on Abraham and syntax
I’ve alluded to the binding of Isaac in previous posts, and I hope that what I’ve written before makes it clear how uncomfortable I am with this story. Nonetheless, it’s one of the readings in this week’s Lectionary scriptures, and there is a part of Robert Alter’s translation of this story that does stick out to me. Here’s how Alter renders Genesis 22:2:
And He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the Land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you.”
More interesting that the rendering is the justification that Alter gives for it in his footnoes:
The Hebrew syntactic chain is exquisitely forged to carry a dramatic burden, and the sundry attempts of English translators from the King James Version to the present to rearrange it are misguide. The classical Midrash, followed by Rashi, beautifully catches the resonance of the order of terms. Rashi’s concise version is as follows: “Your son. He said to Him, ‘I have two sons.’ He said to him, ‘Your only one.’ He said, “This one is an only one to his mother and this one is an only one to his mother.’ He said to him, ‘Whom you love.’ He said to him, ‘I love both of them.’ He said to him, “Isaac.’” Although the human object of God’s terrible imperative does not actually speak in the biblical text, this midrashic dialgoue demonstrates a fine responsiveness to how the tense stance of the addressee is intimated through the words of the addresser in a one-sided dialogue.”
Rashi’s reading is, of course, not the only one, but it helps me see some more to the story that I previously had. In one earlier post I wondered if Abraham had made a case for sparing Isaac in the same way that he had for sparing Sodom. I wasn’t sure then, but this reading allows for us to understand such a case being made.
Furthermore, reading through it this time, I’m impressed by the way this reading emphasizes God’s demand that we sacrifice what is dear to us. As my previous posts attest, I don’t think sacrificing children (metaphorically or literally) can or should ever be understood as an act of obedience to a loving God; rather, I think metaphorical (or literal) sacrifice of children in the name of God is “a warning rather than an example to follow.”
However, there are other things that I think are worth sacrificing in the name of God, such as our commitment to unjust systems that we’re deeply entrenched in or personal pleasures that could be sacrificed to better serve the poor, oppressed, and afflicted. In short, even if the details of the binding of Isaac are deeply troubling to me, God’s repeated insistence in the face of Abraham’s “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have anything by that name to sacrifice” strikes me as something worth thinking about.
I may also need to return to the couple of Kierkegaard books that I own but have never really gone through. I don’t like his idolizing of the binding of Isaac either, but maybe there’s something to learn from them nonetheless.
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