A Mountain-Top Experience

It took a long time for Sarah to forgive Abraham. She knew something was wrong the minute Abraham and Isaac came back from their trip. Sarah hadn’t suspected anything before then; Isaac was almost 13 and spent most of his time with his father and the other men anyway. Every Hebrew mother learned to say goodbye to her sons - if she were lucky enough to have more than one - by the time they were old enough to follow along behind the herds with a switch. She was luckier than most, at that, because Abraham and Isaac often came in to take the evening meal with her, sharing the day’s events and talking over decisions that had to be made. And Isaac would be full of all the things he had learned, lowering his voice to sound older and swaggering just a bit when he had acquired a new skill that put him another step on the road to manhood.

But this time they had been gone a week, and when they came in they were quiet. There hadn’t been any joking or horseplay around the water trough outside the tent when they washed off the day’s dust before coming in to dinner, and Abraham wouldn’t look her in the eye. Isaac just stared at his plate and pushed the food around. “How was your trip?” asked Sarah, finally. “Did something bad happen?” Silence. “Is there anything I ought to know about? Are we going to have another war? Have the wells south of Beersheba been filled in again?” More silence. Isaac glanced at his father and said, “Abba, don’t you think - “ and Abraham silenced him with a gesture. “Go to bed, boy, get some rest. I’ll tell your mother.” Frightened, now, she looked sharply at her husband. “What have you done? Is Isaac in kind of trouble? Something’s wrong, I know it.”

And then Abraham told her. He told her what God had said that day, that now seemed like a lifetime ago. He described how he and Isaac had set out for Mt. Moriah with a donkey and two of the herdsmen. He told her of the three days they had traveled north of Horeb, and how he had listened to his son’s chatter and oversaw each night’s camp and tried to pretend everything was normal. He even told her of Isaac’s innocent question, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" His voice broke at that point.

Abraham’s voice broke, but Sarah found hers, at last.

“What were you thinking of? How could you do such a thing? –Yes, yes, I know, YHWH told you to do it, yes, I heard you the first time - But you’ve argued with Him before. I’ve heard you. And how many times have you told me about arguing Him out of destroying Sodom if he could find even ten righteous men in it? If you can argue with YHWH over the fate of perfect strangers, couldn’t you spare some breath for your own son? Our own son! My son! What kind of a father are you? What kind of a god is he? Haven’t we given up enough for him already?“ Sarah gasped for breath, burst into tears, and picked up the jug of wine as if to throw it. Abraham held her by both arms and said, “Stop it, Sarah. We’re here. It’s all over. We’re back. Isaac is alive. And you know that YHWH has given us far more than we ever gave up for Him. You know better than that, Sarah.”

“So what if I do?” she demanded. “This is our son we’re talking about, and besides - you didn’t tell me! You didn’t even let me say goodbye, you just went off and did it. How can I ever trust the pair of you out of my sight again? And what is it going to do to Isaac?”

Of course we don’t even know if Abraham ever told Sarah what he and Isaac had been doing, up there on Mt. Moriah. But I think we can be pretty sure he didn’t tell her beforehand what was going on. After all, he didn’t even tell Isaac, and he was with him for the whole 3-day trip. And - who can blame him, after all? Sarah didn’t have the direct, personal relationship with God Abraham had, and would probably have flown into a real screaming rage; remember what happened when she felt threatened by Hagar and Ishmael? I think it’s possible that she never even found out afterward how close Isaac had come to death on that lonely mountain. But at the very least she must have wondered what had happened to Isaac on that fateful trip, because he must have changed, after that. He wasn’t the same carefree boy he had been before, dogging his father’s footsteps, enthusiastically diving into every aspect of managing a large and prosperous clan. How could he have been?