Does God Command Immoral Actions? | Lecture 3

Theologian and biblical scholar J. Richard Middleton joined us at Upper House on September 12, 2025. Middleton will explore the provocative question “Does God command immoral actions?” using the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22) as a central example, inviting us to engage deeply with the moral and theological complexity of this foundational text.

J. Richard Middleton is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis, at Northeastern Seminary and Roberts Wesleyan University, in Rochester, NY. A native of Jamaica, he immigrated to Canada for graduate studies and moved to the USA for a teaching position. He is past president of the Canadian-American Theological Association (2011–2014) and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (2019–2021). Middleton’s research area is Old Testament theology with a focus on creation, suffering, and the ethics of power. He is the author of five books; the most recent are The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Brazos, 2005); A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic, 2014); and Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God (Baker Academic, 2021). He is currently working on two new books, one on the power dynamics between prophet and king in 1 Samuel and the other on the biblical worldview for our troubled times.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You guys got stamina. You're staying with me, I hope. And you're allowing yourself to think differently about texts. So I've tried to show that a careful reading of the Akadai in the context of the earlier Abraham story, with the later fallout from what happened, suggests a reinterpretation of what was being tested. It also leads to a reappraisal of whether Abraham's response was optimal. But this reappraisal seems to fly in the face of the two angel speeches in verses 11 through 12 and 15 through 18. Because these two speeches from the angel of Yahweh are traditionally read as positively valuing Abraham's response. Doesn't the angel of Yahweh speaking on behalf of God, in this case on behalf of Yahweh, validate Abraham's unquestioning obedience? And most people say, of course. I think a surface reading does suggest that. But once we start questioning Abraham's response to God, it now becomes possible to read the two angel speeches a bit differently. Here, more than anywhere else, the pressure of the traditional interpretation makes itself felt. I already began to read the first speech a little bit differently when I noted that the statement, now I know that you're a God of Pharaoh, could signify what was discovered from the test, but does not necessarily reveal the purpose of the test, what was being tested. Likewise, the omission of whom you love in the description of Abraham's relationship to his son could be read as containing an implicit negative judgment on Abraham's response because it suggested it wasn't quite optimal, because couldn't he have been faithful to God while also loving his son? Since the phrase whom you love is omitted also from the description of Isaac in the second angel's speech, verse 16, maybe, just maybe, we could read other aspects of that speech as less than fully approving. For example, we might reconsider the significance of Yahweh swearing by himself to fulfill the promises stated in verses 17 and 18 that he had previously made to Abraham. Now, this is an unusual oath in the book of Genesis. God swears by himself that he will do something. It seems to be predicated on Abraham's actions. The specific reason given for God's oath is that Abraham did not withhold his son, which explains the point of the opening general statement, because you have done this thing. What thing? Giving up your son as a sacrifice. Clearly, God's promise is based upon, or God's oath is based upon what Abraham did. No disputing that. The traditional interpretation is that the promises of blessing, originally given back in Genesis 12, which were given to Abraham unconditionally, I will bless you and I will, you know, make you a great nation. I will, through you, all the nations of the earth will bless themselves, given unconditionally. That promise is now tied in some way to Abraham's actions in the Akeda. So the basis of the blessing is now changed, and from here on the blessing is dependent not only on God's will, but also on Abraham's obedience. As one famous scholar, John Levinson of Harvard puts it, the Akedah has now become the basis for the Abrahamic covenant. Or said differently, another place in his works, the Abrahamic covenant has now become a consequence of the Akeda. Now, most traditional interpreters agree on two points. First, they take Abraham's obedience as positive, so that when they link God's oath of blessing to his actions, they make the blessing a consequence of his actions. This represents God's approval of Abraham. The blessing signifies God approves Abraham. The second point is that they understand the linking of the blessing to Abraham's actions as something new and unprecedented. And I could quote you, Levinson, and many others on this point. However, I think both of these points could be challenged. They're both false. Let me start with a second point. That's the clearest one, that's just wrong. The conditional element in the promises does not begin with Genesis 22. There's a conditional element already there in Genesis 18, because God desired Abraham to teach his children and household Yahweh's way of righteousness and justice. Why? In order to bring about the fulfillment of the promises. I've chosen