The Genesis of Justice (16 page)

At an even more fundamental level, why should sacrifice be so highly valued at the expense of other—even other biblical—norms?
Abraham may have been entitled to sacrifice “what is most precious” to
him
—as long as it was
his
to sacrifice. His life, his fortune, his health—yes. But his son? No! His wife’s son? Certainly not! Where did Abraham get
the right to sacrifice Sarah’s only and last child, especially since he could, as a man, have more children with other wives?
Indeed, he had six more children with his next wife. Levenson might argue that judged by the standards of his day, Abraham
owned his son—just as he owned his wife. Isaac was
his
, to do with as he wanted. By sacrificing Isaac, Abraham
was
giving up something that was
his
—not Sarah’s. But this argument takes moral relativism beyond all meaning. By
any
moral, as distinguished from descriptive, standard that Levenson or others could articulate, it would have been wrong for
Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It is significant that Levenson proposes no standard—other than the immoral practices of the time—by
which Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac could be justified.
¹⁵
Abraham’s critics may be wrong for failing to consider the historical conditions that allowed for human sacrifices. But the
fact that some of Abraham’s contemporaries may have been willing to sacrifice their children does not make Abraham’s actions
praiseworthy. Surely there were some,

even in those days, who refused to sacrifice their children. Perhaps they lost their own lives for their refusal. Why should
we judge Abraham by the common—or lowest—standard of his era; should we not expect more of a man who is presented as a paragon
of virtue for all times and places? The closest Levenson comes to his own standard of judgment is to praise Abraham for his
“radical obedience to the divine commandments”
¹⁶
and for his “complete trust” in God.
¹⁷

“Trust” in this context can have multiple meanings. It can mean that Abraham trusted that God was right in ordering him to
sacrifice his son and was prepared to do the terrible deed. This is
moral
trust. It could also mean that he trusted that God would never actually permit the slaughter of an innocent child. This is
empirical
trust. Trust, in the latter sense, can be illustrated by the experiment in which you ask a loved one to fall backward into
your arms. If they trust you
to catch them
, they will willingly fall. That is empirical trust. Moral trust would be a willingness to fall backward even if they knew
you would not catch them, because they trusted your judgment that a broken back is not such a bad thing! It is not clear in
which sense trust is used in the context of the
akeidah
.

Kierkegaard, in his famous essay on the
akeidah
—“Fear and Trembling”—focuses on Abraham’s “faith” and argues that he suspended his own ethical principles in demonstrating
his faith. Kierkegaard too is unclear whether he means faith that God would not require Abraham actually to sacrifice Isaac
(empirical faith) or faith that if He did, it would be the right thing (moral faith).
¹⁸
If the latter, then Kierkegaard fails to provide a persuasive argument for why we should praise faith over parental responsibility.

How then do the traditional commentators explain God’s command, Abraham’s actions, and the praise we are supposed to heap
on both of them? What lessons about justice are we supposed to derive from this extraordinary tale of injustice?

First there is God’s command. How are we to assess it? The “defense lawyer” commentators have a simple-minded, reductionist
justification of God’s command. One writes, “The nature of this trial calls for an explanation, since there is no doubt that
the Almighty does not try a person in order to prove to Himself whether he is capable of withstanding the trial, since God
is all-knowing and has no doubt about anything.”
¹⁹
But the text itself is richer than this tautological answer, since the angel of God says, “For
now
I know that you are in awe of God” (or that you “fear” God). This suggests that the trial was not fixed, as some commentators
argue—that neither God nor the angels knew what its outcome would be. Just as God believed and hoped that Job would pass the
diabolical test concocted by Satan, God probably also believed and hoped that Abraham would pass the test that God contrived
for him. (Some commentators argue that Satan provoked God into testing Abraham just as he did with regard to Job.) But God
could not be certain, because since the day Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and learned right from wrong, man
had the capacity to choose freely. Perhaps if the test had been a simple one—between good and evil—God could be confident
that Abraham would choose good over bad. But which is “good” and which “bad” in the context of a divine command to kill one’s
own son? Even God and His angels could not be certain of Abraham’s answer. They had to wait for Abraham to act, and only then
could the angel declare, “For now I know. . . .” This idea of God’s uncertainty is supported by some contemporary commentators,
²⁰
who argue that Abraham’s “decision could not be known—even by God—until he actually made it by bringing down the knife on
his son’s body.”
²¹

