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© 2015 John D. Brey.

Someone once said war is never the cause of anyone's death. It's merely the cause of their premature death. We're all, everyone of us, going to die, eventually, because of the true nature and cause of death: the bondage to death and the angel-of-death caused by the original sin in the Garden.

The original sin in the Garden aborted God's original covenant with mankind ---which included everlasting life ----such that now we're all under the bondage of sin (and the death that comes with it). It's therefore particularly fitting that Rabbi Hirsch claims that strict Hebrew exegesis suggests the covenant between God and Abraham renews the original covenant between God and mankind, i.e., freedom from the bondage of sin, and thus freedom from death, and therefore, the renewal of mankind's destiny with everlasting life.

It's good to remember these things when exegeting the "binding" (bondage) of Isaac, since there's nuanced gems of immense value hidden away in the narrative since times immemorial.

Judaism, as it’s often practiced, doesn't speak so much of the "sacrifice of Isaac" but instead the "binding" of Isaac (Isaac's bondage).

The "binding of Isaac," a.k.a. the Akedah (so to say), can very easily be read as the macrocosmic eventuality, eventuating from Abraham's binding of the organ which, according to the Abrahamic covenant (and even Rabbi Hirsch's interpretation of it) must be bound, limited, placed under strict constraints, in order that the covenant be enacted in the actuality of the two acts that represent the covenant, i.e., Abraham's binding of the organ of the covenant, and then the binding of Isaac. A relationships is clearly established between the first covenant between God and mankind, it's abortion, the results of the abortion (bondage to sin and inevitable death), and the rituals and symbols associated with the renewal of the original covenant, i.e., the signs and symbols associated with the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant.

Isaac isn't actually sacrificed, though there's every reason to think that's the intent of his binding, i.e., his being bound. -----Likewise, the organ of the covenant isn't sacrificed, emasculated, cut off, . . . even though there's every reason to believe that's the intent of its being bound, its binding, and Abraham being bound to cut and bleed it.

Notwithstanding the obvious parallels between binding the organ through which the "firstborn" must come (so to say), followed up by the binding of the firstborn himself, and neither being fully or actually sacrificed, though the parallels make it extremely clear that that's what's being implied by the bindings . . . it's nevertheless not the case that either of the symbols of the Abrahamic covenant, i.e., the organ of the covenant, or the "firstborn" son of the covenant, are actually sacrificed. 

In two cases foundational to the founding of the Abrahamic covenant, Abraham's circumcision, i.e., the binding of the organ of the covenant, and the Akedah, the binding of the one purportedly conceived through the binding of the organ of the covenant, the clear and unambiguous fulfillment of the covenant, that is both sacrifices (sacrifice as the fulfillment of the covenant), are aborted, cut off, which is to say the "sacrifice itself," not what's being sacrificed, is aborted, sacrificed, leaving only the binding mitzvot of the bindings as binding on modern Judaism's sensibilities concerning the covenant through which they see themselves in the mirror of the word of God as they have come (so to say) to interpret it.

The actual sacrifice of the firstborn, Isaac, a.k.a., the Akedah, is aborted in the letter of Isaac being sacrificed; but the spirit of the sacrifice (so to say) is not itself completely aborted, since rather than the sacrifice being utterly called off, it's the case that instead, a surrogate sacrifice takes the place of the original sacrifice. The sacrifice itself is, then, not sacrificed, or utterly aborted, since a surrogate sacrifice takes the place of the original sacrifice. The spirit of the sacrifice is intact even if the letter of the law is aborted.

So what's the spirit of the sacrifice such that even if the letter of the sacrifice is aborted, it, the spirit, really does get sacrificed? And what does it imply, to abort the letter of the law of the sacrifice, i.e., the organ merely marked for sacrifice, and the one born of an aborted emasculation, only to keep the spirit of the sacrifice alive by sacrificing it, the spirit, rather than pandering to half-measures, half emasculations, half sacrifices?

