As an introduction to the Lord’s Supper in church today, my pastor read and shortly discussed the implications of Genesis 22:9-13 in light of Christ’s death on the cross. Testing and confirming Abraham’s faith is certainly a major component of this scene, but just as God was after a metaphor for Christ’s work when Moses struck the rock rather than speaking to it (1), so God was commanding a metaphor about His Son’s work through Abraham and Isaac.
“Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.”
Notice that I included verse 14, because I read further after pastor stopped. In the NASB, which I read, there was a footnote before the last two words, “be provided”. The center notes read, “Lit. [literally] be seen” (2). I wondered, “What was seen?” They saw “a ram caught in the thicket by his horns.” (v.13) As I shared this thought after service, a brother pointed out that Abraham had earlier said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” (v.8) Was he wrong, since it was a ram? No, God did provide (see) a lamb, as John the Baptist says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) But in the immediate context, God did provide a ram, which had been a lamb of course. A ram is strong, as indicated by its horns (3). The thicket involves entanglement, thorns, and suffering.
Here is the metaphor, as I saw it anew. The powerful Son of God, the same one who “will shatter kings” and “drink from the brook by the wayside” (4) in power and victory, willingly becomes caught (incarnation) in the thicket of our sinful world, so that He would be God’s provision/sacrifice for mankind. God saw to “sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin” (5).
Abraham bound Isaac and placed him on an altar on the Mountains of Moriah (6), where the temple was later built, and where Christ Jesus was much later nailed to a cross. Thus, “In the mount of the Lord it will be seen,” our provision for a sin debt we could never repay, fully paid by our victorious Savior. Praise the Lord!
- Numbers 20:8-13
- It may seem very odd that the same word could be translated “provided” or “seen”, but in the immediate context of Abraham’s (and don’t forget Isaac) need and naming of the place, it is a legitimate translation (see also Deuteronomy 33:21). Conversely, when something needed is “seen”, it is at hand and provided. Also, KJV, GNV, and WYC translations render the word as “seen”.
- Numbers 24:8; Daniel 8:6-8
- Psalm 110:5,7: Drinking from the brook seems to be a metaphor for the warrior refreshing himself after victory, almost in defiance of the downed enemies.
- Romans 8:3
- Genesis 22:2; 2 Chronicles 3:1
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