will not possess with my son—with Isaac.”

11 And the thing was bad exceedingly in the eyes of Abraham over the matters of his son. 12 And ELOHIM said toward Abraham, “Do not let it be bad in your eyes because of the lad, and because of your house-servant; all that Sarah says toward you, hearken with her voice, for in Isaac seed will be named for you. 13 And also—the son of the house-servant, for a nation I will place him, because he is your seed.”

Chapter 22:1 And it was, after these things, that the ELOHIM tested Abraham, and he said toward him, “Abraham,” and he said, “Look, it’s me!” 2 And he said, “Take please, your son, your only one, whom you have loved—Isaac, and walk for yourself toward the land of the Moriah, and make him go up there for a going up-thing, upon one of the mountains that I will say toward you.” 3 And Abraham shouldered up...

In two last  fragments there is no name of Elohim.
The passage about Isaac here has other important aspects. The literal translation is not as straightforward as the commonly accepted translation of Torah.

First, the text speaks about love of Abraham to Isaac in the past perfect tense. Does it mean Abraham does not love Isaac anymore?

Then, the text does not say directly that Abraham has to sacrifice his son. Rather, there is a wordplay: “make him go up there for a going up-thing”, where “going up-thing” may mean sacrifice in flame, when smoke rises, according to footnote in the translation.  So, it may mean “for sacrificial flame”. But it sounds like tautology: “make him go up for going up”. It does not have to mean “flame”. Anyway, the text does not explicitly require to sacrifice the son.
In case of Ishmael, anonymous Elohim sent his messenger to save him. In case of Issac, we are told YHVH sent his messenger to save him.

This observation vindicates God of Abraham: He did not excuse sending one son to the wilderness and did not order Abraham to kill another son. And God saved Issac at the last moment.

Torah does not give a name of Elohim who was talking with Abraham both times. Obviously, Abraham did not know the name either.  So, he did not have to obey. Both times, the decision was Abraham’s responsibility.

When Isaac was saved from Abraham, ELOHIM YHVH said to Abraham through his messenger that He will uphold the pact because “you have not held back your son, your only one”, as if it was a good thing. This praise is hard to understand. But we know, God does not always say what He means (for example, He told Adam and Eve that they will die if they eat from the tree of knowledge).

Willingly or unwillingly, Abraham discovered that God, ELOHIM YHVH, needs this pact, and Abraham cannot get out. The pact is not a favor for Abraham, it is God’s plan. This may be the most important conclusion of these “tests”.

Supposedly, Isaac heard ELOHIM YHVH messenger on the mountain too, but he was not convinced that it is safe to deal with his father. Abraham returned from the mountain alone: “19. And Abraham returned toward his lads, and they rose and walked toward Beersheba; and Abraham sat in Beersheba.”

One may understand that Abraham abandoned his son on the mountain and left his wife and started living separately. How did Isaac get back from the mountain? We are not told. Next thing we know is that “Sarah died in Kiriath -arba – that is Hebron—in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to wail for her.”

Abraham was not with Sarah, when she was dying. He did not bless Isaac on his own deathbed.  He also did not have any encounter with Elohim anymore.

Obviously, the event was tragic both for Isaac and for Sarah. And expulsion to the wilderness was tragic to Hagar and Ishmael. I think their suffering should be taken into consideration when we think about Abraham.

The fact that there are several prohibitions on human sacrifices later in Tanah means that our ancestors did not see behavior of Abraham as an exemplary, commendable.

Conclusions

Commonly accepted, politically correct translation forces upon us a morally deficient interpretation of “Abraham test”. The interpretation is difficult to reconcile with Jewish tradition, where human sacrifices are forbidden, and in no other case God requires one human to torture another human to prove his obedience. 

The translation is ahistorical. It ignores the fact that Abraham was brought up and lived in polytheistic culture, where it was common to attribute own thoughts and ideas to inspiration of spiritual beings. The standard translation needlessly takes away meaning and corrupts worldview of our ancestors, distorts our great heritage.

I hope this analysis demonstrated advantages of going back to the original text of Torah together with the understanding that the word Elohim does not necessarily mean God.

If we admit that only ELOHIM YHVH stands for God, then, thanks to the literal translation, we are able to see that God did not demand Abraham to sacrifice his son for a meaningless “test”.