Isaac

• 1. The Name That Laughed

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  Isaac is the only one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites whose name was never changed. His name means "he will laugh." That laughter belongs to his parents, Abraham and Sarah, who laughed when they were told they would have a child at their advanced ages. Genesis describes Abraham falling on his face and laughing at the news. Sarah, past the age of childbearing, laughed inwardly when she overheard three messengers renew the promise. When God questioned the laughter, she denied it.

  Isaac stands inside Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and Rastafari. He is the son of Abraham and Sarah, the father of Jacob and Esau, and the grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel. He first appears in the Torah. According to the narrative he died aged 180, the longest-lived of the three patriarchs. He was also the only patriarch who did not move out of Canaan. How a figure so central could leave so faint a trail of his own actions is a question that runs through everything that follows.

• 2. The Knife On Moriah

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  At God's command, Abraham took his son to Mount Moriah to build a sacrificial altar and offer Isaac upon it. This was the last of ten trials to test Abraham's faith. He bound his son to the altar and drew his knife to kill him. At the last moment an angel of God stopped him, and he was directed instead to sacrifice a nearby ram caught in thickets.

  The Book of Genesis never states Isaac's age at the binding. Some Talmudic sages set it at thirty-seven, reasoning from the next story, Sarah's death at 127, when she had been 90 at Isaac's birth, as though she died on hearing of his intended sacrifice. The episode, called the aqedah, became central to later Jewish tradition and is cited in appeals for the mercy of God. In one version of these interpretations, Isaac actually died in the sacrifice and was revived. According to many Aggadah accounts, it is Satan who tests Isaac as an agent of God. Isaac's willingness to follow the command at the cost of his death became a model for Jews who chose martyrdom over violating Jewish law.

• 3. Wells And A Stolen Blessing

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  Before Isaac was 40, Abraham sent his steward Eliezer into Mesopotamia to find him a wife from the family of his nephew Bethuel. Eliezer chose the Aramean Rebekah. Rebekah was believed to be barren after many years of marriage, until Isaac prayed and she conceived. She bore twin boys, Esau and Jacob, when Isaac was 60. Isaac favored Esau, and Rebekah favored Jacob. The narratives about Isaac never mention him having concubines.

  Isaac moved to Beer-lahai-roi after his father died. When famine struck, he went to the Philistine land of Gerar, ruled by King Abimelech, where his father had once lived. Like Abraham, he pretended Rebekah was his sister, afraid Abimelech would kill him to take her. He returned to the wells his father had dug and found them stopped up with earth by the Philistines. He unearthed them and dug new wells all the way to Beersheba, where he made a pact with Abimelech, just as his father had.

  Isaac grew old and blind. He told Esau to hunt venison so he could give his blessing. While Esau hunted, Jacob followed his mother's advice and deceived his blind father by posing as Esau, taking the blessing and the place of primary heir. Esau had already sold his birthright to Jacob for "bread and stew of lentils." Isaac then sent Jacob into Mesopotamia to take a wife from his mother's brother's house. After 20 years working for his uncle Laban, Jacob returned, reconciled with Esau, and the brothers buried their father in Hebron after he died at the age of 180.

• 4. A Type Of Christ

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  Tertullian drew a parallel between Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrificial fire and Christ carrying his cross. The early Christian church read Isaac as a type of Christ, and as both "the son of the promise" and the "father of the faithful." There was general agreement that, while all the sacrifices of the Old Law anticipated Calvary, the sacrifice of Isaac did so "in a pre-eminent way."

  The New Testament states that Isaac was "offered up" by Abraham and that Isaac blessed his sons. Paul contrasted Isaac, symbolizing Christian liberty, with the rejected older son Ishmael, symbolizing slavery. Hagar is associated with the Sinai covenant, while Sarah is associated with the covenant of grace that her son Isaac enters. The Epistle of James, chapter 2, verses 21 to 24, holds that the sacrifice of Isaac shows justification requires both faith and works. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, verse 19, the release of Isaac is treated as analogous to the resurrection of Jesus.

  The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church consider Isaac a saint. His feast is kept in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Byzantine rite on the Second Sunday before Christmas, between December 11 and 17, as the Sunday of the Forefathers. In the Catholic Church he is commemorated on the 25th of March or on the 17th of December.

• 5. A Prophet In The Quran

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  Isaac is mentioned seventeen times by name in the Quran, often alongside his father and his son Jacob. Islam considers him a prophet, the father of the Israelites, and a righteous servant of God. The Quran says Abraham received "good tidings of Isaac, a prophet, of the righteous," and that God blessed them both.

  When angels came to Abraham about the punishment to fall on Sodom and Gomorrah, his wife Sarah "laughed, and We gave her good tidings of Isaac, and after Isaac of (a grandson) Jacob," despite their old age. Several verses describe Isaac as a "gift" to Abraham. Verses 24:26 to 27 add that God placed "prophethood and the Book" among his offspring, read as pointing to Abraham's prophetic descendants. In the Quran's account of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son, the son's name is not given, and debate has continued over his identity, though many hold that the identity is the least important element in a story meant to show the courage that comes through faith.

• 6. The Ancestor Of Beersheba

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  Recent scholarship has raised the possibility that Isaac was originally an ancestor from the Beersheba region, venerated at a sanctuary. Some scholars describe him as "a legendary figure," or "a figure representing tribal history," or "a seminomadic leader." Ugaritic texts from the 13th century BCE refer to the benevolent smile of the Canaanite deity El, while Genesis instead ascribes the laughter behind Isaac's name to his parents.

  The biblical historian A. Jopsen argued for a connection between the Isaac traditions and the north, citing Amos 7:9 and its phrase "the high places of Isaac." Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Romer proposed that Isaac may be the ancestor worshipped in Beersheba, with the oldest tradition about him an ancestor myth dating back to at least the 8th century BCE. They suggested the story of his conflict with Abimelech of Gerar and the Philistines could have originated in the 7th century BCE, aimed at justifying Judah's claim over Judahite territories transferred to the Philistine cities by Sennacherib. They note that Gerar, identified with Tel Haror, then held special importance as a fortified Assyrian administrative center, and that a king of Ashdod named Ahimilki bore a name similar to Abimelech. They further proposed that Abraham may be the ancestor worshipped in Hebron and Jacob the ancestor worshipped in Israel.

  Isaac also left a mark in the early Christian imagination. The earliest portrayals of him appear in the Roman catacomb frescoes. Alison Moore Smith grouped these works into three categories: Abraham leading Isaac toward the altar, both figures standing in orant attitude on and near a pedestal, and Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac as the boy stands or kneels beside the altar. Sometimes Abraham grasps Isaac by the hair, and in the later paintings the Hand of God emerges from above.