him that he may charge his children and household to do all this stuff, so that Yahweh may bring about for Abraham what he had previously promised him. This is the conditional element. The promises are now based on Abraham's actions. The promises had been specified in the prior verse that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, that all nations of the earth be blessed through him. This means that even before the Akedah, Genesis 22, Abraham had a responsibility to live in such a way that he communicated Yahweh's normative standards of righteousness and justice. That is the way of the Lord, way of Yahweh. It further means that prior to the Akedah, prior to Genesis 22, God had already intended that Abraham's embodiment and communication of this way would affect the reality of the blessing that God intended for the nations. Do you get my point? I hope this is not too fine a point. It had been unconditional in Genesis 12. Genesis 18, I want Abraham to live in such a way and teach my path that the nations could become blessed through Abraham and his family. It's precisely so that Abraham himself could learn about Yahweh's way and then model and communicate it that God revealed his plans about Sodom to Abraham. There was a teaching moment. But Abraham did not learn what God intended in Genesis 18. Neither, I think, did he learn what God intended in Genesis 22, at least not until after God called off the sacrifice. This leads me to wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to think that Yahweh needs to uphold the promises by his own oath in Genesis 22, precisely because they cannot be sustained by Abraham's response, which was less than fully faithful. God's promise of blessing, in other words, is not a sign of his approval of Abraham's actions, but is meant to compensate for the deficiency in Abraham's actions. Because Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac has not embodied God's way, God must intervene to bring about the blessing, separate from Abraham, living in such a way to bring it about. So I agree entirely that Genesis 22, 16 through 18 signifies a change in the relationship between God's promises and Abraham's actions. But I think the change is exactly in the opposite direction from what every commentary I have read says. I was kind of crazy, right? The change, I believe, is from a conditional blessing in chapter 18 back to unconditional in Genesis 22. Now, if this was the only place in the Old Testament that this shift happened, I'd be out on a limb and maybe just falling off the limb. But it's not the only time such this occurs in the Old Testament. There are actually four such other places where God switches from a conditional promise to an unconditional promise. The main one is what I'm going to focus on here. It's the Golden Calf episode at Mount Sinai in Exodus 32 to 34. If we had time, we don't, but maybe in the Q ⁇ A I'll talk about Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all of whom also have the same shift. Okay. Let's look at the golden calf episode. The motive clause for the second commandment, that is a reason to avoid idolatry, is that God will certainly punish evil, and that God's chesed or God's love is for those who love me and keep my commandments. That is, those who are obedient. God's covenant is stated in conditional terms. First comes a statement about God's judgment upon disobedience, then comes a statement of God's conditional love. The Sinai covenant is a conditional covenant. But then in Exodus 32 comes massive disobedience, idolatry, the golden calf. They break precisely this covenant, this commandment, the second commandment. They construct an idol, and the covenant is broken. And God says, I'm rejecting the people. I want to start over with you again, Moses, and have a new people. I don't need Abraham's people anymore. Moses intercedes on Israel's behalf. He stands in the breach, as later biblical texts call it, and convinces God not to give up on Israel despite their sins. Then after Israel's failure at Sinai, God grants Moses a special new revelation of the meaning of the divine name. He had granted Moses the meaning of the name in Exodus chapter 3, I am who I am, and all that stuff about the Exodus. But in this new revelation occurs in Exodus 34, God, first of all, reverses the order of punishment and love from Exodus 20. Now love precedes judgment. That's the first change. The second change is that the words for love are multiplied. God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. This is overflowing love. And God now states that this love is unconditional. It will continue despite Israel's idolatry. No requirement of reciprocal love or covenant obedience is mentioned as a basis for God's grace. His love is now explicitly linked to forgiving sins. So the difference between the golden calf episode and the Abraham's story in Genesis 22 is this God's compensation for the deficiency in his covenant partner is not the result in Genesis 22 of anybody standing in the breach as Moses did. Rather, God stepped into the breach himself and swore an oath. This reminds me of Isaiah 59, where Yahweh saw there was no one and was appalled, there was no one to intervene. So his own arm brought him victory and his righteousness sustained him. God stepped in where no one interceded. My suggestion, therefore, is that the oath in Genesis 22, 16 signifies God's pledge or commitment that his purposes will not be thwarted by Abraham's lack. It's therefore a sign of God's grace towards Abraham, reassuring him personally that the promises will indeed come to fruition, because God is