Other commentators try to have it both ways. Of course God knew what Abraham would do, even though Abraham had complete free
will.
²²
The purpose of the test, therefore, was “to translate into action the potentialities of [Abraham’s] character and give him
the reward of a good deed, in addition to the reward of a good heart.”
²³
In other words, God rewards good actions more than good intentions. But this begs the important question Would it have been
good if Abraham had actually carried out God’s command and sacrificed his son? Would the killing of Isaac have given Abraham
“the reward of a good deed”? As it was, Abraham got to have his cake and eat it, too. He got brownie points for following
God’s command,
and
he got his son back. But for purposes of evaluating the morality of Abraham’s actions, we should judge him as if he actually
plunged the knife into Isaac’s throat. Would
that
story have appeared in the Bible? If not, why does this story appear—since
Abraham’s
mens rea (state of mind) and actus reas (actions) are essentially the same as they would have been had he actually killed
his son?

Some midrashic commentators go so far as to suggest that Abraham did actually kill Isaac and that God then brought him back
to life. Isaac then “stood on his feet and spoke the benediction ‘Blessed are Thou,

O Lord, who quickenest the dead.’”
²⁴
These commentators do not take this suggestion to its logical conclusion by asking whether Abraham deserves praise for actually
killing Isaac—if that’s what he did.

A twentieth-century rabbinic commentator, Avraham Yitzhak Kook, contrasts the Abraham story with “the absolute self-surrender
characteristic of idolatry.” According to Rabbi Kook, primitive idolatry required its followers to ignore “parental pity”
if the gods so commanded “and made cruelty towards sons and daughters the keynote of Molech worship … ”
²⁵
Molech was the Canaanite God of fire who demanded the sacrifice of children. I must admit I do not understand the distinction
Rabbi Kook seems to make between Abraham’s actions and those of his Molech-worshiping contemporaries. Abraham too allowed
his “self-surrender” to God’s unjust command to triumph over his pity and obligation to his son. And the importance accorded
Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son can be said to have made “cruelty towards sons”—or at least a willingness to be
cruel—a “keynote” of Jewish worship. Abraham’s
God
is surely to be contrasted with the Canaanite
God
, since the former stays Abraham’s hand, whereas the latter allows the sacrifices to go forward. But Abraham’s
own
conduct cannot be contrasted favorably with that of Canaanite parents who willingly sacrificed their children to Molech,
unless Abraham never really intended to carry out God’s commands, in which case he loses points on the faith scale.

In an effort to escape this harsh conclusion, another modern commentator offers a radical interpretation of the Abraham story.
Lippman Bodoff, a Jew working within the Orthodox tradition, proposes that in testing Abraham, God hoped that Abraham would
refuse
His command to murder Isaac. The object lesson of the story, according to Bodoff, is to send a message “that God does not
want even his God-fearing adherents to go so far as to murder in God’s name or even at God’s command.”
²⁶
God was “testing Abraham to see if he would remain loyal to God’s revealed moral law”—namely the prohibition against murder—“even
if ordered to abandon it.”
²⁷
According to Bodoff, Abraham would pass the test only if he stood up to God and said: “‘I can’t do it; it is contrary to
Your moral law.’”

