The Binding of Isaac

Rosh Hashanah morning sermon · WOW Chavurah High Holidays 5786 / 2025

Adam Cohn

The binding of Isaac is a weird and incomprehensible story. When we read it, it makes Abraham unrelatable. How could you imagine — and I apologize for describing this so graphically — plunging a knife into your own child, release its blood, scatter it over the altar, and burn the entrails… because this is what happens in a sacrifice. It’s horrific.

We can’t understand it. This idea is so foreign from our experience. We don’t even sacrifice animals in this way anymore. We haven’t for almost 2,000 years — let alone humans. So why do we read this uncomfortable story over and over again on Rosh Hashanah?

It really degrades Abraham in our eyes. Makes him seem like a religious fanatic, a lunatic. We can’t connect with this story. So my task here this morning is to make the incomprehensible make sense. Because I have a deep faith that our Torah makes sense. And if there is a contradiction or something I don’t have the wisdom to understand, I try to put myself in that world and wonder how I would react.

First, remember that in the ancient world we were much more comfortable with death than in the world we inhabit. No sanitation, no vaccines, famine and starvation, constant wars. Only one in four children would live to adulthood. Women would often not survive childbirth. If you made it to adulthood, you would have experienced death many times.

They slaughtered their own food. They were experts with the knife in ways we cannot imagine. If you put yourself in that world, you are desensitized to violence and blood in ways that cannot be accomplished in the most graphic movies and video games.

The next thing is that you had a choice of what god to worship. There were gods for everything. There were fertility gods worshiped by farmers, war gods worshiped by soldiers, gods for thieves, and performers. Whatever you wanted to do in this world, there was a god you could ask for help. You picked the one that had the most power to help you.

Abraham chose the God Most High, and he wasn’t the only one. The only God worth worshiping was the Creator God who was actively involved in directing the affairs of humanity. All powerful, all knowing, always present.

We sacrificed animals to this God to show that we trust Him and are not afraid of starvation as long as we worship this God. We sacrificed animals to get rid of our sins. Today, our wealth is measured in money and not livestock. So we give to charity for the same purpose.

If sacrifice is a potent way to draw God’s favor, how much more so with human sacrifice? It was considered powerful magic that could draw down instant blessings from the gods that demanded it.

There is a story in the second book of Kings that recounts a battle between the Israelites and the Moabites and the Edomites.

When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too intense for him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they could not. So he took his firstborn son, who was to reign after him, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall of the city. There was great wrath against Israel, and they withdrew from him and returned to their land.

An enemy king used human sacrifice to turn the tide of battle, calling down the wrath of an evil god whose name I will not speak here on this day. And it worked. The book gives no explanation as to why this worked, but it is presumed that it does. For whatever reason our God, the true God, allows the illusion to persist that other gods operate with power in the world. And so such tragedies are allowed.

Even on the battlefield today there is an echo of this practice, where the enemies of Israel use children as shields to hide weapons and soldiers. It is a powerful practice and has caused losses on the battlefield. How many brave IDF soldiers have fallen because they respect the lives of these children turned shields more than their own parents.

Then I would point you to the book of Exodus in the Torah. I’ll read you this line.

Sanctify to Me every firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the Children of Israel, of man and of animal, it is Mine. Every firstborn donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, and if you do not redeem it, you shall break its neck; and every firstborn of man among your sons, you shall redeem.

And in the book of Numbers:

Everything that opens the womb of all flesh that they offer to Hashem, of man and of animal, shall be yours; however, you shall surely redeem the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of an unclean animal you shall redeem.

Now we have an oral tradition that explains that this does not mean we sacrifice firstborn humans. But the clarification is not written in the Torah. It only exists in the Talmud, and it is simple. The child is presented to the kohen — the Hebrew word for priest — with the equivalent of five silver shekels. A few questions and the child is redeemed according to the law. No sacrifice needed.

But from time to time there is dispute in the Jewish community about the validity of the oral law. Some groups don’t study it or look to it at all. But every Jew, everywhere, reads the story of the binding of Isaac on Rosh Hashanah. It’s dramatic. Whatever you think of it, you remember it.

When the great rabbis discuss the importance of this, there is great attention paid to the value of Abraham’s obedience to God. When God said, sacrifice your heir that I have given you, Abraham didn’t hesitate. The verse says:

So Abraham arose early in the morning and saddled his donkey; he took his two young men with him, and Isaac, his son; he split the wood for the burnt offering, and he arose and went to the place that God had told him.

So not only did he get up early to fulfill his task, he didn’t hesitate to do God’s will. He prepared the wood for the burnt offering. So there was no ambiguity about what he planned to do. He wasn’t running away from the task. He took with him two men, so there would be witnesses to what happened. Two is the number of witnesses that are needed to testify in a Jewish court.

On the way, presumably Isaac has traveled up a mountain to make sacrifice with his father many times. So he asked:

“Father!” And Abraham said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

And Abraham replied:

“God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went together.

So either Abraham was lying to Isaac so as not to create anxiety about what was about to happen, or Abraham suspected what God was planning. Only a few chapters earlier Abraham received this prophecy:

And God said, “Indeed, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his offspring after him.”

So Abraham knew Isaac was part of the long-term plan. He had not forgotten God’s most important words about his destiny. In my opinion, Abraham knew what God was going to do, and he told Isaac exactly the way it would happen.

Abraham knew that the sacrifice of the firstborn was expected. Had he not done it, there would be people who would call him a hypocrite for withholding his firstborn from God. They would question his faith.

When discussing this verse, the rabbis talk a lot about Abraham’s obedience to God’s will. The rabbis are big on obedience. But I don’t believe this was a test at all. I believe that at this point in his life, Abraham was so in tune with the will of the God he worshiped that he understood this barbaric practice of child sacrifice had to end. This was the way to do it.

God created this dramatic moment of binding Isaac, placing him on the altar, raising the knife. Then comes the word of God and instructs him to sacrifice the ram who was caught in the bushes, and Isaac is redeemed. There was no obligation to sacrifice. And there were two witnesses to testify that Abraham’s intent was clear, and God gave His instructions otherwise.

To believe that this is an obedience test, you have to believe in a cruel and capricious God. To believe that Abraham actually intended to sacrifice his son, you have to believe that he is a horrible father. I don’t believe either of these things.

I believe that we have a God of life, who values our children above all else. He knew how messed up the culture was around him and He needed Abraham to redeem the world. So He created this dramatic moment for us to recount and reread every year at the start of the new year — leaving us to puzzle through it and question the very nature of God, Abraham, and our relationship to them.

We love and protect our children. We don’t sacrifice them. We raise them, we teach them diligently, and speak to them at all times about our loving God. Our God is a big God, the biggest, and He can be stern and judgmental. But He is only as stern as He needs to be to teach us what we have to know. Isaac endured a moment of terrible anxiety, so that we could know exactly how much to value our children.