Why did Abraham offer his son?

Abraham climbs a mountain to respond to God asking him to sacrifice Isaac or his hard-won son who is the only child. Following his father without having any idea what will happen to him, he asks, “We have embers and firewood ready. Where is a little sheep to take as a scapegoat?” “God will get it prepared,” says Abraham.

Abraham’s anecdote in the book of Genesis, one of the most famous biblical episodes, is hard to relate to. Contemplating the other side of our life from a religious and ideological viewpoint, the author provides an answer to this conundrum by attempting literal restoration through “The Voice of Isaac,” a part of his new series novel book. Isaac, as a proxy for the author, speaks between God asking the father to offer the most precious one in his life and the father who obeys Him.

“If offering is an expression‎ of love, asking for sacrifice represents greater love. While God demands sacrifice, He is already being asked for sacrificing.”

In a scene where Isaac afterwards recalls the day on the mountain, the author concludes that it is all about love. God asks His beloved son (Abraham) to give Him the son’s dearest one (Isaac), which proves that He is the one who practices love before anyone else with the absolute affection in His heart. It arouses emotions that the literal technics of repetition and expansion in the book play a variation of the narrative that defies human understanding and logic to get readers closer to a newly defined literal truth.

Before and after the title piece of the book stand short stories that get inspirations from other Genesis episodes around the time when Abraham and Isaac are born. The author adopts well-known tales in Genesis on Lot, a nephew of Abraham, who survives amid the demise of Sodom; Hagar, a maid who gives birth to Ishmael or Isaac’s half-brother; and Jacob, Isaac’s son, who runs away and dreams a dream. The biblical figures are reinterpreted by the author in the frame of the stories of humans who do have an incomplete understanding of the world of God but stay within His love.


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