Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild
I have in the past emphasized that the most important parts of any Biblical text are those which are not written or not printed, not read but which must have happened if a narrative is to make any sort of sense. Narrative sense, or theological sense – the two are not always the same.
The story of what we call the ‘Akedah’ or ‘Akedat Yitzhak’ is a story filled with Words – and Silences. The Silences are actually longer than the Words and there are more of them and they are in many respects the more significant. I could spend a week discussing each one but here, today, I will focus on a few only.
God decides to ”test” Abraham. Why? The text is silent. We do not read that God says to Himself, ”I think it is time I put Abraham to another test, it is about time again.” We have context and we have hints, but no statement.
What does Abraham answer to God when he gets the appalling, unbelievable command to sacrifice his only surviving, beloved son? The text gives us no verbal answer, but what does he THINK? How does he react inside? There are of course Midrashim which try to fill some of these mysterious gaps, which describe how he argues back, which try to make him into a more rounded, believable, even sympathetic character – because the ancient rabbis faced the same problems and challenges as we do with these texts – but the biblical text in Genesis chapter 22 is silent.
What does he tell Sarah? Does he tell her anything at all? It seems – from the text – not. So the next question: What does Sarah think when she wakes up one morning to find her husband and son have gone, together with two of the servants and a donkey, have slipped away in the early dawn without telling anybody where they were going, or why, or when they planned to return?
Commentators focus on the three days of silence between father and son as they walk northwards from Beersheva to what will later be assumed to be Jerusalem, a hill seen from a distance after three days’ journey. At the time this place is uninhabited, it is just a flat clearing with some stones that can be piled together to make an altar, with bushes around it, bushes so thick that a wild ram can get itself entangled. It has no name as yet, it is just ”the place where God will show you” – But there is silence when it comes to any other people living there or any other encounter with anyone at all during the journey there – and back.
What does Abraham say to Isaac as – afterwards – he unties him, puts the knife away (having maybe used it to cut the knots)? What does he say to the two servants when he returns, without the son? What do they think about their aged master who returns from this mysterious mission without the firewood, without the son, and with a strange expression? Clearly they would not dare to ask him, but do they talk to each other about it? Or to the other servants on their return? And – most important of all: What does he say to Sarah when he returns to her at Beersheva? (To make matters more complex, WE know that Isaac is still alive, even though he is not mentioned here at the end of Chapter 22, and a few chapters later Isaac will marry Rebekah when she is brought to him, and he will take her into his mother’s tent – it seems that, even after her death, Isaac feels more comfortable, safer, in his mother’s tent than in his father’s. Sarah never gets to say Goodbye to her son…. ) The silence between father and son, between son and father, continues. Abraham will never get to play the Grandfather role, at least not to the twin sons of Isaac. The fact that in Chapter 25, once widowed, he will marry again, to Keturah, and have sons and grandsons is not, here, relevant. They do not provide him with the same sense of destiny and dynasty.
Does Abraham talk to God ever again after this life-changing encounter? Does he pray to God to ask for help for his son? No – he sends his own servant Eliezer to look for a potential wife for Isaac, knowing that if he does not do so the line will simply die out through Isaac’s inability to find a wife for himself. Isaac – wherever he is – is clearly traumatised. There is no direct communication.
Sometimes Silence can be a blessing, and sometimes Silence can be a curse. Sometimes there is that companionable silence when you know already what your partner is thinking and you know that they know what you are thinking, and so you can just sit there, maybe holding hands, maybe each with a book or their own thoughts, and the silence bonds you rather than binds you. Sometimes however you know that you have things you want to say but you do not dare to, because you know how your partner will react, and your partner knows that you want to say something, and maybe even what, but knows also that you do not trust yourself and you do not trust them either, and so the silence builds up between you because, even though something is not spoken aloud, that does not mean that it is not present. It gets heavier, it gets more and more difficult to ”break” the silence. Until one day the silence takes over and communication ends totally.
Abraham and Sarah have not had an easy marriage. She has of course as a bride left her family and joined her husband in his journey to a new unknown home. They have had to face years of childlessness; they have adopted Abraham’s orphaned nephew Lot who, as he grows and establishes himself, needs to break away and go and live somewhere else – though Abraham as an uncle still needs to intervene at least once to rescue his nephew from danger and captivity, and tries to intervene a second time to save his city of Sdom from destruction. (He never learns that Lot and two of his unnamed great-nieces have survived the catastrophe, and so for him, at least, Lot ceases to be a potential heir, a link to a potential future generation.) Twice the couple have had to flee starvation and economic disaster – it is not easy for a nomadic shepherd to have to become the guest of a city state and there are risks attached – and twice Sarah has been taken away from her husband through a lie. Later she has recommended that Abraham try to get at least the slave girl Hagar pregnant – and is then shocked and distressed when this succeeds. By the time she herself is promised a son she has to laugh in ironic disbelief – she is too old by now, she says. First Sarah has driven the pregnant slave girl out of the camp – but she returns. Then later, when she has finally borne a son of her own, she tells Abraham to send the slave girl and her son Ishmael out of the camp – ”sending” someone into the desert without resources or protection is basically a euphemism for ”letting them die” – and he has done so. He is prepared to do Anything to keep his jealous wife quiet, it seems.
What else is this man prepared to do, to keep his God quiet? The story appals us with its opening sentence. ”Destroy your own future” says God. ”Ignore everything I have promised you, about numerous descendants and a glorious future. Kill your last surviving son.” And – he gets ready to do precisely that! Without argument. Without telling either his son or his son’s mother what he has in mind to do.
What does he tell his wife, the mother, before setting off? It seems: Nothing. What does he tell her afterwards? It seems: Nothing. The silence is overwhelming. From both sides, for we do not read that Sarah asks him, confronts him, or breaks into weeping or anger. The next thing we read is that Sarah has died and Abraham, rather than having time to grieve, is kept busy with practical difficulties such as finding and purchasing a grave plot. Does he blame himself for her sudden collapse? Isaac does not appear at the funeral – yet a further gap.
Yes, the gaps tell us as much as or more than the actual words in this troubling text. We do learn that God, too, can change His mind – perhaps this is also a message for Rosh Hashanah, that on this Day of Judgement we can still hope for a change of destiny at the last moment – and we learn, confusingly for some, that sometimes blind obedience to God’s commands is NOT what is demanded of us. Sometimes, when we feel we too are being tested, we have to respond by arguing, not obeying. And sometimes we have to listen to the Silence inside us, and not just the Words.
Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild.
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