In Genesis 22, we see the story of God commanding Abraham to offer his beloved son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. Hebrews 11:19 concludes by saying, “Figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” This tells us how the story ended. As they walked up the mount, Isaac asked his father about the lamb for the burnt offering. “Where is the lamb?” he asked. To this, Abraham gave a provocative answer: “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (Gen. 22:8). This shows us how much Abraham was able to understand, even though he lived at such a primitive time in redemptive history.
Genesis tells us how God provided for Abraham. As his knife began the deadly arc that would end Isaac’s life:
“The angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The Lord will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided’” (Gen. 22:11–14).
Based on this account, Hebrews concludes, “Figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” Isaac did not die and have to be resurrected, but God spared his life and honored Abraham’s faith.
Christians have long seen the episode atop Mount Moriah as a picture of God’s provision of another sacrifice, the true sacrifice, and the Lamb of God. “Where is the lamb?” asked Isaac, just as the whole of the Old Testament asked that same question. Years later, in the Israelite priesthood, lamb after lamb was slain day after day at the temple. Yet all the while, everyone knew that mere animals could not take away sin. “Where is the true lamb?” the priests and people must often have asked. The answer was finally given by John the Baptist, who saw Jesus walking along the Jordan and cried out, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
Interestingly, the Greek text in Hebrews 11:19 does not say that Isaac’s deliverance was “figuratively speaking” like a resurrection. The word it uses is “parable,” so Hebrews 11:19 reads from the Greek to the English, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and as a parable, he did receive Isaac back from death.” Christians have long understood this to mean that Isaac’s death illustrated and pointed to another death, the true death that takes away our sin in Jesus.
Isaac carried the wood for the offering on his back, just as Jesus Christ would later carry his cross to his place of sacrifice. Abraham and Isaac’s journey through the valley of the shadow of death totaled three days, and for three days, Jesus Christ lay in the tomb before he, as Isaac prefigures, was raised by the power of God.
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