Genesis 22 – Kate Bluett

What do I have that God has not provided?
What can I give that was not God's before?
What God demands is yet of his supplying:
I give it back, and so I praise the Lord.
And when you say that I must give you Isaac,
my holocaust was ever, always yours.

It is my heart I lay upon the altar;
it is my soul forwhich I hone the knife.
Above all else, myself I'd gladly offer.
Take me, O God: Make me the sacrifice.
I know you hear, so often as I call you;
hear me again, and spare my Isaac's life.

And yet I know—I know as none knows better—
that God who sees is not blind to the past.
I know too well that you will have your vengeance.
As Sodom fell, so I must fall at last.
Why will you wreak your justice on the sinless?
Spare him, O God, and let my die be cast!

For all the times that I have sinned against you
this is my pay—how could I turn again?
And if I turned, it still would not prevent you
from what you will. O God, my God, relent!
Have mercy, Lord. Give way, and we will bless you,
my son and I. Ask not that he be spent!

What is this sound, this strange, arresting whisper?
What is this hope that rises in my soul?
Has mercy come to say I am forgiven?
What is this light my weeping eyes behold?
O Isaac, see: a ram within the thicket.
So we are saved! So we shall be made whole.

God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a burnt offering
on a height that I will point out to you.”
Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey,
took with him his son Isaac, and two of his servants as well,
and with the wood that he had cut for the burnt offering,
set out for the place of which God had told him.
Genesis 22:1b-19

“And will you take the righteous with the wicked?”
You had the courage, then, to question God.
Before you see the ram caught in the thicket,
you climb the mountain and you break your heart.

You lay your only son upon the altar
without a word of protest for his sake,
prepare yourself your very soul to offer,
and in your hand the sharpened knife you take.

Where is the courage that could fight for Sodom?
Where is the strength that dared a Pharaoh's wrath,
the tears that fell for Hagar and your lost son?
How has the hope within you turned to ash?

Is it the test itself that makes you falter,
to hear God ask you for the death of love?
Or do you lay your faith upon the altar,
let heaven witness as you call its bluff?

Does even God look down this day in horror
to see the rotten harvest of despair,
and does he give you back again your courage
to wrestle with him in the depths of prayer?

Then pray for me, O Abraham, in my doubt,
when I must bear the fire and the knife,
that I may cling, through all the waves I ride out,
to love as surely as I cling to life.

עקדת יצחק (1947) מאת משה קסטל. צבע על זכוכית, 46×45 ס”מ. מוזיאון קסטל. By Moshe Castel – Taken by Talmor Yair – שיחה), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17939939

Tag: Genesis 22

Abraham’s Song

Abraham