Akeida (2) - Good and Evil

          The story of the akeida can be read on many levels and has attracted a huge and varied set of commentaries over the years.  It is not surprising then that the midrash, which revels in multiple layers of meaning, should exhibit a rich and multisided approach to the story.  Today we are not so much progressing from last week's discussion as we are starting all over.  We shall take a look at midrashim that more directly than last week's address the morality of God's command to Avraham.

A.  Sad and Happy

          Let us perform a little exercise in "midrashic thinking." If I were to tell you that the midrash wishes to illustrate that Avraham is torn between the sadness of his love for his son and his joyful obedience to God, and that this tension will be exhibited in the midrash by distinguishing between Avraham's eyes and his heart, which, in your opinion, will be the organ of sadness and which will be the organ of joy? Choose your answer before reading on.

 

          When I have asked this question in the yeshiva in the past, most students have answered that in his heart, Avraham of course is sad, for he loves Yitzchak, his only son, but since he has decided to serve God and obey, he, with tremendous self-control, is able to control even his facial features.  No one, observing from the outside, would be aware of the inner turmoil and torment in his heart.

          And now the midrash:

"And Avraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife."

He stretches out his hand to take the knife, and his eyes are flowing with tears, and the tears fall on the eyes of Yitzchak from the pity of a father - nonetheless, the heart is joyous to do the will of his creator.  (56,8)

          I am not taking score, but I assume that a good number of you gave the opposite answer than the midrash.  Why does the midrash assign the sadness to his eyes and the joy to his heart?

          You might think that this midrash is being critical of Avraham, stating that he was unable to control himself.  The tears are a sign of weakness and regrettable human frailty, of an undesirable and excessive humanity in the service of God.  But the language of the midrash is clearly not critical at all.  The midrash is praising Avraham for being joyous in the midst of sadness.  Why then this dichotomy between eyes and heart?

          In my opinion, this midrash is expressing the inner contradiction of the akeida itself.  God has told Avraham what he must do, but unlike every other task given him, this one is truly not good.  Until now, Avraham has always identified with his tasks, because he himself was committed to the action.  As we have seen in the past, generally Avraham in fact knows what he must do even before God tells him.  Avraham has therefore spent the last three days trying to identify with this task as well, trying to perceive how he can, as a whole and committed moral individual, do this deed.  But in fact, he cannot do so, for the act is NOT moral!

          The problem here is what to do when God commands you to do something that you do not approve of, that you do not agree with.  The obvious answer is to do it anyway, and of course that is what Avraham does.  But the crucial question is HOW - in what state of mind - does he do it.  He could simply suspend independence of mind and judgement, simply concluding that his own ethical reservations are irrelevant when God commands.  If that would be Avraham's response, he would simply have been happy (assuming he had managed to fully accomplish that response). 

          The philosophical underpinning of this response would be the thesis that God's commands are not necessarily moral or good, but are merely expressions of God's will, which is above considerations of morality.  (For those of you with memories of medieval philosophy, this is the third way described by the Rambam in the chapter on Providence [Guide, III,17], ascribed by him to the Islamic Ashariyya school).  This philosophy refuses to require that God act ethically, for such a demand would imply that God is subject to a greater principle than Himself, which would impugn God's unity. 

On the contrary, our midrash, I think, is stating that Avraham, even as he set out to fulfill God's command, insists on trying to perceive why it is moral and good.  He is determined to obey God's command with all his heart and all his soul, as he has until now, and that includes - in fact is centered on - his nature as an ethical and moral fearer of God.  Avraham understands that the akeida is not a call for him to abandon, or even to transcend, his morality, but rather to express it in a way he had not been aware of until then.  Precisely for that reason, at the moment he stretches out his hand to slaughter, his eyes flow with tears, for he has not attempted to repress his moral being as an ethical agent and a father.  The tears are not a superficial reaction that somehow escapes the control of Avraham's will, but rather arise from the depths of his true nature, which he has attempted - unsuccessfully, of course - to express in the act of the akeida.  Hence, although his mind (called his heart in the psychophysiology of the Sages) is happy, his mercy, his good attributes and loving nature, cannot help but be sad, for even at this moment, Avraham is a merciful individual and father.

          The philosophical basis for this response of Avraham is that God IS morality, and it is impossible to serve him except as a moral individual.  Contrary to the assumption of the Ashariyya, Avraham would be impugning God's unity by divorcing God's will from His goodness (or worse, by basically denying God's goodness).  Of course, in the case of the akeida there is a real problem, since in fact the command to sacrifice Yitzchak does not reflect God's goodness.  That is not a problem for us, as we know that God does not intend for Avraham to sacrifice Yitzchak, but Avraham does not know that.  He is therefore attempting to perform the impossible - to kill his son as an act of goodness in the service of the Merciful God.  This inner tension is finally expressed in simultaneous tears and joy, until God stays his hand.

B.  Good or Not

          But perhaps I am wrong.  Perhaps if it is God's will that Avraham sacrifice his son, then it is by definition a good thing and there are no more questions to ask.  The midrash continues.

And the angels were congregating in groups above.  What were they crying out? "The highways lie waste, the traveler ceases, He has broken the covenant, He has despised the cities, He regards no man" (Is.  33,8). 

          In order to understand this part of the midrash, we have to read one that appears earlier, but is clearly the beginning of the section I have quoted.

At the moment that Avraham out father stretched forth his hand to slaughter his son, the ministering angels cried.  This is what is written, "Behold the mighty ones cried outside" (Is.  33,7).  What does it mean "outside?" (The midrash interprets the verse as "the mighty ones cried, 'outside.'")

