Did Cormac McCarthy Write the Sacrifice of Isaac?

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Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.”― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

The Old Testament reading for this week takes us to one of the most familiar stories in the Torah, the binding of Isaac. We have been journeying with Abraham for several weeks, from his first call, deep in the wilds of Mesopotamia, to this strange encounter on Mount Moriah. Genesis 22 records the final interaction between Abraham and God. It began with the exact words God first spoke to him before he left his father’s home, “Get up and go.” Instead of instructing Abraham to “get up and go” to an unseen land, he is told to “get up and go” to the land of Moriah and offer his son as a burnt offering on a mountain that has yet to be revealed. El, the sky God, Abraham’s God, has just asked for a human sacrifice, not just any sacrifice, Abraham’s son, Isaac.

I’m going to say the quiet part out loud. However well-known this fable may be and frequently preached as a story of faith and devotion to God, it is disturbing, frightening, theologically challenging, and an ethical nightmare. We cannot read this story as omniscient narrators who know the ending, how it all works out in the end, and as those willing to give God the benefit of the doubt because it is not, we who are asked: would you kill your child to show your devotion to almighty God? We must put ourselves in the place of Abraham and Isaac, knowing no more or less than they know. To experience this text is to read it within the moment, as each word is spoken, and to feel the emotions behind the words.

Abraham meant to kill his son. He was going to do it. Isaac was going to die by his hand.  Because of a divine command, he was ready to do violence and harm to his child. This is what God has asked, and Abraham had intended to comply. Only a few chapters earlier, we remember Abraham negotiating with God to save the lives of any righteous people remaining in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham showed no hesitation about going to God to bargain for the lives of total strangers. He was bold in his assertions for God to show mercy; in Genesis 18:31, we find this dialogue, “Abraham said, 'Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?' He said, ‘For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.’  Then he (Abraham) said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak once more. What if only ten can be found there?'”

Abraham brilliantly negotiates with God to show mercy and restraint for a handful of people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, when God asks Abraham to kill his son in the supreme test of faith, there is no bargaining, dialogue, request for an explanation, or even an outright refusal. This isn’t a test of faith; he could have said this is sheer barbarism. Why would Abraham bow to such an obscene request?  Wouldn’t the more critical test of faith be to tell God no?

A god, the Canaanite sky god El, the divine power we call God, or any god who asks for this extreme demonstration of a follower’s faith and devotion is cruel and sadistic. I’m not sure one can see it any other way. For centuries, preachers, pastors, and scholars have tried to put lipstick on this pig. We’ve twisted words, ideas, meanings, and our understanding of faith in homiletical pretzels because we know the ending: we know there will be a sheep in the bushes. Abraham doesn’t know this. Imagine Isaac’s fear at seeing the knife and the fear. They do not have the luxury of omniscience or a leather-bound study Bible with highly rationalized footnotes. 

I wonder if Isaac pleaded with his father. Or did he lay there and take it passively, like some of us would? You know, son, you can hear Abraham saying, “This is what the Lord wants, and we don’t want to disappoint God. You’ll be in heaven with the angels soon; it’s what’s written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. It’s your time to go. Papa must slit your throat now; don’t scream child. Just listen to the angels. You’ll be waiting for me in heaven. Mother and I will meet you at the Pearly Gates.” Honestly, this reads more like a novel by the late Cormac McCarthy than it does Holy Scripture. That’s how brutal this story is. There is only blood, broken families, and generational trauma. It’s McCarthy on steroids.

A single sheep may have died on the altar that day on Mount Moriah, but Isaac was still the victim. How do you cope with the fact that your father was prepared to kill you in cold blood? You don’t. How do you relate to a God that treats you like a pawn in a game to see who is faithful and who is not? I do not know. I have no idea. Perhaps we’re still trying to sort through Isaac’s trauma, Sunday after Sunday we go into church wondering if this will be the day we’ll be asked to take the ultimate test.

If we were a little more honest with ourselves and how we read this story, not like omniscient gods but like people who muddle through clouds of unknowing, whose faith is tested daily, we might have a better idea of where we stand with God. We might be more like the Abraham of Sodom and less like the mindless would-be murderer on Mount Moriah.