The Binding of Isaac – A Father Offers His Only Son
The command came without warning and without explanation: “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Genesis 22:2). With these words, God set in motion one of the most profound and mysterious events in Scripture—a test of faith that would become a prophetic picture of the gospel itself.
The Impossible Command
Abraham had waited twenty-five years for Isaac. He was the child of promise, born miraculously to Sarah when she was ninety years old and Abraham one hundred. Through Isaac, God had promised, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Isaac was not merely Abraham’s son—he was the heir of divine covenant, the vessel through whom Messiah would eventually come.
Now God commanded Abraham to destroy this very promise with his own hands. How could Isaac be the father of nations if his ashes lay on an altar? How could blessing flow through a dead child? The command made no sense from any human perspective. It contradicted everything God had previously promised.
Yet Abraham arose early the next morning and began the journey to Moriah. He did not argue, complain, or delay. The writer of Hebrews explains his reasoning: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac . . . accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Hebrews 11:17, 19). Abraham believed that even if he slew his son, God would raise Isaac from the dead to keep His promise.
The Three-Day Journey
For three days, Abraham traveled with Isaac toward Mount Moriah. For three days, Isaac was as good as dead in his father’s mind—the knife had not yet fallen, but Abraham had already surrendered his son in his heart. These three days of journeying while the “dead” son walked beside his father prefigure the three days Christ lay in the tomb.
On the third day, Abraham “lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off” (Genesis 22:4). He turned to his servants with remarkable words: “Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” Both of them would return—Abraham believed this even while carrying the fire and the knife to slay his son. This was resurrection faith before any resurrection had occurred in human history.
Isaac carried the wood for the burnt offering up the mountain, just as Christ would carry His wooden cross up the hill of Calvary. The father and son walked together—united in purpose, even though only one understood what was about to happen. The silence between them speaks volumes about the weight of this moment.
The Question and the Answer
Isaac finally broke the silence: “Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7). This question pierces the heart. The boy understood sacrifice well enough to know something was missing. He trusted his father enough to ask directly.
Abraham’s response contains one of the most profound prophecies in all of Scripture: “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:8). The Hebrew allows for a remarkable double meaning: God will provide a lamb for Himself, and God will provide Himself as the lamb. Both readings would prove true.
In the immediate context, God would provide a ram caught in a thicket. In the ultimate fulfillment, God would provide His own Son—the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Abraham spoke better than he knew, prophesying the incarnation and the cross two thousand years before Christ came.
The Altar on Moriah
Abraham built an altar, arranged the wood, and bound Isaac upon it. The bound son—this is the meaning of the Hebrew term “Akedah” by which Jewish tradition knows this event. Isaac was not a small child who could be easily restrained; he was likely a young man, strong enough to carry sufficient wood up a mountain. He could have resisted, fled, or overpowered his aged father.
Yet Isaac submitted willingly to his father’s will. Here is a picture of Christ, who said, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17-18). The Son submitted to the Father’s plan, offering Himself voluntarily for the sins of the world.
Abraham raised the knife. Everything in his nature cried out against what he was about to do—his love for Isaac, his understanding of God’s promise, his role as protector of his family. Yet his hand descended toward his son’s throat, willing to trust God beyond all human comprehension.
The Voice from Heaven
“Abraham, Abraham.” The angel of the LORD called from heaven at the crucial moment. “Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me” (Genesis 22:11-12).
The test was complete. Abraham had proven that he loved God more than he loved Isaac, that he trusted God’s word more than he trusted his own understanding. God had found a man willing to surrender everything—and therefore a man to whom everything could be entrusted.
Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket—a substitute provided by God Himself. The ram died in Isaac’s place. Isaac rose from that altar alive, as one returned from the dead. Abraham named that place “Jehovah-jireh,” meaning “The LORD will provide,” adding, “In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.”
The Mountain That Remembers
Where was Mount Moriah? Second Chronicles 3:1 tells us: “Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the LORD appeared unto David his father.” The very mountain where Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac became the location of the Jerusalem temple—where for centuries, substitutionary sacrifices were offered for sin.