R. Azaria said: Outside - it is foreign to You to kill the son.  (56,5)

          Now back to the midrash we began.

And the angels were congregating in groups above.  What were they crying out? "The highways lie waste, the traveler ceases, He has broken the covenant, He has despised the cities, He regards no man" (Is. 33,8).  God does not want Yerushalayim and the Temple that He intended to grant to the descendants of Yitzchak! "He regards no man" - The merit of Avraham did not stand; no creature has any importance for Him! (56,8).

          The angels, it would appear, are upset.  The final statement attributed to them, in fact, sounds almost bitter - nothing has any importance, it would appear, in the eyes of God, nothing in this world.  Notice that the midrash does not bother to quote a response of God to this cry.  So what does the midrash expect us to understand from this extraordinary text?

          I think - and this is a rule for most appearances of angels in the midrash - that the midrash is using angels here to express the objective truth about the akeida.  Angels are heavenly and their outlook on the situation is correct.  What the angels are saying to God, in an extraordinarily audacious statement, is that His command is "foreign," it is not Godly, it does not belong to God's nature! They are accusing God of not acting like God! Outside! - this conduct is not part of Your nature, and hence is impossible.  The akeida is declared by the angels, that is objectively, to not meet the standards to which God is necessarily committed.  God is Goodness, and sacrifice of children is foreign to the goodness of God. 

C.  So How Could the Good God Do It?

          Continuing right on in the same midrash:

R. Acha said: Avraham began to question, these things are surely very perplexing.  Yesterday You said to me, "For in Yitzchak shall your seed be called," then You said to me, "Take your son," and now You say to me, "Do not send your hand against the youth!"

God said to Avraham: "I shall not break my covenant, nor change that which has issued from My lips" (Ps. 89,35).  When I told you to "take your son," I did not say "slaughter him," but only "raise him" ("ha'aleihu") - for cherishing, I told you to raise him up him and you did as I bid.  Now take him down.  This is what is written, "It never entered My mind" (Jer. 19,5). (56,8)

          The complete verse cited at the end of this midrash reads: "They have built the high places of the Baal in order to burn their children in fire as offerings to the Baal, which I have not commanded, nor spoke it, nor did it enter My mind." The Sages could not help but be impressed by the repeated vehemence of God's expressed reservation concerning child sacrifice - I never commanded it, never said it, never even thought of such a possibility! But, even if He ultimately suspended the command to Avraham, did He not at least "speak" such a thing when He told Avraham to set out on the journey to Mt. Moria.  The midrash says, not at all! God wished Avraham to "raise up" his son, not actually kill him. 

          Now, we all realize that the midrash is not claiming that Avraham had made a silly mistake of interpretation.  Had Avraham immediately realized that God wanted him to take Yitzchak on a pilgrimage to Mt. Moria (the future location of the Temple), the entire point of the akeida would have been lost.  I think this midrash should be understood as a continuation of the previous one.  Properly speaking, such a thought, the commission of evil, cannot exist in the mind of God.  God was deliberately misleading Avraham, for reasons that this midrash does not make clear, although we have seen at least some of them in the previous shiur.  The angels are quite correct, as I predicted they would be - it is evil and hence "foreign" to God to request such a thing.  The answer to their cry is not that God can do it anyway, or that nothing is foreign to God, but that in fact He is not planning to do it, nor did it ever "enter His mind." As God answers Avraham, "I shall not break my covenant."

D.  Can I do the Same Thing?

          While what we have been discussing explains God's command, what about Avraham's response?  Did he not wish to sacrifice his son? The midrash quoted earlier answers that Avraham was not happy (in his heart) to sacrifice his son, but was happy to do the will of God.  There is an important difference between the two.  And now that we know that God cannot and will not desire such a thing, there no longer can be a desire to serve God in this way.  As a result of the fact that we have conclusively learned that God never "breaks His covenant," and will never ask for the performance of evil, we in fact no longer can reach the level of Avraham, who knew this only from the depths of his own being but was undoubtedly plagued by the thought that perhaps God did command him to do evil.  This is the uniqueness of Avraham, which can never be repeated.  The history of Avraham gives us a guarantee of the goodness of God that Avraham did not have.  Hence, "Unique was Avraham, and he inherited the land."  The midrash states:

"He said, Here am I."

R. Yehoshua b. Korcha said: In two places Moshe compared himself to Avraham.  God said to him: "Do not give yourself airs in the presence of the king, and do not stand in the place of great men" (Prov. 25,6).

Avraham said "Here am I" - Here am I for priesthood, here am I for kingship.  He achieved priesthood and he achieved kingship. 

He achieved priesthood - "God has sworn and will not change His mind, you are a priest forever" (Ps.  110,4).

He achieved kingship - "A prince of God are you" (Bereishit 23,5).

Moshe said, "Here am I" - Here am I for priesthood, here am I for kingship.

God said to him: "Do not come near to here" (Shemot 3,5).  "Near" refers to the priesthood, as is written, "for the stranger who comes near shall die" (Bemidbar 1,51).  "To here (halom)" refers to kingship, as is written, "For He has brought me till here" (2Sam 7,18).

When Avraham answered God by saying "Here am I" he stood in a place that Moshe, even as he gave the same answer, could not stand, for to do so would be to "give himself airs in the presence of the king." Avraham's readiness - for that is what "Here am I" means - cannot be repeated, for we have learned, from him, that to be ready to do God's will is to be ready to do good.  Avraham's readiness is greater than Moshe can reach, by definition, for it is unrepeatable. 

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Next shiur: The aftermath of the akeida

56,10; 11