In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayera, we find the famous story of the Binding of Isaac, the Akedah, in which Abraham nearly sacrifices his son Isaac at God’s command. The story is seen in Jewish tradition as a great test of Abraham’s faith, yet the biblical text conveys nothing about Abraham’s feelings on his way to bind his son. The rabbis, too, rarely engage with this aspect of the Akedah. Nowhere is there a glimpse into Abraham’s soul, nor into the intriguing question of what Abraham believed at that hour. How did he reconcile the command to sacrifice his son with God’s old promise to establish the Hebrew people from Isaac’s seed?
The Zohar, however, accompanies Abraham on his way to the Akedah and examines his consciousness at the time he was going to bind his son:
“On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar…” (Genesis 22:4). What is the reason that it says, “On the third day he saw the place from afar”? Because it is written: “For through Isaac shall your seed be called” (Genesis 21:12) — and that refers to Jacob, who would issue from him. This is the “third day.”
“He saw the place from afar,” as it is said, “From afar God appeared to me” (Jeremiah 31:2). Abraham looked on the third day — that is, the third level — and beheld Jacob, who was destined to come forth from him.
Rabbi Elazar said: What praise is there for Abraham in this? For when he looked and saw that Jacob was destined to come forth from him — well, as he was going to bind Isaac, this is not such great merit for him that he already saw that Jacob would arise from him! For from before this Abraham knew wisdom…But now the verse says “from afar” — because he was going to bind Isaac, and he did not wish to question or doubt the command of the Blessed Holy One. Therefore, it says “from afar” — he saw through a speculum that does not shine by itself. Thus, he saw, but not all was revealed to him.
Zohar, Part I, 120a
In the Zohar’s symbolic system, the term “day” generally signifies a sefirah. The third day would then be the third sefirah (counting from the uppermost of the seven lower sefirot), which is Tiferet represented by Jacob. The Zohar reads this verse to say that Abraham saw the third day, the sefirah that Jacob would come to represent, and therefore he became confident of his grandson’s eventual existence. However, this confidence in the birth of Isaac’s son raises questions about the nature of the trial. If Abraham was indeed confident that Jacob was destined to come into the world, then he implicitly also knew that the act of sacrificing Isaac would not be carried out. So what is the trial in that?
The story of Abraham’s great trial is thus caught in a kind of literary trap. On the one hand, abandoning faith in his promised family future would constitute a flaw in the image of the father of believers, because that was God’s promise. On the other hand, if Abraham believes with perfect faith in God’s promise and knows that Isaac is still destined to be the father of Jacob, then there is no trial at all. Or in the Zohar’s words: “ This is not such great merit for him that he already saw that Jacob would arise from him!”
The solution the Zohar proposes here reflects a profound insight built upon undermining the binary concept of believer/non-believer and recognizing a varied and rich psychological space between these two poles. The Zohar adds another dimension to the portrayal of Abraham’s struggling soul such that he both sees and does not see simultaneously. Abraham sees Isaac’s seed — that is, Jacob — but from afar, “through a speculum that does not shine.” In order to leave room for the trial of the Akedah, the vision is pushed to the distant cognitive horizon, from which it appears more obscured.
In the soul of the great believer, faith in God’s promise did not crack, but a kind of relaxation of total religious certainty in the meaning of the promise now took hold within him. As the Zohar continues:
Abraham said: Surely the Holy One, blessed be He, knows in another way that it will be fulfilled.
Abraham clings to the faith that through Isaac he shall become the father of a great nation, but the meaning of this promise and the ways of its fulfillment become obscured, distant from him and no longer clear.
The Zohar thus seeks to provide its readers with a key for coping with certainty that is not certain. Absolute faith in the messianic future, for example, is at the heart of Jewish consciousness, as evidenced by its inclusion in Maimonides’ list of the 13 principles of faith. However, the suffering of Jewish history has produced more than a few existential situations in which certain faith in the redemptive future was nearly impossible. In its treatment of Abraham, the Zohar is seeking to train Jewish consciousness to a slightly more modest vision of faith — one that views the promise of redemption “from afar,” through “a speculum that does not shine,” and thus to be capable of clinging to faith even in times of crisis.
This piece was originally published as part of an original series produced by My Jewish Learning and Sefaria called A Year of Zohar: Kabbalah for Everyone. Sign up for the entire series here.
