Jehovah Jireh

From the day that he left Haran behind, Abraham had many remarkable experiences. His communion with and his communication from God, his growing experience of divine power, and his increasing knowledge of God’s character led to his being called, with a unique and special dignity, the friend of God, Isa. 41. 8. But the greatest climax of his life was not when he, in the horror of a great darkness, heard God reaffirm His covenant with Abraham, and pass, like ‘a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp’ through the pieces of the dismembered offering, Gen. 15. 17. Nor did it take place when God asked, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?’ and took him into His confidence about the judgement about to fall on Sodom, giving Abraham the opportunity to plead for the inhabitants of that sinful city, 18. 17.

The true climax of Abraham’s life was ushered in by another call of God. No less clear and uncompromising than the first (which it unmistakably echoes), it was incalculably more costly. ‘Abraham’, said God, ‘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’, 22. 2. Just as God had carefully specified the costliness of His first call - ‘thy country … thy kindred … thy father’s house’ - so now His identification of Isaac as ‘thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest’ makes the cost as plain - and as appalling - as it could possibly be. Spoken to any father, such a request would have been shattering, but, having followed Abraham’s story through Genesis, having waited with him through the years of barrenness, having mourned with him over the terrible consequences of his effort to solve by human means a problem that he should - and could - have left safely in God’s hands, and having heard the promises that could only be fulfilled if Isaac lived, we know the true magnitude of God’s demand.

Knowing its magnitude, we can, perhaps, begin to imagine the emotions that filled Abraham’s heart as he grasped the meaning of God’s request. And imagine them we must, for all that Abraham says to God is his initial ‘here I am’.¹ Abraham’s silence, his refusal to query or debate God’s words, to express any of the thoughts and questions that must have been teeming through his brain, is one of the most remarkable elements of this remarkable story. The man who had established obedience and worship as the template of his life was not now going to depart from it. Silently and submissively, though surely with a breaking heart, he readied himself, his servants, and his son for the journey to the appointed place. When he does speak, his words to his servants and to his son are eloquent of the same priority and the same confidence in God that had been so strikingly seen in his departure from Haran. To his servants he said, ‘Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you’, v. 5. This was no dissimulation, designed to spare their feelings or to prevent them from interfering with his purpose. He went to offer his son upon the altar, but he did so in the assurance ‘that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead’, Heb. 11. 19. He must have wondered how, but his ignorance of the details was no obstacle to the faith that assured him that he and the lad, both, would come again. His response to Isaac’s query was more remarkable still. His words may well suggest that he had an inkling of what God might do, ‘My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering’, Gen. 22. 8. Framed, as it is, by the repeated phrase, ‘they went both of them together’, this single exchange emphasizes, in a very moving way, their isolation and intimacy as they moved towards the place of sacrifice.

And provide He did. Not until Isaac was bound and the knife raised, not until Abraham had given full and incontrovertible proof of the reality of his fear of God, but before Isaac suffered any harm, the voice came again, ‘Abraham, Abraham’. Abraham’s response was identical with his answer to the first call, ‘Here am I’, v. 11. The demands of God’s earlier call in no way affected his alertness and attention to the divine voice. It spoke now with a message of reprieve. Abraham had passed the test, and God would not demand the shedding of Isaac’s blood. This time, He speaks, not as Elohim, but as ‘the angel of the Lord’, the first appearance of the name of Jehovah in this narrative. ‘He who requires from Abraham the surrender of Isaac is God the creator … but it is [Jehovah] in His angel who forbids the extreme act, for the son of promise cannot perish’.² And, as Abraham’s arm is arrested, his words to Isaac are revealed as prophetic. God did provide himself a lamb, ‘a ram caught in a thicket by his horns’, v. 13, provided by God, and ready to be offered ‘in the stead’ of Isaac.

Such momentous events could not go uncommemorated, and so Abraham builds his final altar and names the mountain ‘Jehovah-jireh’, v. 14. In verse 8, Abraham speaks of God by His creatorial title Elohim, rather than Jehovah, but the verb is identical to that used here. Elohim, the Creator God, would provide, Abraham had reassured Isaac. But it is the covenant-keeping Jehovah who gives His name to this place, the name last used (before verse 8) at the beginning of chapter 21 in connection with the birth of Isaac. As in English, the Hebrew verb translated ‘provide’ has both the sense of seeing a need and meeting it.³ Apart from its appearance in verses 8 and 14 (twice), the verb also forms part of the name Moriah, which means ‘seen of Jehovah’. There is an emphasis on sight throughout the story - Abraham ‘lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off’, v. 4. Isaac, on the lonely walk up the mountain said, ‘Behold the fire and the wood’, v. 7. At the climax of the story, ‘Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns’, v. 13. Man’s seeing is purely reactive - Isaac sees what his father has provided, Abraham sees God’s place and God’s provision. God’s seeing is different. He sees before and sees to provide. That duality is reflected in the gloss on the name ‘Jehovah-jireh’: ‘In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen’ can also be rendered (and is in many translations), ‘On the mount of the Lord it [or he] shall be provided’. The expression could also be rendered, ‘in the mountain the Lord will appear’, NET footnote.

The precise import of this expression is somewhat ambiguous, but it undoubtedly points us towards the future significance of Moriah. The mountain is mentioned by name on only one other occasion in scripture, 2 Chr. 3. 1, ‘Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite’. This fact explains the reference to ‘the mountain of the Lord’. The ‘mountain/hill of the Lord’ refers to the temple, emphasizing the elevation involved in approaching God.⁴ In this connection, this saying ‘seems to be a play on the double application of the word: Jehovah “sees” the needs of those who come to worship Him in Zion, and then “is seen”, i.e. reveals Himself to them by answering their prayers, and bestowing upon them the blessings of His providence and aid: His “seeing”, in other words, takes practical effect in a “being seen”’.⁵ From a New Testament perspective, it is this point that Paul emphasizes with his allusion to Genesis chapter 22, ‘He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?’ Rom. 8. 32. The Lord who provided Himself a Lamb is still the God of Abraham, and still the God of Jehovah-jireh.

Before we leave Jehovah-jireh, we should notice its consequences for Abraham. We have already noticed some of the echoes of Genesis chapter 12 in this narrative. Now, God reiterates, reinforces, and amplifies the promises He had made to Abraham when He first called him. Three features, at least, of God’s words underscore the intensification of His earlier promise. Firstly, God swears by Himself on only a handful of occasions: in this passage; Isa. 45. 23; Jer. 22. 5; and 49. 13.⁶ As the writer to the Hebrews emphasizes, that oath provides an unshakeable certainty, Heb. 6. 17, 18. Secondly, the expression ‘saith the Lord’ in verse 16 uses a word that describes not just general speech, but a prophetic utterance or oracle. Thirdly, the Hebrew construction ‘in blessing I will bless … in multiplying I will multiply’ emphasizes the certainty of the blessing, ‘I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply’ ESV. Whatever room there might have been for doubt in Abraham’s mind before this point is reduced to nothing - nothing could be more certain than the divine declaration of enormous, unimaginable blessings to come.

Genesis chapter 22 is, literally and spiritually, one of the mountaintops of scripture. It is unquestionably the summit of Abraham’s life, the climax of a pathway marked out by pitched tents and built altars, the pathway of a pilgrim and a worshipper who, by the time his journey drew to its close, had learned that the God who deserves all we have is the God who provided it in the first place.