How might he have managed such an act of defiance? Abraham could have reminded God of His covenant with Noah, which made explicit
what had been implicit at least since Cain killed Abel—namely that killing is wrong. Even a heavenly voice cannot make the
killing of an innocent child right. The Talmud recounts a wonderful legend that makes the point that once God gives humans
His law, He may not interfere with the human process for interpreting and applying it. The legend tells of a rabbinic dispute
between Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (a brilliant but somewhat arrogant rabbi who lived at the beginning of the second century
A.D.) and the other members of the yeshiva over a rather arcane issue concerning an oven:

On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument, but they did not accept them. Said he to them: “If the halakah
[oral law] agrees with me, let this carob-tree prove it.” Thereupon the carob-tree was torn a hundred cubits out of place.
… “No proof can be brought from a carob-tree,” they retorted. Again he said to them: “If the halakah agrees with me, let the
stream of water prove it!” Whereupon the stream of water flowed backward. “No proof can be brought from a stream of water,”
they rejoined. [Finally] he said to them: “If the halakah agrees with me, let it be proved from heaven!” Whereupon a Heavenly
Voice cried out: “Why do ye dispute with R. Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the halakah agrees with him!” But R. Joshua
arose and explained: “It is not in heaven!” What did he mean by this?—Said R. Jeremiah: That the Torah had already been given
at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to Heavenly Voice, because Thou hast long since written the Torah at Mount Sinai.
²⁸

The Talmud then relates how a rabbi asked the prophet Elijah what God did next. According to the story, God laughed with joy
and said, “My sons have defeated me [in argument].” If God’s voice is not enough to change the law regarding an issue of ritual,
why should it be enough to overrule the most fundamental law of humanity: Thou shalt not murder?
²⁹
At the very least, Abraham could have pointed to God’s covenant with Noah and asked God to resolve the conflict between His
written and oral command before agreeing to slaughter his son.
³⁰
It shows no disrespect to point to conflicting authority and seek guidance. When Abraham argued with God over the sinners
of Sodom, he had no contrary authority—other than his own sense of justice—to which to refer.

There is a wonderful midrash that elaborates on the conflict between God’s general prohibition against murder and His specific
command to murder in this case. As Isaac questioned his father about the absence of a lamb for the burnt offering, a wicked
angel named Samael upbraided Abraham, saying: “What means this, old man! Hast thou lost thy wits? Thou goest to slay a son
granted to thee at age of hundred!” Abraham was resolute: “Even this I do.” Then the angel prophesied that after Abraham sacrificed
Isaac, God would condemn him: “Tomorrow He will say to thee, ‘Thou art a murderer, and art guilty.’” Still, Abraham responded,
“I am content.”
³¹
Abraham, according to this interpretation, was willing not only to sacrifice his son, but also to break God’s law against
murder and be rebuked as a murderer, as long as God personally ordered him to do so. Immanuel Kant would have had Abraham
respond more directly to God’s command with a reference to the categorical imperative against murder: “That I ought not to
kill my son is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt; that you, as you appear to be, are God, I am not convinced. … ”
³²
Or as Bob Dylan put it:

God said to Abraham, go kill me a son. Abe said, man, you must be puttin’ me on
.

But Kant and Dylan beg the critical question: What if Abraham believed it really was God and that He was not putting him on?

Bodoff goes so far as to say that if Abraham had actually killed Isaac and received praise for that act, we would have had
“a religion to which few and perhaps none of us could subscribe. … ” But this raises the disturbing question of why so many
can
subscribe to a religion in which Abraham is praised for his
willingness
to obey God’s immoral command. Here is where Bodoff’s interpretation is truly radical. He claims that Abraham never intended
to carry out God’s unjust command. He expected God to countermand it at the last minute—he had
empirical
, not
moral
trust. He was willing to fall backward, confident that God would catch him before he hit the ground. He was not willing to
accept God’s moral assurance that killing Isaac was the right thing to do. Bodoff argues that Abraham was resolved to violate
God’s command if, at the last minute, God did not countermand it. In other words, as much as God was testing Abraham, “Abraham
was testing the Almighty.” And the reason for the test is understandable: This is a God who swept many innocent along with
the guilty in the flood but who acceded to Abraham’s moral argument over the innocents of Sodom. Which God was He, really?
Had He learned the lesson of not condemning the innocent? This test would answer that question for Abraham. Had God failed
the test—had he not stayed Abraham’s hand—Abraham would have broken the covenant and said, “If the God I have found demands
the same kind of immorality that I saw in my father’s pagan society, I must be mistaken [in accepting Him and] I must look
further.”