Genesis 22
22
CHAPTER 22
1And after that these things were done, God assayed Abraham, and said to him, Abraham! Abraham! He answered, I am present.
2God said to him, Take thine one begotten son, whom thou lovest, Isaac; and go into the land of vision, and offer thou him there into burnt sacrifice on one of the hills which I shall show to thee.
3Therefore Abraham rose by night, and saddled his ass, and led with him two young men, and Isaac his son; and when he had hewn trees into burnt sacrifice, he went to the place which God had commanded to him.
4Forsooth in the third day, he raised [up] his eyes, and saw a place afar;
5and he said to his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, I and the child#22:5 According to Jewish tradition, Isaac was probably 25 years old at this time (Gehman/Josephus). shall go thither; and after that we have worshipped, we shall turn again to you.
6And he took the wood of burnt sacrifice, and laid it on Isaac his son; forsooth he bare fire, and a sword in his hands. And when they twain [or two] went together,
7Isaac said to his father, My father! And he answered, What wilt thou, son? He said, Lo! fire and wood, where is the beast of burnt sacrifice?
8Abraham said, My son, God shall purvey to him the beast of burnt sacrifice. Therefore they went together,
9and came to the place which God had showed to him; in which place Abraham builded an altar, and dressed [the] wood above; and when he had bound altogether Isaac, his son, he laid Isaac on the altar, upon the heap of wood.
10And he held forth his hand, and took the sword to sacrifice his son.
11And lo! the angel of the Lord cried from heaven, and said, Abraham! Abraham! Which answered, I am present.
12And the angel said to him, Hold thou not forth thine hand on the child, neither do thou anything of harm to him; now I know that thou dreadest God, and sparedest not thine one begotten son for me.
13Abraham raised [up] his eyes, and he saw behind him a ram cleaving by the horns among briars, which he took, and offered as burnt sacrifice for the son.
14And he called the name of that place The Lord seeth; wherefore it is said, till to this day, The Lord shall see in the hill.
15Forsooth the angel of the Lord called to Abraham the second time from heaven,
16and said, The Lord saith, I have sworn by myself, for thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thine one begotten son for me,
17I shall bless thee, and I shall multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the gravel, either sand, which is in the brink of the sea; thy seed shall wield the gates of his enemies;
18and all the folks of [the] earth shall be blessed in thy seed, for thou obeyedest to my voice.
19Abraham turned again to his young men, and they went to Beersheba together, and he dwelled there.
20And so when these things were done, it was told to Abraham that also Milcah had borne sons to Nahor his brother;
21Huz the first begotten, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram,
22and Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel,
23of whom Rebecca was born; Milcah childed these eight to Nahor, the brother of Abraham.
24Forsooth his concubine, or secon-dary wife, Reumah by name, childed Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.
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Genesis 22: WBMS
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Wycliffe’s Bible with Modern Spelling ©2017
Wycliffe’s Apocrypha ©2013, 2015
Wycliffe’s Bible © 2012, 2015
Wycliffe’s New Testament ©2001, 2011
Wycliffe’s Old Testament ©2001, 2010
Genesis 22
22
The Testing of Abraham.#The divine demand that Abraham sacrifice to God the son of promise is the greatest of his trials; after the successful completion of the test, he has only to buy a burial site for Sarah and find a wife for Isaac. The story is widely recognized as a literary masterpiece, depicting in a few lines God as the absolute Lord, inscrutable yet ultimately gracious, and Abraham, acting in moral grandeur as the great ancestor of Israel. Abraham speaks simply, with none of the wordy evasions of chaps. 13 and 21. The style is laconic; motivations and thoughts are not explained, and the reader cannot but wonder at the scene. In vv. 15–18, the angel repeats the seventh and climactic promise. Moriah: the mountain is not given a precise geographical location here, though 2 Chr 3:1 identifies Moriah as the mountain of Jerusalem where Solomon built the Temple; Abraham is thus the first to worship there. The word “Moriah” is a play on the verb “to see” (Heb. ra’ah); the wordplay is continued in v. 8, “God will provide (lit., “see”)” and in v. 14, Yahweh-yireh, meaning “the Lord will see/provide.” 1Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test and said to him: Abraham! “Here I am!” he replied.#Sir 44:20. 2Then God said: Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.#2 Chr 3:1; 1 Mc 2:52; Heb 11:17. 3Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey, took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac, and after cutting the wood for the burnt offering, set out for the place of which God had told him.
4On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place from a distance. 5Abraham said to his servants: “Stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over there. We will worship and then come back to you.” 6So Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two walked on together, 7Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. “Father!” he said. “Here I am,” he replied. Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” 8“My son,” Abraham answered, “God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.” Then the two walked on together.
9When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he bound#Bound: the Hebrew verb is ‘aqad, from which is derived the noun Akedah, “the binding (of Isaac),” the traditional Jewish name for this incident. his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar.#Jas 2:21. 10Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.#Wis 10:5. 11But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. 12“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the angel. “Do not do the least thing to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from me your son, your only one.”#Rom 8:32; 1 Jn 4:9. 13Abraham looked up and saw a single ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.#While the Bible recognizes that firstborn males belong to God (Ex 13:11–16; 34:19–20), and provides an alternate sacrifice to redeem firstborn sons, the focus here is on Abraham’s being tested by God (v. 1). But the widely attested practice of child sacrifice underscores, for all its horror today, the realism of the test. 14Abraham named that place Yahweh-yireh;#Yahweh-yireh: a Hebrew expression meaning “the Lord will see/provide.” See note on vv. 1–19. hence people today say, “On the mountain the Lord will provide.”
15#The seventh and climactic statement of the blessings to Abraham. Unlike the other statements, which were purely promissory, this one is presented as a reward for Abraham’s extraordinary trust. A second time the angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven 16#Gn 15:5; Ex 32:13; Lk 1:73; Rom 4:13; Heb 6:13–14; 11:12. and said: “I swear by my very self—oracle of the Lord—that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your son, your only one, 17I will bless you and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants will take possession of the gates of their enemies,#Gn 24:60. 18and in your descendants all the nations of the earth will find blessing, because you obeyed my command.”#Gn 12:3; 18:18; 26:4; Sir 44:21; Acts 3:25; Gal 3:16.
19Abraham then returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer-sheba, where Abraham lived.
Nahor’s Descendants.#The descendants to the second generation of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, who married Milcah. Of Terah’s three sons (11:27), the oldest, Abraham, fathered Isaac (21:1–7), and the youngest, Haran (who died in Ur), fathered Lot. Abraham is now told that Nahor had eight children by Milcah and four by his concubine Reumah. Apart from the notice about the children born to Abraham by his second wife, Keturah (25:1–6), all the information about Terah’s family to the second generation is now complete. It is noteworthy that Jacob will, like Nahor, have eight children by his wives and four by his concubines. 20Some time afterward, the news came to Abraham: “Milcah too has borne sons to your brother Nahor: 21Uz, his firstborn, his brother Buz, Kemuel the father of Aram, 22Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel.” 23Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham’s brother. 24His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also bore children: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah.
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