Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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that Isaac. God's command must overrule all these considerations.
2 The place: In the land of Moriah, three days' journey off; so that he might have time to consider it, and, if he did it, must do it deliberately, that it might be a service the more reasonable and the more honourable.
3. The manner: Offer him for a burnt-offering. He must not only kill his son, but kill him as a sacrifice, kill him devoutly, kill him by rule, kill him with all that pomp and ceremony, with all that sedateness and composure of mind, with which he used to offer his burnt-offerings.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass,
and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
We have here Abraham's obedience to this severe command. Being tried, he offered up Isaac, Heb 11:17. Observe,
I The difficulties which he broke through in this act of obedience. Much might have been objected against it; as,
1. It seemed directly against an antecedent law of God, which forbids murder, under a severe penalty, Ge 9:5, 6. Now can the unchangeable God contradict himself? He that hates robbery for burnt-offering (Isa 61:8) cannot delight in murder for it.
2. How would it consist with natural affection to his own son? It would be not only murder, but the worst of murders. Cannot Abraham be obedient but he must be unnatural? If God insist upon a human sacrifice, is there none but Isaac to be the offering, and none but Abraham to be the offerer? Must the father of the faithful be the monster of all fathers?