But the connection runs deeper still. Just outside the temple mount, on an extension of the same mountain ridge, stands a rocky hill called Golgotha—the place of the skull. Here, two thousand years after Abraham’s test and one thousand years after Solomon’s temple, another Father offered His only Son. But this time, no voice stopped the sacrifice. This time, the Son actually died.
“God will provide himself a lamb.” On Moriah, the prophecy finally reached its fullest meaning. God provided His own Son as the Lamb—the ultimate substitute who would die not for Isaac alone, but for all who would believe.
The Father’s Heart
Genesis 22 gives us a rare window into the heart of the Father. What did it cost Abraham to place Isaac on that altar? The text repeatedly emphasizes the relationship: “thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.” Abraham’s pain in offering Isaac provides a small reflection of the Father’s grief in offering Christ.
Yet there is a crucial difference. Abraham’s knife was stayed; the Father’s was not. Abraham received Isaac back from a figurative death; the Father watched His Son actually die. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
God did not ask Abraham to do anything He was not willing to do Himself. When the fullness of time came, the Father offered the Son on the same mountain range where Abraham had surrendered Isaac. The shadow became reality. The type found its fulfillment. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
The Son’s Submission
Isaac’s willing submission to his father points directly to Christ’s submission to the Father’s will. In Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). The Son went willingly to the altar of the cross, bound not by ropes but by love for His Father and for sinners.
Isaac could have resisted but chose not to. Jesus could have called twelve legions of angels but chose not to. Both sons trusted their fathers completely, even when the path led to apparent death. Both demonstrated that true faith means surrender—laying oneself upon the altar of God’s will.
Isaac rose from that altar and walked down the mountain with his father—a picture of resurrection. Three days later, Christ rose from the tomb and appeared to His disciples—the reality to which Isaac’s experience pointed. Death could not hold the beloved Son, whether figuratively or literally.
The Substitute Provided
The ram caught in the thicket was not an accident but a divine provision. God had prepared a substitute before Abraham ever arrived at the mountain. The animal died so Isaac could live—its blood was shed in place of the son’s blood.
So Christ was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Before creation, God had prepared the substitute. Before Abraham was born, before Isaac was conceived, before the test was announced, the sacrifice was already determined in the eternal counsels of God.
The ram was caught by its horns—symbols of strength and authority. Christ wore a crown of thorns pressed into His brow—those thorns representing the curse of sin that He bore for us. The substitute took the place of the sinner, enduring what we deserved so we could receive what He deserved.
The Gospel in Genesis
The binding of Isaac presents the gospel in dramatic form. A father offers his only son. The son submits willingly. The son carries the wood for his own sacrifice. On the third day, the son is received back as from the dead. A substitute dies in the son’s place. All of this happens on Mount Moriah, where God would later make the ultimate provision for sin.
Abraham’s faith becomes a pattern for all believers. He trusted God even when circumstances seemed impossible. He obeyed God even when the command was painful. He believed in resurrection even before anyone had been raised from the dead. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3).
Isaac’s submission becomes a picture of Christ’s obedience. He did not resist when bound. He did not rebel when laid upon the altar. He trusted his father completely. So Christ “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8).
The Call to Surrender
The binding of Isaac speaks to every believer about surrender. What is your Isaac? What is the thing you love most, the person you cannot imagine losing, the dream you cannot bear to release? God may ask you to lay it on the altar—not because He is cruel, but because He wants to be first in your heart.
Abraham discovered that when we surrender everything to God, we often receive it back multiplied. Isaac returned from that mountain to become the father of Jacob, the grandfather of the twelve tribes, the ancestor of Christ Himself. What Abraham surrendered in faith, God returned in blessing.
But ultimately, the binding of Isaac is not about what we must give up. It is about what God has given for us. He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all. The Father’s heart, revealed dimly through Abraham’s sacrifice, is fully displayed at Calvary. Such love demands a response—the surrender of our whole selves to the One who surrendered everything for us.