Michael S. Stroh

“...I am now thirty-seven years old, yet if God desired of me that I be slaughtered, I would not refuse.” Said the Holy Blessed One, This is the moment!” Straight away, God did prove Abraham .”

The Akeidah becomes the model for martyrdom and it is no coincidence that Christianity sees Isaac as an adumbration of Jesus . In the Midrash , Isaac’s martyrdom is seen as a voluntary and praiseworthy act in obedience to the will of God . In another midrash:

“...Rabbi Isaac said: When Abraham wished to sacrifice his son Isaac, he said to him:‘Father, I am a young man and am afraid that my body may tremble through fear of the knife and [ will grieve you, whereby the slaughter may be rendered unfit and this will not count as a real sacrifice; therefore bind me very firmly...”

Obedience to the absolute will of God , no matter what is demanded, is the meaning of serving God . It may even contradict human feeling; so Abraham , with tears in his eyes is ready to obey God ’s will, which is a privilege granted to him.”...”R. Azaria said: It is unnatural. It is unnatural that he should slay his son with his own hand...” In Kierkegaard ’s Fear and Trembling, of course, it is the very unnaturalness of the act that moves Abraham from the ethical to the religious stage of existence and makes Abraham the knight of faith. Kierkegaard raises the question of whether there can be a “teleological suspension of the ethical”. Under ordinary conditions, slaughtering your son is murder; this is an ethical universal and applies to all people, in all circumstances, in all places, and all times. Is it possible that God might move Abraham beyond the universal and demand a personal act in which Abraham , as a single one, relates to God as one particular person to the Absolute? This would be incomprehensible since only a universal can be comprehended; a particular can never be comprehended. Abraham can explain this command, therefore, to no one since he cannot bring it under a universal. That is why he cannot tell Sarah what he his doing and lied to his servants when he said that both he and Isaac would return from the mountain. The Torah credits human beings with a natural sense of justice. Thus, when Abraham had the famous dispute with God