Devotional Short Note to Genesis 22

 

I do not know why someone would suggest Isaac to be fifteen years old for this chapter? But that is what someone did. Abraham was then 115 years old in 2125 BCE to be exact (calculated not with the Septuagint shortening of the Word of God but the Hebrew text for the period length of the enslavement). The Septuagint is a Byzantine degenerative text full of errors and “tricks” since it was copied in those days by Christians’ hands only and the original pure one got lost. The errorful one originated already in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes with additions, harmonizations, omissions, and a long list of word-substitutions, syntax reformulations circa 164 BCE. The “Xerox copyists” of those days got too involved with a heavy Hellenistic hand and Hellenistic mind on the text (just like they did in Ptolemaic Alexandria with Homer’s Iliad) and the result was the same. Not only regular slips of the hand, ear, eye, tongue and memory (which is innocent human errors) but blatant ones of degeneration. So the Septuagint will not be followed here. So Hebrew calculated biblical chronology have us in the 115th year [? uncertain] of Abraham in 2125 BCE calculated from 1450 BCE as the date of the Exodus and 970 BCE as the death of Thutmosis III, the Napoleon of Egypt of those days.

So 2125 BCE is the date for this chapter. If the scholar of Bibliotheca Orientalis 26 number 3/4 of 1969 is correct on pages 162-167 with the dating of Gudea of Lagash between 2143-2124 BCE, then this governor of Lagash in Mesopotamia heard of the Sodom and Gemorrah destruction and the Salty Dead Sea aftermath result during the beginning of his reign, and he became very religious. He placed a statue of himself with praying hands on every street corner and descriptions of his piety to his goddess Ningirsu, all published and available at archive.com. He must have thought that maybe his city is next in line. The last thing he wanted to be is a statue of salt due to the anger of the gods, maybe. The news of Sodom and Gemorrah reached the Levant fast and all rulers were worried. This was a paradigm shift time in the Levant. There never was such a pious ruler before and after outside the Bible in Mesopotamia. Hyper-religious. No other ruler wanted to appease the gods as this governor Gudea. He was not going to take any risks and repeat Sodom and Gemorrah. The gods are crazy and he had to keep them at bay, so he thought. Sumerian Mathematics were seximal and decimal but in his texts, Gudea is concerned about the sanctity of the number seven! It appears regular in his expressions of worship. Some Hebrew theology about the week and Sabbath as seven days, probably rubbed off on him, and he mixed it with his own paganism. See the original texts in German by F. Delitzsch.

In this context God wanted to take Abraham on a typology lesson. He had to go to mount Moriah and offer Isaac his son. Abraham did what God requested since the vividness with which God spoke to him as a prophet, was so clear, so direct that Abraham would be foolish to refuse. It was a strange request, the meaning of which he did not understand yet, setting out on the travel.

What God is going to show Abraham is that the shocking aspect of offering one’s son is stopped by the Trinity themselves but the Trinity did not intervene to offer Christ in the functional role of Son of God when He came to die for everyone’s sins in 31 CE. No one stopped the hand of the killers. Christ was determined to die and He did from a broken heart. Even for those who killed Him and caused Him to be killed.

Today, Mount Moriah is that rock in the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, according to tradition. Abraham did not leave a sticker to say, this was it.

God then promised to increase his seed so that all the nations of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 22:18) “and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because you have listened to My voice” = וְהִתְבָּרְכוּ בְזַרְעֲךָ כֹּל גּוֹיֵי הָאָרֶץ, עֵקֶב, אֲשֶׁר שָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקֹלִי. The Apostle Paul is right in Genesis 3 that the “seed” is singular here but it also included Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and what followed. Both Christ and the real generations from Abraham in the Isaac line. It is in the promised seed and not the seed as a result of sinful machinations. God works with obedience and faithfulness not in ecumenical embracing. God is very particular and specific.

Then in Genesis 22:19-24 Moses took an excerpt from the Book of the Patriarchs dealing with the generations of the brother of Abraham and especially Rebecca is mentioned since Moses wanted to move over to the link with Isaac later.

 

Dear God

Christ for us, yes it is Christ for us and the Father’s grace, the Son’s love and the Spirits’ patience. For us. In Jesus Name, Amen.