In the beginning
Well, the experiment has begun. Slowly. It seems I am leery of being seen reading a Bible in a public place like a train or café or park. If it looks like one, that is. And the one I have chosen to read certainly does, black leather cover, gilt-edged pages RSV. The experiment already has an unexpected dimension: my own prejudices and intellectual vanity. It's very fine for the world's great scholars to sit in their studies or seminaries and read scripture, but someone doing the same thing on the subway must be a religious fanatic or somehow narrow-minded - where the heck did I pick THAT up? - and heaven forbid anyone should think that of me.
I'd better live a long life, because there is still so much improvement to be made.
Now to the book. I was struck by the story of Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his only child, Isaac, in obedience to a voice he heard. We are told it is God, testing. We are told that Abraham's fear of and devotion to the Lord is so great that he prepares to do this unspeakable thing. He binds his son, and lays him on the altar, and is about to slay him when the Voice calls to him again and says "Stop", and a ram appears, stuck by its horns in a thicket. Abraham sacrifices the ram instead. Then he leaves, rejoins his servants, and goes to live at Beer-sheba. Isaac does not go with him. Rupture.
What is now the relationship between father and son? What can it possibly be? What a lonely child Isaac must have become. His father raised a knife to slaughter him in obedience to a god. His half-brother, Ishmael, has already gone far away. He is the only child of Sarah - does he go back to live with her? The next paragraph speaks of her death at Hebron, not Beer-sheba where Abraham dwelt. We are told that Abraham goes to mourn for her and then arranges to find a wife for the boy from amongst his own people; the granddaughter, in fact, of his brother Nahor. When the match is made, perhaps Isaac finds some happiness, for it says he "took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." (Genesis 24:67b).
The sacrifice incident is not directly mentioned again. The name Isaac means "he laughs".