Does God Command Human Sacrifice in the Bible?

 

 DOES GOD COMMAND HUMAN SACRIFICE IN THE BIBLE?

God put Abraham to the test and said to him: Abraham! “Here I am!” he replied. Then God said: Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you. …When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he bound his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar. Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. “Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the angel. “Do not do the least thing to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from me your son, your only one.” Abraham looked up and saw a single ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son. (Genesis 22:1-2; 9-13)

Does God command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Yes, he does.

Does he intend to accomplish the sacrifice? No, obviously not.

It has been argued that since God is sovereign over the moral law—inasmuch as he is sovereign over all creation—he can abrogate the moral law if he so pleases. In the case of Abraham, it has been asserted that God would have the prerogative to pursue the sacrifice of Isaac to its completion because he has the right to suspend the moral law.

I believe this view is very mistaken.

Earlier in this blog I wrote:

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While it is true that God is sovereign over all creation and can do as he pleases, at the same time God does not act contrary to his nature.

Because the moral law subsists in God, God would never contradict the moral law.

He might permit the transgression of the moral law, that is obvious, but he would not declare it as an immutable part of the Divine order.

Catholic Encyclopedia offers the following explanation about why the moral law—or natural law, another term—is immutable:

“The natural law is immutable in itself and also extrinsically. Since it is founded in the very nature of man and his destination to his end—two bases which rest upon the immutable ground of the eternal law—it follows that, assuming the continued existence of human nature, it cannot cease to exist. The natural law commands and forbids in the same tenor everywhere and always. We must, however, remember that this immutability pertains not to those abstract imperfect [formulas] in which the law is commonly expressed, but to the moral standard as it applies to action in the concrete, surrounded with all its determinate conditions. We enunciate, for instance, one of the leading precepts in the words: ‘Thou [shall] not kill’; yet the taking of human life is sometimes a lawful, and even an obligatory act. Herein exists no variation in the law; what the law forbids is not all taking of life, but all unjust taking of life.”

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm

—“Natural Law,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910)

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No doubt Abraham had grave misgivings about killing his son Isaac in sacrifice. His conscience would most certainly deeply trouble him—his conscience, which has access to the moral law, would continually point out the immorality of the act. Abraham’s anticipation of the act of human sacrifice would stab constantly at his conscience.

“Founded in our nature and revealed to us by our reason, the moral law is known to us in the measure that reason brings a knowledge of it home to our understanding. …The general teaching of theologians is that the supreme and primary principles are necessarily known to every one having the actual use of reason. These principles are really reducible to the primary principle which is expressed by St. Thomas in the form: ‘Do good and avoid evil’. Wherever we find man we find him with a moral code, which is founded on the first principle that good is to be done and evil avoided.”

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm

—“Natural Law,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910)

However, Abraham, because of his human limitations besides being handicapped by human nature wounded by sin, could not possibly know the moral law entirely or decide infallibly.

“Taking into consideration the power of passion, prejudice, and other influences which cloud the understanding or pervert the will, one can safely say that man, unaided by supernatural revelation, would not acquire a full and correct knowledge of the contents of the natural law (cf. Vatican Council, Sess. III, cap. ii). In proof we need but recall that the noblest ethical teaching of pagans, such as the systems of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, was disfigured by its approbation of shockingly immoral actions and practices.”

—Ibid.

Why does God command Abraham to commit an act that Abraham’s conscience would tell him is immoral?

Elsewhere in this blog I have said that God reveals the moral law gradually, sometimes, incredibly, over many centuries.

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Revelation is gradual. God does not reveal everything all at once. The same applies to the moral law. We can cite as a classic example Jesus’ teaching on divorce:

“[Jesus] said in reply, ‘Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator “made them male and female” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.’

“They said to him, ‘Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss [her]?’

“He said to them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.’” (Matthew 19:4-9)

God revises, if you will, his specification of the moral law, over long time, indeed, centuries.

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In the case of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God sets forth his appalling imperative consistent with the gradual revelation of the moral law and for at least two reasons.

To test Abraham’s faith

“In the past, Abraham had doubted God. He had tried to have children in his own way instead of waiting on God. By asking him to sacrifice Isaac, God was testing Abraham to see if he trusted Him.”

https://www.nationalshrine.org/blog/why-did-god-ask-abraham-to-sacrifice-isaac/

—“Why Did God Ask Abraham to Sacrifice Isaac?” The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 2021

To foreshadow the sacrifice of Christ

“The story of Isaac is both a picture of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son and a foreshadowing of God’s willingness to sacrifice His only Son for us. Abraham says, ‘God will provide the sacrifice.’ Not only did God provide a ram as a sacrifice for Abraham, but He provided a lasting sacrifice through His Son — for Abraham, and for all of us.”

—Ibid.

God is not an imperious ogre who seeks to inflict suffering on humanity. He is an ineffable mystery of perfect love whose ways transcend human understanding.