‘Seeing You Have Not Withheld Your Son’: An Overlooked Motif in Genesis 22?

Abstract

In Late Bronze Age diplomatic correspondence, vassals attempt to demonstrate their loyalty by declaring they would carry out any command of the king even if it is self-destructive. A critical aspect of these exchanges is that the seemingly harmful order was never meant to be fulfilled. The exaggerated offer to undergo needless suffering was sufficient proof that the subaltern was an arad kitti, or ‘faithful servant’. This rhetorical dynamic, wherein the ‘deferential gesture’ is enough to satisfy a seemingly overwrought demand, has relevance for evaluating components of the divine decree in Genesis 22, that Abraham deliver up his son ‘as a burnt offering’, his willingness to carry out its dictates, and the heavenly overlord’s ultimately setting aside its execution. The author suggests that the biblical episode was a symbolic ritual enacted between the deity and patriarch, whose intent was to exalt Abraham as the arad kitti, par excellence, and to demonstrate that God was the most trustworthy of suzerains.