Disclaimer: Biblical fiction is based on actual events, but elements have been added to enhance storytelling. Please refer to the Genesis 22 for the account this story is based on.

Things were finally starting to look up for Abraham. He’d always been a wealthy man, but now he had a son to leave it all to. Isaac had been born to him by his previously-barren wife Sarah. He never forgot the words God spoke to him when he was ninety-nine years old: 

“Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him, an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.” 

Within a year, Sarah had miraculously conceived and delivered a baby. Now Isaac was the delight of his parents. All of God’s promises seemed to be coming true! But all that changed in an instant when God spoke to him again.

“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you.” 

Abraham’s heart sank into his gut. Why?! he thought. How could this possibly be? Did I not hear God correctly? Sacrifice Isaac – the son of the promise – on an altar?!

Nevertheless, Abraham made preparations to go. He didn’t dare tell Sarah the truth – she’d die before she let her son be killed – so he told her the same lie he told the servants he’d brought on the three-day journey.

“The boy and I will go there and we will worship and then return to you.” 

At the appointed mountain, Abraham’s heart pounded in his chest as he and Isaac climbed the slope alone. His palms were sweaty as he held the knife that would spill his son’s blood. He had to stifle tears as he looked back at Isaac, a vibrant happy boy in the prime of childhood. Abraham’s mind was racing, doubting, replaying the words he’d clearly heard from God.

“Father!” Isaac’s voice jolted him back to reality.

“Here I am, my son,” Abraham replied.

“Look, here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the offering?”

Abraham nearly collapsed in grief, turning his face away to hide his distress. He managed to sputter, “God will provide for himself the lamb for the offering, my son.”

Satisfied, Isaac walked on, not knowing that he was to be the sacrifice.

Finally, they came to the place, an outcropping of rock near Mount Moriah in the midst of the mountains of Canaan. Isaac watched his father pile up stones to form a crude altar and arrange the wood on top. He could sense his father’s distress but didn’t know the reason for it. Abraham could barely look at his son’s questioning face as he bound his hands and feet together with strips of leather. Now both of them were weeping. Abraham gently picked up his son, feeling the young life within his arms, and laid him on the altar. He looked down one last time into the eyes of his terrified, beloved son. His heart was breaking as he drew the knife and lifted it over his head.

“Abraham! Abraham!”

A voice thundered all around them, echoing off the rocks and valleys. Abraham instantly fell to his knees beside the altar. 

“Here I am,” he stammered.

“Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. I know now that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son – your only son – from me.” 

Abraham wept aloud, the tears flowing freely. Immediately, he picked himself up and used his knife not to kill his son but to cut the cords that bound him. The straps flew off the boy’s wrists and ankles, and Abraham embraced his son as they both wept aloud, unrestrained and unashamed. 

Their emotions released, Abraham held the face of his beloved boy and told him everything – all about the terrible instructions he’d received, lying to his wife, and the torturous trek into the mountains.

Just then, they heard the sound of branches rattling behind them. Looking up, a ram was caught in a bush nearby, unable to free his vast horns from the bramble.

“And now, my son, who I have received back from death, look at the sacrifice God has provided for us.”

Abraham took up his knife again and killed the ram still stuck in the bush. Together father and son freed the animal from the bush and burned it whole on the altar. And there, father and son worshipped their God.

*     *     *

Abraham is known as the father of faith. All who believe in God and live accordingly are considered his children, not for any genetic relation but for a spiritual one. It’s not just because of his belief but because of his faith-filled action. God spoke and Abraham obeyed. He left his family and his home to journey to an unknown land where God promised to “make you a great nation” (Gen 12:2). He circumcised himself and all the males of his household as a sign of the covenant he had entered into with God. And even after Isaac’s long-awaited birth, Abraham nearly sacrificed him to God in an act of obedience. Abraham was a man of faith because he believed and obeyed, even when everything within him opposed it. Thousands of years later, among those same mountains of Moriah, God sacrificed his own son Jesus in an act of love for all humanity, so that all those of faith – the true descendants of Abraham – could be with God for all eternity.