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| Juan de Valdes Leal (1622-1690) – The Sacrifice of Isaac |
Genesis 21:1 ff: The son of Av-Raham and Sarah, younger half-brother of Yishma-El.
Psalm 105:9; Jeremiah 33:26 and Amos 7:9/16 give his name as Yischak (ישחק).
The root with a Tsaddi (צ) means "to laugh", as explained in Genesis 21:6 - but see my note there; with a Seen (ש) it means "to play", in both senses of sport or dance or playing a musical instrument.
Is the prefix Yud (י) or Yah (יה)?
Other than the Akeda, which was probably the most significant non-event in history, and the fact that he was the father of Ya'akov and Esav, there is absolutely nothing to be said about Yitschak, whose life consisted of maintaining his wells, amid arguments about them with his neighbours.
Is the prefix Yud (י) or Yah (יה)?
Other than the Akeda, which was probably the most significant non-event in history, and the fact that he was the father of Ya'akov and Esav, there is absolutely nothing to be said about Yitschak, whose life consisted of maintaining his wells, amid arguments about them with his neighbours.
Though actually this lack-of-fact may itself be enormously significant. Throughout the Hittite world, the Creation is described through three generations. So, for example, in the Greek, Ouranos spreads the seed of Creation, Chronos adds the construct of Time to his father's Space, and Zeus squares it off by taking charge for all time. In the Hindu world it is slightly different, with Brahma creating the Cosmos, Vishnu sustaining it, and Siva making sure that it is never over-populated: the so-called Trimurti.
And if, as we have shown, Av-Raham (Great Father) is simply a dialect variation of Brahma ("Great Father") - and Av-Raham fathering multitudes of nations on Keturah in his old age appears to make the Ouranos link as well - is there not a logic to his son having the Vishnu role, sustainer and maintainer?
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But there is the Akeda, which is reported in Genesis 22, the tale of Ha Elohim testing Av-Raham's servility by insisting that he take the son, miraculously born to Sarah in such old age that she laughed when she learned that she was pregnant, and murder him on an altar on a mountain-top. In the tale Ha Elohim relents at the last moment, and accepts a lamb instead... and herein lies the significance, for it symbolised, in the world of the Beney Yisra-El, the end of the era of child sacrifice, the beginning of an epoch in which abstract notions of Justice, Mercy, Compassion etc, which is to say humanistic values, would now take over from divine despotism. Not so in the remainder of the world. And herein lies a second and perhaps even more important historic moment.
According to Genesis 22:2, the non-sacrifice took place on Mount Mor-Yah (מֹּרִיָּה), or at least "in the land of the Mor-Yah" (אֶרֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּה), whose precise geographical location is not given. 2 Chronicles 3:1, on the other hand, either knows exactly where it was, or at the very least is following a tradition that had become embedded by its time, which was not later than the 5th century CE, at the time of the completion by the Ezraic Redactor of all the Tanach; and 2 Chronicles 3:1 states unequivocally that "Shelomoh (Solomon) began to build the house of YHVH, at Yeru-Shala'im, on Mount Mor-Yah" - previously the threshing-floor of Ornah, or Araunah, of the Bene Yevus (Jebusites), with the rock on which the Akeda took place now beneath its altar; that rock is today the centrepiece of the Moslem Shrine of Omar, also known as "The Dome of the Rock". Christians might like to consider the relevance of this to the account of Jesus' visit to the Temple (Matthew 21:12-13), which prompted his arrest: the about-to-be-sacrificed paschal lamb going to the precise spot where Yitschak was redeemed, in order to undo the humanism of his redemption, and restore the ancient barbarism of the Azaz-El sacrifice of the "beloved son" (Yedid-Yah, Shelomoh's birthname, and his father David's full name", means "beloved").
Psalm 24:3 also speaks of "the mountain of YHVH", but, though this is clearly intended to mean the mountain where the Temple stood, Mor-Yah is not specifically mentioned. The same is true of Isaiah 2:3 & 30:29, and Zechariah 8:3.
The illustration at the top of the page is only one of many of the Sacrifice of Isaac in the history of Art. Several others, including paintings of the theme by Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Rubens, can be found at one of my very favourite art-blogs - click here.
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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