Answering that question may be aided by acknowledging that ironically, the spirit of the sacrifice, kept alive by the abortion of the letter of the sacrifice (i.e., merely binding the organ of the covenant, as well as merely binding the "firstborn" of the bound organ, who, the "firstborn" of the bound organ, is also only bound to the binding and not the actual sacrifice), gains its spiritual life, its life as the spirit of the Akedah, only through its sacrificial death.

The primary players in the drama are merely bound to the binding of the sacrifice and not the full impact of being sacrificed. The primary players are merely bound in, and to, the letter of the sacrifice, the binding, such that the actual sacrifice (the spirit) is more like a breath of relief to them (that they don't have to go all the way) than the sort of breath that might represent a living spirit, the spirit of the actual sacrifice, rather than merely being bound to the binding.

In other words, the spirit of the sacrifice of Isaac, aborted, since Jews don't consider the sacrifice of Isaac, but only the binding of Isaac, appears to justify the extreme paradox that the ones bound only to the binding of the sacrifice are not only thereafter oblivious to the spirit of the sacrifice, but, since the spirit of the sacrifice gains its life only through its death, they remain oblivious to the spirit of the Akedah, which is the resurrecting of the spirit of the original covenant to mankind (renewed through the Abrahamic covenant) through the death of the spirit of the covenant (which, ironically, is the source of the spirit of the original covenant's rebirth).

At this point in the examination of the rich nuances of the story, previously implied, there remains just one question: Who, or what, is the spirit of the sacrifice, who, which, gains it's spiritual life, the very life as the spirit of the sacrifice (and thus the spirit of the original covenant renewed through Abraham), only through its own singular and personal sacrificial death. 

When, after having read further than the binding (and release of the bondage) of Isaac, a careful reader comes to see that the spirit of the original covenant between God and mankind, aborted as it were, and renewed as it is, through Abraham, in the story of the Akedah, is a poor lamb of God with his head crowned with the intertwining of thorns, the impatient reader reading ahead of himself must be utterly dumbfounded by the scripture's narrative whereby the spirit of the original covenant between God and mankind is kept alive in the death of the lamb of God, which, the death, sacrifice, is the spirit that keeps the lamb of God alive, as the spirit of the covenant, precisely through his sacrificial death, as the spirit of the Akedah.

The spirit of the Akedah is neither the binding, nor the release, of Isaac, but the death of the lamb of God, through which (and through whom) the spirit of the Akedah remains alive to this very day. 

Since Isaac's sacrifice is aborted through the surrogacy of the lamb of God, it can appear to disinterested religious types that God is using the abortion of Isaac's sacrifice as the spirit of the Akedah. In other words, these religious types believe God is using Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as the opportunity and the sign whereby he (God) will teach of his rejection of actually sacrificing the firstborn.  ----Contrary to this distorted religious prejudice ---- i.e., that God intended the abortion of the sacrifice of Isaac as the spirit of the Akedah ----there’s reason to believe that the spirit of the Akedah, the true spirit of the Akedah, is not the abortion of Isaac's sacrificial death, but the surrogacy of the lamb of God (substitutionary penal atonement) in place of the death of Isaac.

Justifying this belief is the fact that at the second of the two fundamental events in the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant, that being the Passover, the same two signs found at the Akedah (circumcision blood, and the blood of the lamb) are once again the primary signs signifying the meaning of the Abrahamic covenant. The same two bloods that are seminal in understanding the Akedah, circumcision blood as emblematic of the sacrifice of the firstborn, and lamb's blood as the symbol of the surrogacy which allows human sacrifice (death of the firstborn) to be aborted, are found as the primary elements at the Passover.

Midrashim teaches that the very two bloods associated with the Akedah, Isaac's circumcision blood as emblematic of his later sacrifice, and the blood of the lamb as symbolic of the abortion of his personal sacrifice and death, are both placed on the doorposts of the Jewish home on Passover.

