Stroll through Scripture for September 14, 2025

Based on Genesis 21:1–3 and 22:1–14

There’s really no way around this story except to go straight through it. When we read it, it’s just troubling on so many levels. God demands a human sacrifice! Not just any child, but the child of Abraham and Sarah that they waited so long for. The child that God promised them. And now God is demanding Abraham sacrifice his son? That had to hurt deeply.

There’s no nice way to spin this. We hear in Genesis 22:1 that God is testing Abraham. It brings new meaning to the version of the Lord’s prayer that includes this line: “do not put us to the test but save us from the evil one.”

There’s a lot going on with this story. It initially presents God much like the other gods of the Ancient Near East, except…God stops the sacrifice. It wasn’t about sacrificing Isaac to God after all. But Abraham doesn’t know that. Child sacrifice was not uncommon in the ancient world. It was done to supposedly quell the anger of the gods or a god. God here is separating himself from the other gods in not having Abraham go through with the sacrifice. To our modern understanding and ears, this still horrific.

The passage presents God testing Abraham. Let’s talk about that for a moment. Why does God test anyone? Our actions reveal what we truly believe. Our words are often just aspirational in nature — what we want to believe. But actions don’t lie. A test reveals what’s really going on.