Dad, Where's the Goat?

So, a really old man takes his only legitimate son and the two boys that help out with the lawn and the farm, out on a camping trip. He separates the non-relations and goes off alone with his son for a while, say three days. He comes home, possibly without his son.

If you already know which bible section I'm about to pick on, you have an anecdotal to mastery of biblical literacy. The binding of Isaac is this big controversial passage, for Jews and Muslims and social services. Us Jews stand by it as the separation between human sacrifice and goat slaughter which helped the human species evolve as a culture or something.

I know there's a lot of talk about how many times G-d refers to Isaac as nice things. Isaac is Abraham's only (a politically correct translation would be favored) son, his beloved son. Say “son” again, his son. This is actually the first use of the word “Love” in the bible. This is supposedly to pump up how big a deal Abraham's faith in G-d is. I have always thought that G-d had to be really specific, because Abraham LOVED talking G-d out of shit. It's probably a little of both.

Some of you are worried that this is not the current Torah Portion and my game is off: this was my chapter translation in my Hebrew book, which is how I got such a close look at the lack of love and family that happens linguistically.

Everyone talks about how much the positive words are used, but no one has noted that Abraham, at one or two points calls or refers to Isaac as נער , nar is the same word used for those other two guys. Who, despite what a modern JPS says, are not literally servants. I'm sure that young men, or lads, or boys, were probably workers for Abraham because the Bible didn't have child labor laws.

I hate to say it, but I'm not sure Abraham loves Isaac outside of G-d. Some REALLY religious people just went “aww” but seriously? When Dad wasn't about to hatchet into son's neck, son is just another serving boy? You know who actually loved Isaac? Maybe G-d, because he didn't let Abraham faith-slaughter the kid but really, HIS MOM. She was kept out of the loop and it killed her.

Maybe Abraham failed the test and G-d only told him he won to keep him from killing his offspring. G-d will bless Abraham's lineage with many people...only because he's got living children to go and reproduce.

Just holy crap.