A Covenant Interpretive Hypothesis for the Sacrifice of Isaac: Unbinding with the Test Answer Key

Seminary Commons

Abraham’s test of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 hangs on God’s words. God’s last speech in the test functions as a divine interpretation of Abraham’s test actions (“because you have done this thing“ v. 16) for the covenant blessings (vv. 16-18) sequentially evoke all of Abraham’s seven covenant revelations except for the sixth (Abraham’s intercession in Gen 18). Since the covenant lessons are used as the divine norm for evaluating Abraham, one logical interpretative hypothesis for the test is a covenant-crisis challenge designed to elicit a comprehensive covenant response from the divinely trained Abraham. This covenant interpretation satisfies the coherence criteria by aligning all three divine speeches uni-directionally and satisfies the correspondence criteria of the details in the test. However, Abraham’s actions demonstrated compliant literal obedience and resurrection faith instead. The ensuing interaction of the anthropocentric (Abraham) and theocentric (God) viewpoints are captured by the uneven structure of actional dynamics, which, if reconstructed symmetrically according to the literary chiasm, indicates the ideal covenantal response to the test according to the narrator.