Since circumcision blood represents the death of the firstborn, it's obvious that by placing circumcision blood on their doorposts prior to the sacrifice of the firstborn (the Passover), Jews acknowledge their awareness that what occurred for Abraham at the Akedah, the salvation of Abraham's firstborn through the blood of the lamb, was about to occur on a national scale for the children of Israel.

Once it's established that the spirit of the Akedah is not God's forbidding human sacrifice, but the sacrifice of the surrogate, the lamb of God, who takes the place of Isaac, the real consideration rests on the relationship, or link, between Isaac, and the surrogate, between Isaac and the lamb of God?

The lamb of God, far from dying a meaningless death, or playing a minor role in the symbolism of the story (as some branches of Judaism would have it), is in truth the key to the entire narrative since, understood in the context of all other related symbolism, Isaac can be seen to be a symbol of the lamb of God not vise versa. ----In other words, when the story is rescued from the unknowing belief that the non-sacrifice of Isaac is the spirit of the narrative, it becomes apparent that the lamb of God, far from playing a minor role on the side, is the leading actor in the story. The lamb of God is the central character in the story, not Isaac. The plight of the lamb of God, and not Isaac, is the focus of the story. Isaac is merely a fore-skene, a prop, for the sacrifice of the lamb of God, rather than the lamb of God being a meaningless diversion after the rescue of Isaac. 

So then what context or symbolism lends itself to the idea that the lamb of God, rather than Isaac, is more fundamentally important to the narrative? ----Firstly, Rabbi Hirsch's implication that the Abrahamic covenant is a renewal of the original covenant between God and mankind, aborted at the original sin.

"Death," i.e., the lordship of the angel of death, is the result of the abortion of the original covenant through the original sin. Therefore, Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, if it's the fulfillment of the sign of the covenant, i.e., Abraham's circumcision (circumcision being the sign of God's renewal of his original covenant with mankind), appears to be a test of the validity of "death" (and thus the lordship of the angel of death), after the reinstatement of the original covenant between God and mankind, a covenant where death had no authority.

If Rabbi Hirsch is correct that the Abrahamic covenant is a renewal of the original covenant between God and mankind (in existence prior to the Fall, and rise of death), and if Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan is correct that circumcision (the very sign of the Abrahamic covenant) makes a Jew like the first human, under the original covenant, i.e., prior to the abortion of that covenant, in the Fall . . . then, assuming that the reign of death, the lordship of the angel of death, is the primary result of the Fall, then after circumcision makes Isaac the "firstborn" Jew, who, represents the first human who would have been born prior to the Fall, Isaac as the paragon of the first human to be born prior to the rise (so to say) of the reign of death, the lordship of the angel of death, then Abraham is bound, so to say, to test out the idea that Isaac is no longer under the reign of death, the lordship of the angel of death.

The Akedah is the logical test of the legitimacy of the renewal of God's covenant with mankind as it (the original covenant) existed prior to the rise of the organ of the original sin, the rise of what Professor Wolfson has called the "reign of the phallus," which is here, directly associated with the lordship of the angel of death, and the rain associated with tilling the earth. 

If Abraham's faith is in the nature and result of the renewed covenant, aborted in the Garden, and renewed through him (Abraham), the logical proof not only of Abraham's faith itself, but his faith that the original covenant has been renewed, the Fall rescinded, is his willingness to challenge the angel of death, the lord of the fallen world, precisely by questioning, testing, his (the angel of death's)  authority to take the life of a human being born under the Abrahamic covenant, which, the Abrahamic covenant, is the renewal of the original covenant, the covenant whereby the first human wasn't yet under the authority of the angel of death (wasn't subject to death).

The Akedah is a challenge to the lord of this world, who is the angel of death. It's a test to see if God has been faithful to the renewal of the original covenant, such that the angel of death, and thus death itself, no longer reigns after the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant.

