Why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Genesis 22

The passages

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

Genesis 22:1

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Genesis 22:2

And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.

Jeremiah 7:31

The problem

God commands a father to kill his son, and the father sets out to do it. The narrator tells us it is a test (the KJV says "tempt"), but Abraham does not know that. Later prophets condemn child sacrifice and say God never commanded it. James 1:13 says God tempts no one. If the story shows Abraham's faith, it also shows a God who asks for something monstrous and a man who says nothing. Kierkegaard called this the "teleological suspension of the ethical".

What believers and scholars say

A test with a good end. The traditional view is that God never intended the sacrifice. The story is about trust, and its resolution shows that God provides. It also opposes child sacrifice by having a ram substituted. The Hebrew nasah means "test" and not "tempt" in the sense of James.

A polemic against child sacrifice. Some scholars read the story as marking the end of an older practice, or as claiming that Israel's God, unlike others, does not require it. Levenson counters that the story shows that God does claim the firstborn (compare Exodus 22:29), and that the substitution is a redemption.

Abraham should have argued. Abraham bargained with God over Sodom (Genesis 18), and here he stays silent. Some Jewish and Christian readers have drawn the conclusion that Abraham failed another sort of test, one of conscience. This is a minority reading, but a long-standing one.

A story to be argued with. Kierkegaard saw the story as showing the limits of ethics. Others, such as Immanuel Kant, said that if a voice commanded this, we should know it was not God.

Where this leaves it

The story ends well for Isaac, but the command stands in the text. A reader may take it as a lesson in trust, an argument against child sacrifice, or an unsettling account of a God who tests. All three readings have been held by serious believers, sometimes in the same person at different times in life.