The Binding Of Isaac
Andrea Del Sarto
First, A Word...
I'm struck by the power of our myths as the great, hidden engines of our history, amazed that otherwise intelligent people can truly think that the earth is six thousand years old, or that creation theory or any one of its pseudonyms is as real as what we have come to understand as evolution. And I am most amazed that otherwise compassionate people so willingly offer their sons, and now their daughters, to the maw and paw of war - for god, country, church, or whatever.
And this ability, this willingness to offer our children as sacrifices is what this piece is about. The poem pretty much tells the story - the binding, or akedah, of Isaac when he was ten years old.
Remember? God gives Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, after decades of infertility. Then, when Isaac is ten, He commands Abraham to bind Isaac to an alter and slaughter him as a sacrifice, a burnt offering, an act serving as proof of Abraham's faith. Only at the last minute is Isaac spared by a ram which appears in the thicket. God lets Abraham- and little Isaac - off the hook. We are taught to think of this as a perfect faith, one which we are to emulate in our own lives.
But what if Abraham had refused to offer his Isaac as a sacrifice? What if he had negotiated with this god to find a less terrible, more life affirming way to prove faith?
What if his decision had been to cherish the life of his child, and not just in his heart?
What if the myth had been, instead, about honoring the sanctity of a Isaac's life, rather than about the child's availability as a sacrifice?
Abraham kneels in prayer
At the foot of the sacred mountain,
Home of his shape shifting, desert god.
Today, like every day,
He prays for a child,
A son hatched from the raisin
Of his old wife’s womb.
And today, unlike yesterday
And the day before,
His god of wrath and whimsy is listening.
Sarah swells with the seed of Abraham,
And his ewes and does grow fat and freshen,
Water floods the wadi,
Gathering in cool, ripening pools,
And the cactus flowers and fruits.
Abraham lights great fires of celebration,
Searing the flesh
Of the perfect first born of his flock in sacrifice.
The smoke curls up the flank
Of the sacred mountain,
Up into the dark nostrils
Of the sleeping god,
Who stirs,
Then sleeps again,
Dreaming of galaxies.
And Abraham,
Patriarch of gratitude,
Raises the swaddled child
To the mountain,
Knowing too little of the fickle god
Who dwells there.
I shall name him Isaac,
He says,
Because he has brought us laughter.
And, for the moment,
There is no answer.
Every circle
In the life of these Bedouins
Has Isaac at its center.
Abraham teaches him
To name things in the world,
Teaches him the husbandry
Of sheep and goats,
The stewardship of grass and water.
He makes him memorize the holy places,
Practice the summoning of their magic,
Tells him stories
About his companion god
Who comes and goes from these places,
The voice that speaks only to him,
The voice which, one day,
Will speak only to Isaac.
He tells him of the covenant
Carved early into his delicate flesh.
And as the light and heat evaporate
From the floor of the world,
He sits late by Isaac’s bed,
Watching him breath.
On the eve of Isaac’s tenth birthday,
Sarah shakes out the rugs,
And prepares sweet nut cakes,
While Abraham readies the fires.
Unable to sleep,
He walks the path to the place
Which is still his alone.
He kneels at the foot
Of the sacred mountain,
Praying for the things
That fathers pray for.
But he is interrupted by the cold voice
With its terrible instructions:
Abraham.
Take your son,
Your only son Isaac
And offer him for a burnt offering.
Abraham does not argue,
Does not offer himself in the boy’s place.
He does not propose
The sacrifice of his yearlings,
Or the burning of the great flock itself.
This is the bargain he has struck
With his solitary god.
The piper has played,
It is time to pay.
So it was
And so it is,
That mothers and fathers ever after
Have raised their children,
Swaddled in the bunting of great armies,
To what they believe to be
The places of their gods.
And the smoke of their sacrifice
Curls up the flanks of their sacred mountains,
Into the black vacuum of space,
Dissipating finally in temperatures
Just above absolute zero.