The Lamb of God 9 min read Lesson 2 of 12

Abraham and Isaac on the mountain, the ram caught instead of the son, and the sentence seven chapters earlier that Paul and James both built on

The Lamb God Provides

The first lamb in the Bible that anyone asks about is the one Isaac asks about, carrying the wood for his own burnt offering. His father’s answer is the sentence the whole series turns on: God will provide himself the lamb. The ram in the thicket is the first thing in Scripture to die instead of a person. And before any of it, in a night under the stars, Abraham had believed a promise and been counted righteous for believing it.

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Lesson 2 of 12 · The mountain

On the way up the mountain Isaac asks where the lamb is, and Abraham answers that God will provide it himself. He does. A ram is caught by its horns in a thicket, and Abraham offers it, the text says, instead of his son. That phrase, instead of, is the first time in the Bible that one life is given in place of another, and the whole vocabulary of sacrifice grows from it. But the mountain is not where Abraham was made right with God. That was seven chapters earlier, on a night when he was shown the stars and believed a promise he would never see kept: he believed Yahweh, and it was credited to him for righteousness. Paul quotes that verse to prove that righteousness comes by faith and not by works. James quotes the same verse and says the mountain was where it came true. They are not contradicting each other; they are reading the same life in its order. First the believing, credited as righteousness; then the test, in which the believing was seen. The series will come back to both of them. Here it only notes the order, because the order is the point.

The question on the way up

God has told Abraham to take his son, his only son, whom he loves, and offer him. They have walked three days, and the boy is carrying the wood.

Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, and said, “My father?” He said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they both went together. — Genesis 22:7–8 · WEB

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Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they both went together. The Hebrew of Abraham’s answer is Elohim yireh-lo ha-seh, God will see to the lamb for himself, and the verb is the one the third series met in El Roi and Yahweh Yireh: to see, and so to see to, and so to provide. Whether Abraham knew what he was saying, the narrator does not tell us; he reports that they went on together, and that is all. The answer is true in a way Abraham could not yet see, and the Gospel of John, in the sentence of the first lesson, calls Jesus by the phrase Abraham used: God’s lamb.

שֶׂה seh H7716

or שֵׂי; probably from שָׁאָה through the idea of pushing out to graze; a member of a flock, i.e. a sheep or goat; (lesser, small) cattle, ewe, goat, lamb, sheep. Compare זֶה.

A member of the flock, a sheep or a goat, of either sex, young or grown — the word for one animal out of the small livestock a household kept. It is Isaac’s word on the mountain, and it is the word of Exodus 12, a lamb for a household, and of Isaiah 53, like a sheep before its shearers. Hebrew has other words for a lamb by age and sex; this is the plain one, the animal you would go and choose from the fold. When the Baptist said "the Lamb of God," the Hebrew behind the Greek was this word, and the mountain was in it.

Instead of his son

Abraham has bound Isaac and taken the knife, and been stopped.

Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and saw that behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering instead of his son. Abraham called the name of that place “Yahweh Will Provide”. As it is said to this day, “On Yahweh’s mountain, it will be provided.” — Genesis 22:13–14 · WEB

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Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; he went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering instead of his son. Then he named the place Yahweh Will Provide. The ram is not called a lamb, and Isaac’s question is answered by something larger than he asked for; but the answer is the same in kind. An animal dies, and the son does not, and the text says why in two words: instead of. Everything the later law will say about laying a hand on the head of an offering, about blood on the altar, about a life for a life, is a working out of what happened in that thicket.

“Yahweh God made garments of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.” Genesis 3:21 · WEB
Yahweh God made garments of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them: the first animals to die in the Bible, and they died so that people could be covered.
“Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat. Yahweh respected Abel and his offering,” Genesis 4:4 · WEB
Abel brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat, and Yahweh respected Abel and his offering: the first offering the Bible approves, a lamb, before any law required one.
“By faith, Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac. Yes, he who had gladly received the promises was offering up his only born son, to whom it was said, “Your offspring will be accounted as from Isaac,” concluding that God is able to raise up even from the dead. Figuratively speaking, he also did receive him back from the dead.” Hebrews 11:17–19 · WEB
By faith Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac, concluding that God is able to raise up even from the dead; figuratively speaking, he did receive him back from the dead: the letter reads the mountain as a resurrection in figure.
“He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32 · WEB
He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all: Paul’s sentence echoes the angel’s on the mountain, you have not withheld your son, your only son, and turns it toward God.

The last line is the one Christian readers have heard in Genesis 22 since the beginning: a father, an only son, the wood carried up the hill, and a substitute provided so that the son lives. On Moriah the substitute was the ram. The New Testament’s claim is that on the same hills, a thousand years later, the substitute was the Son.

Credited as righteousness

The mountain is chapter 22. This is chapter 15, and it comes first.

He believed in Yahweh, who credited it to him for righteousness. — Genesis 15:6 · WEB

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He believed in Yahweh, who credited it to him for righteousness. Abraham has been promised a son and has no son; God has taken him outside and shown him the stars. He believes, and the narrator uses a bookkeeper’s word: it was credited, reckoned, entered to his account, as righteousness. Nothing has been done. No altar, no knife, no ram, no law, since the law is four centuries off. A man believed a promise, and God counted the believing as if it were the whole of what he owed. Paul saw that this was the oldest sentence about how anyone is made right with God, and built Romans 4 and Galatians 3 on it; the ninth lesson follows him there.

James on the same mountain

James also quotes Genesis 15:6, and he quotes it about chapter 22.

Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith worked with his works, and by works faith was perfected. So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. — James 2:21–23 · WEB

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Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? Faith worked with his works, and by works faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness. James is reading the two chapters in their order. The believing came first and was credited; the offering came seven chapters later, and in it the believing was seen and, James says, completed, the way a promise is completed when it is kept. Paul and James have been set against each other since the Reformation, and the tenth lesson takes the argument on directly. What this lesson notes is that both of them quote the same verse about the same man, and that neither of them thinks the ram made Abraham righteous. The ram made Isaac live.

What the mountain asks

It asks Isaac’s question and waits. Where is the lamb? Abraham’s answer, that God will see to it himself, is the answer the rest of the Bible spends its length unfolding, and the series will find the lamb at a door in Egypt, on an altar in the desert, in a prophet’s song and on a hill outside Jerusalem. The mountain also asks what Abraham had before the lamb was provided, which was a promise believed, and it asks the reader whether that is enough to walk up a hill on. Abraham thought so. He and the boy went on together.