The Binding of Isaac Revisited

During my cyber journeys this morning, I came upon a blog post called A Girardian Interpretation of Genesis 22:1-14 on a blog called Faynights. It looks like the last post was sometime in 2007 so it is not a currently updated blog. The post about the Binding of Isaac was written as an essay for the author's Hebrew class. It brought out a few Girardian points I have not seen mentioned anywhere else. Isn't it amazing what you can find on google!!!???

One of the points she brings concerns the knife referred to several times in the text:

As Abraham prepares to kill Isaac, the language used is not that of ritual but that of butchery. In his translation of the Pentateuch, Robert Alter points out that the word מאכלת, which is used throughout for the knife, usually refers to a cleaver used in butchering rather than a weapon used for sacrifice. Likewise, עקד (verse 9), while it does not appear elsewhere in the Old Testament, is used in rabbinic Hebrew to mean trussing the legs of animals, and שחט (verse 10) means not “sacrifice” but “slaughter.” 5 It is difficult to see the attempted killing as having the dignity of a divinely approved ritual when this brutal vocabulary is used.

Now that is interesting indeed, eh? Makes me think of comparisons of Scripture to an onion...layer upon layer upon layer. Or another way of looking at it is that the deeper we dig, the more we find.

Another interesting facet of the tale when examined from a Girardian perspective is that Isaac is identified as the victim/sacrifice and the text clearly stresses his innocence. Scapegoats are usually perceived as guilty of something...and in fact, it is because of the belief in their guilt that the whole thing works as a kind of catharsis for the mimetic rivalry that is threatening to erupt into the all against all scenario. In this essay she says:

Indeed, it may be to emphasize his innocence that the author depicts him as if he were a young child, even though the timescale of Genesis suggests he would have been an adult. Girard believes that this acknowledgement of the victim‘s innocence is the first step in dismantling the sacrificial process:

She also discusses the "name change" of God in the text. I think I discussed this in one of the posts in the "series." I originally got the idea from the Girardian Lectionary...which she also quotes in her essay. About this name change she says:

Another very significant change in vocabulary occurs when the angel saves Isaac. Up to this point, the word used for God has been אלהים. While often used in the Old Testament to mean the God of Israel, this is really a generic term that can refer to any god or goddess. Only when Isaac is rescued does the true name of God -- יהוה, “the Eternal” -- appear in the text.

She also discusses some very interesting thoughts about the ram that was caught in the thicket....things I have never pondered before. Why a ram? If Isaac is a "picture of Christ" as many believe, then why not a lamb...a sheep? Why a ram? A wild animal? And although it is thought astounding to many that the ram was caught in a thicket, in nature it happens often during mating season when they are in a mating frenzy. She says:

How did the ram come to be caught by its horns? This sort of accident is not uncommon among wild hoofed mammals during the battles of mating season. It usually happens either when the animal is ‘horning’ vegetation to intimidate a rival, or as it charges in a blind rage. An animal caught this way is doomed: it will either be killed by a predator or starve. 8 Could it be that the ram appears in the story, not to provide Abraham with a “surrogate victim" 9, but as another warning of the destructive effects of rivalry and violence?

There's that onion again...layer upon layer. Then she goes on to mention the name Abraham gives the mountain....not "God spared my son" but rather "The Eternal Sees." I have not checked this out in any other resource. I am taking her word for it. It does make sense...and what is it that the "Eternal Sees" that we don't yet...even still to this day? This whole mimetic rivalry thing...pent up anger...the need to find a scapegoat...a victim to hang all societies ills upon. We still scapegoat as surely as they did in ancient times. The ritual is different, less crude, perhaps more subtle and hidden, but the heart of it, the purpose is still the same.

Lastly, in the footnotes, she cites some sources that discuss the ram:

In her classic account of the wildlife of the American Southwest, The Land of Little Rain, Mary Austin describes finding the skeleton of a young ram with its horns still embedded in the trunk of a tree (p. 58). And Richard Despard Estes, an expert on the hoofed mammals of Africa, tells a true story that could just as well serve as a parable. Two fighting springboks found their horns inextricably locked; each spent the rest of its life face to face with its rival as they starved to death together (African Mammals, p. 83).

My sincere thanks and accolades to Laura Brown, the author of this essay. She brought out several points that peeled another layer off the onion. And my sincere thanks, as always, to google, for the many vistas it has opened for me....the information that came to me with the click of my mouse. Someone told me that yesterday was "shut it off" day...a challenge to turn off your computer for 24 hours to see if you could do it. Now why would I ever want to do such a thing??