The symbol of the redemptive Holocaust.

by Alejandro Roque Glez.

“And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham… Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and get you into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering… Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off… My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering… And in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because you have obeyed my voice.”

(Genesis 22:2-18)

God shows Abraham––and to the world––what he would do 2000 years later with his Son Jesus Christ (Jn 1:14) in the same place it would happen; and in Abraham’s obedience we all have been blessed.

Abraham, symbolizing God here, took his only child Isaac (according to the promise), and thinking about the certain death of his son walked three days––which symbolize the three Hebrew days Jesus went to preach into the dead: 1 Pet 3:19, 4:6––to the place where he was going to sacrifice him.

The angel of God did not allow him to go further (v.11-12) after three days elapse (v.4); and it being a symbol of the then future resurrection of Jesus (Lk 24:1, 7, 21) in the third day. If there are any doubts, we will add that on Mount Moriah where the patriarch Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac by obedience to Yahweh’s command, was the same place where two millennia later the Son of God was sentenced and then sacrificed as a burnt offering, like a Lamb led to the slaughter, on the Cross of Calvary, under the Roman Empire and instigated by religious Jews of the time.

Abraham was also a symbol of the Savior, because in him are comprised the two testaments to form a whole, catalyst of the one carrier of eternity: Yeshua the Nazarene. If we analyze the social life of Jesus––in front of the society in which he lived––today he would be classified as a strange individual, complex, bigoted, wrong, lonely, and very politically incorrect; cause and fact that has always bothered the political or religious elite on any time.

In the same place where patriarch Abraham took Isaac for the purpose of offering him to God is where Solomon built by God’s command and of king David his father, about a thousand years after Abraham, the magnificent Temple of God (2 Chron 3:1), in which they daily sacrificed burnt offerings on the altar and for another thousand years the lamb symbolizing Christ: the Lamb of God (Jn 1:29), was sacrificed (crucified) a few meters from the Temple located there in the city of Jerusalem.

Will you dare to say, dear reader, that everything happened by pure chance? There are no coincidences in the course of history.

Suffice is to say by way of admiration such qualities of the believer Abraham whom knowing Yahweh the Holy God––and having seen his miracles before––did not doubt his eternal justice, never hesitating to meet the divine mandate in relation to his own son; something certainly very painful when he was firstly told; but his faith in the God who had given him the title of Friend, now he had received by the same faith that assurance about the Almighty Yahweh––el Shaddai––would raise his child back after death (Heb 11:17-19); and thus used as a symbol to the surrounding nations showing them his absolute control over matters concerning life.

This unusual man of God who had already expressed his great mercy when he asked God to prevent the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (18:23-33); was flesh and blood like any of us, with family problems, earthly and adamics, in a society where he had developed. Not being a man free of sin––because there is no such––when we see as a whole the patriarch Abraham’s trajectory: his simplicity in times of scarcity and wealth, his unconditional devotion to God the Father who gave him life and eternal promises; his centennial patience expecting a child that seemed to never come, and while all his servants procreated with the blessing of his master having extended families; and when it came that time to embrace the little boy and see him grow, thus be subjected to the test of his existence, delivering to the Creator of life his only son for which he had waited a whole life long, then we understand why God chose this man to make of him the father of many peoples and nations.

(What will life be on our planet once the Lord fulfills the promise of his coming? If interested you can read it in the form of a literary narrative, recreated in the author's book entitled: 'The King Victorino').

[These and other Old Testament prophecies are explicatively compiled in the author's book entitled: 'Prophecies in the Pentateuch;' in print and digital editions]

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