. . . And just here a problem seems to arise? -----If Abraham is testing the validity of the re-establishment of the original covenant between God and mankind, a covenant without "death" (and thus without the lordship of the angel-of-death), then firstly, why does he not go through with the test, and secondly, even though Isaac doesn't die at the Akedah, he does die, eventually, seemingly refuting the idea that the covenant of death, the lordship of the angel-of-death, has been rescinded?

If, as stated earlier, the central significance of the Akedah (the spirit of the Akedah) resides in the lamb of God, and not Isaac, then why does the lamb of God die in the Akedah, which, presumably, is the testing, and sign, of the rescinding of death?

If the spirit of the Akedah resides not in Isaac's binding and release, but in the death of the lamb of God, and if the spirit of the Akedah is the rescinding of "death," the aborting of the lordship of the angel-of-death, then there seems to be a giant problem in the fact that the alleged spirit of the Akedah, the lamb of God, dies, then and there (as part of the Akedah), seemingly refuting the idea that the covenant of death, the lordship of the angel-of-death, has been rescinded by the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant (which is considered the re-establishment of the original covenant)? 

If we note that Moses spoke "through" the same angelic mediator, to the same lamb of God encountered at the Akedah, and that the lamb of God, who Moses speaks to, is in the same thorn-bush, as he’s in at the Akedah, then the "thorn-bush" and the "lamb of God" (treated as mere props in the Jewish focus on the binding of Isaac), seem to take on a fundamental role central to the actual spirit of the Abrahamic covenant.

If we focus on the fact that the angel of the Akedah offers the lamb of God (hidden in the thorn-bush) in place of Isaac, we begin to notice a disturbing similarity between the narrative of the Akedah, uncovered in such a way as to shine a light on these things, and a heretical tract that some time after the Akedah, or Moses at Sinai, repeats some of these same motifs in order to sell Judaism outside the boundaries of the small country of Palestine.

Abraham would have rescinded the covenant of death if he would have said no to the angelic mediator and sacrificed Isaac. Isaac would have been immediately resurrected and the lordship of the angel of death ---"the reign of the phallus" (Wolfson), would have been ended, rescinded. ----But Abraham, like his natural-born offspring (come through a phallus cut, but not through to the bone of truth), couldn't distinguish between the angelic mediator ---with his half-truths, versus God through and through. Abraham actually failed ---- leaving Israel and Moses, or perhaps some other of his offspring (perhaps born through a more cutting exegesis of the scroll), to succeed, where he failed.

The idolization of Abraham and Moses, by Abraham’s half-circumcised natural-born offspring, must come to an end. They must realize that the very ones they idolized, both of whom spared them by sacrificing the lamb of God, failed, even as they did at Golgotha, such that it's time to destroy the idol of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, and look to the Lamb of God who succeeded where Abraham, Isaac, and Moses failed (John 8:51-53); the Lamb of God who offered himself, and not another, in place of the sinners Abraham and Isaac (the Akedah), Moses and the children of Israel (the Passover).

It's time to stop idolizing the blood of the lamb of God, stop placing it on the outside of the door, the outside of the body, as a cultic emblem, the idolization associated with a phallic-cult, and start bringing it into the most holy place of the house, the body, the temple, the mind, the mouth, the understanding, the exegesis, the believing, seeing, and living.

Neither Abraham nor Isaac are the primary focus of the Akedah: the Lamb of God is. Neither Moses nor the children of Israel are the primary focus of the Passover: the Lamb of God is. Neither Abraham, Isaac, nor Moses, are worthy of worship and or idolization. They failed. They we’re overpowered by the angel of death; recognized in a heretical first century tract as Samael, Lucifer, the angel of the Lord, the lawgiver, the god of this world, the ruler of the realm of death, the god of the natural-born offspring of Abraham (and natural born of everyone else), the angel known to be the devil to those supernaturally re-born through the blood of the Lamb of God seen and appreciated only by going all the way rather than worshiping under half-measures, half-cuttings, half-circumcision, half the scripture (Galatians 5:12).

Abraham performed milah. Moses performed periah. But belief in Christ is the meal that retroactively seals the deal on, and for, the first two.