Can Your God Be Trusted?

By Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Girzhel

Reading time: 5 min. Impact: Eternity.

Genesis 22 opens with a single Hebrew word that should terrify and comfort every reader: וַיְנַסֵּא (vay’nasse). English Bibles soften it to “tested,” but the Hebrew carries the weight of proving through trial—like refining metal in fire. God tests Abraham, not to discover something unknown to Him. He tests Abraham to reveal something Abraham doesn’t yet know about himself.

And what God commands is unthinkable.

“Take your son, your favored one, the one whom you love, Isaac” (Gen 22:2).

The Hebrew piles phrase upon phrase with escalating intensity: בִּנְךָ (bin’kha, “your son”), יְחִידְךָ (y’chid’kha, “your only/unique one”), אֲשֶׁר אָהַבְתָּ (asher ahav’ta, “whom you love”), and יִצְחָק (Yitzchak, “Isaac”). By the time the sentence reaches the name, the reader is breathless. This moment is no abstraction. This is the child of laughter, the miracle son, the entire future of God’s covenant—now ordered to become a burnt offering.

The Refrain of Readiness

Three times in this story, Abraham responds with the same word: הִנֵּנִי (hineini). English cannot capture its density—”Here I am” flattens what the Hebrew conveys: complete presence, body, mind, and will, fully oriented toward the one who calls. It is the response of a servant who has already decided to obey before knowing the command.

Abraham says it to God in verse 1. He says it to Isaac in verse 7 (where translations render it weakly as “Yes”). He says it to the angel in verse 11. Between these three “hineini” statements, a universe of faith unfolds.

The Silent Journey

The narrator refuses to tell us what Abraham felt. We see only actions: rising early, saddling the donkey, splitting wood, and traveling three days. Three days of knowing what awaits. Three days of walking beside the son he intends to kill. Three days of silence.

When Abraham finally speaks to his servants, he says something astonishing: “We will worship and return to you” (Gen 22:5). Not “I will return.” We will return. Hebrew scholars note that this statement is either deception, self-deception, or prophecy. Abraham may be concealing the truth from his servants (lest they intervene), from Isaac (lest he flee), or from himself (lest his resolve shatter). But the text offers a more profound possibility: Abraham genuinely believes that God will raise Isaac from the dead. Hebrews 11:19 makes this point explicit: “He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead.”

The Knife That Fell

At the moment Abraham’s hand lifted the knife, the angel cried out, “Do not lay your hand on the boy!” (Gen 22:12). Then the theological bombshell: “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

Now God knows? Did He not know before?

God knew Abraham would obey. But Abraham needed to know. And the world needed to know. The עֲקֵדָה (Akedah, “binding”) became the proof that a human being could love God more than life itself—more than the promised future, more than the miracle child, more than the covenant.

Isaac, Ram and Jesus

Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught by its horns. The substitution is not a rejection of sacrifice but its redirection. A midrash (a Jewish interpretive story) has Abraham pray, “May it be regarded as if the blood of this ram were the blood of my son Isaac.” The ram dies in Isaac’s place, but Isaac has already died in Abraham’s heart. That is why the angel speaks of the son as not withheld—the offering was complete before the knife struck.

Marc Chagall’s 1931 painting The Sacrifice of Isaac captures what words cannot fully express (Chagall is a Russian Jewish, later French, artist). In Chagall’s vision, the cross is already present at Moriah, hovering as he pictured it somewhere above. As Abraham raises the knife, blood streams down from the cross and the man carrying it to the altar where Isaac is bound. The crimson river pours directly onto the altar where Isaac lies bound. The ram is there too, but the blood tells the truer story: the altar, where Isaac was bound, and the cross above are intricately connected.

A Jewish pharisee, who had met a risen Christ Jesus, whom today we call Apostle Paul, once asked a rhetorical question on behalf of struggling congregations or persecuted early Christ followers in Rome.

He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also, with Him, graciously give us all things? (Rom 8:32)

Both Apostle Paul and Marc Chagall understood that just as Abraham was supposed to show God, himself, and others his love for the LORD, so did the LORD have to show his love by offering his only and unique son, Jesus! (John 3:16)

Conclusion

Here is the truth the mountain teaches: God asked Abraham to show his utter and total commitment to Him, and in return, He was willing to do exactly the same. But God did not stop Himself from giving His only Son, Jesus, so we could have eternal life. This God is the God that you and I can trust. For if He did not spare His most beloved Son for us, “how will He not also, with Him, graciously give us all things?”