Akedah

Akedah ‘Binding of Isaac’, the account in the book of Genesis (22: 1–19) of Abraham, at the command of God, taking his son, Isaac, to be offered as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Abraham binds his son (hence ‘the Binding of Isaac’) to the altar and is ready to perform the dreadful deed when an angel appears to tell him to stay his hand and to promise him that his seed will increase. There is no reference to this episode anywhere else in the Bible. Nor does it feature very prominently in post-biblical Jewish literature until the third century CE. Some biblical scholars, Jews included, have read the story as a protest against human sacrifice, the significant point being that the angel intervenes to prevent the murder as an obscene act that God, unlike the pagan deities, hates and could never really have intended. But in traditional Jewish thought, the Akedah is used as a paradigm for Jewish martyrdom; the Jewish people are ready at all times to give up life itself for the sake of the sanctification of the divine name (Kiddush Ha-Shem).