No One Likes A Pop Quiz Except Abraham (Gen 22:1-23:20)

"God tested Abraham" (Gen 22:1). Things like this make me glad I'm not among the most faithful. Every single completely devout person in the bible, in what I know of it so far, gets tested in a serious way. Adam and Eve. Noah. Job (eventually). And Abraham. God calls up Abraham and nonchalantly tells him to offer up "your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love," as a burnt offering (Gen 22:2). Well, apparently Ishmael doesn't count, but sons from Egyptian servants aside, Abraham doesn't bat an eye. Gathers up some servants, and he treks to where he's supposed to burn his son. They leave the servants at the bottom of the mountain, Abraham telling them that they're just going to worship over that way, and then come back.  Meanwhile, Isaac starts to get curious... he's noticed that they don't have a lamb to use for the burnt offering... Abraham either is the most faithful, and believes that God will, in fact, supply an animal to be offered without any kind of promise to the kind, or just flat out lies to Isaac to hide the fact that he's about to be slaughtered. Abraham is literally raising the knife to kill Isaac when an angel jumps in and says "Stop! God believes in you now!" And magically there's a ram right there that they can offer up instead, and again more promises of making great nations from Abraham's descendants. I know this story is supposed to illustrate exactly how faithful Abraham is to God, but to me, it's terrifying.  It reeks of slasher movie to me. Only this time, God did step in. And I know that choice is a HUGE issue in the whole God/omniscient/omnipotent problem... but every time there's one of these faith pop-quizzes, it sounds like God doesn't know what's going to happen, which choice the human involved will make. No lies: I didn't expect this to be an issue yet...or at all.

Anyways, after that bombshell, we get a bit more genealogical information. Then all of a sudden, Sarah's died. I would've loved to read her reaction to Abraham confessing to her that he almost killed their miracle baby. Maybe that's what did it. Shock. The tricky thing here is that she died in a foreign country. So Abraham goes about making all of the necessary legal arrangements securing land to bury her in.  The locals try to just give him a spot, but he insists on paying for it, which (according to the footnotes) gives him some serious inhabitant rights. It's a little dry to summarize the section, but all of the little phrases and interjections that point to 'proper legal proceedings' make it sound like being at High Tea with Emily Gilmore.

<3 Agnostic in the Pews

p.s. There's a fixed and updated Biblical Family Tree. I'll try to point out when I've updated it... but rule of thumb: whenever I mention genealogies, it's a safe bet it's been, or will shortly be updated.