faithful, even when we are not. So to say, because you've done this thing, I'm gonna do this doesn't mean because of your obedience I'm gonna do this, but because of your disobedience, I'm gonna do this to compensate for your disobedience or your less than faithful actions. So so far I'm unpacking the nature of God's oath, stated in verse 16. Generally, it's because you've done this thing, specifically because you've not withheld your son, your only one. But the angel's speech concludes with another general statement, because you've listened to my voice. Now it's possible you might think that this is just another statement equivalent to because you've done this thing. So it applies to the entire oath. But I think it's more likely we should take these two separately and apply because you have listened to my voice to the final statement about the blessing of the nations by Abram's offspring. It's not just because it follows directly on that statement of the blessing to the nations, but it's also suggested by a change from the way the promise of blessing was stated before Genesis 22, and how it's stated here. Prior to the Akada in Genesis 12 and 18, the promise was stated in terms of the nations who will bless one another by Abraham or through Abraham. I think it means by, but we can talk about that. But here for the first time, the blessing is connected to Abraham's descendants. By your offspring shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves. This means for the promise to be fulfilled, Abraham has to have offspring. He would need to have obeyed the angel's command to stop the sacrifice and sack and spare Isaac. Simply put, if Abraham had not listened to God's voice in desisting from the sacrifice when the angel called from heaven, there would be no offspring through whom the age the nations could bring fine blessing. There's a whole lot more to be said about the Akadai narrative. For that you've got to read the book. And even then I haven't addressed all the issues, like why Abraham is praised in the New Testament and so on. That's for another talk, another article. So I've clearly stated that I have a critical reading of Abraham's response to God in Genesis 22. Yet I'm going to propose that we don't judge Abraham too harshly. I don't believe he passed the test of discerning God's character with flying colors. But you know what? He did not just turn away from God in disobedience either. Abraham genuinely, in the end, tried to obey the God he understood, inadequate as that might have been. If I were to construct a possible hierarchy of responses that Abraham might have made to God's request to sacrifice his son, I would put his protest, that's that's the book you gotta read, I'd put his protest and intercession on behalf of Isaac at the top of the list. That's the optimal response. And if he did protest and intercede, Abraham would have demonstrated his profound discernment of God's character, that Yahweh was merciful and compassionate. Or he might have had a hunch that God was merciful, which would have led him to prayer, and his hunch would have been confirmed when God responded to his prayer, and that would have, I believe, meant God would rescind the request, and then he would have understood that God really is merciful. But not just demonstrating his profound discernment for God, protesting and interceding would have also demonstrated his love for Isaac. It might have even strengthened his love for Isaac. You stand up on behalf of somebody else, and it might create a bond between you. But Abraham didn't speak out on behalf of his son. Somewhat below this optimal response would be Abraham's genuine belief that God would provide a substitute. He might have remained silent against, I add, the tenor of Scripture, the Lament Psalms, the book of Job, Moses, and the prophets who intercede on behalf of the people. And yet he could have trusted that somewhere along the journey or maybe on the mountain, he might find an animal to sacrifice instead of his son. Yet he arrived at the spot for the sacrifice and didn't even give a cursory glance around to see if God had provided a substitute. He just bound his son, placed him on the altar, and didn't look around until the angel called off the sacrifice. And yet, after the angel called off the sacrifice, he did see the ram. And without any instruction, that's really important. God never told him to, he offered the ram instead of his son. And I think that's praiseworthy. So here is where Abraham may have actually learned something about God's mercy after initially not doing too well with the test. It's the provision of the ram that's the basis of Abraham calling the sacrificial sight Yahweh sees or provides, which has come down to us through the King James Version as Jehovah Jireh. And if you want to go to the Imigran song, Jehovah Jirah, it's actually very good. She makes no praise of Abraham, but she praises that the Ram is a substitute for the sun. That's the core of her song. And that's pretty darn good for Imigran, before she became later a little more nuanced in things. But I wonder how Isaac might have turned out if Abraham had made the optimal response. If he had witnessed his father pleading on his behalf with God's positive response to his intercession, would Isaac have returned down the mountain with his father? Would he have bequeathed to Jacob a different notion of God than the fear? And would there be a significant unit of narrative material in the book of Genesis focused on Isaac's life? Beginning with, now, these are the generations of Abraham. Given the way things turned out, we can only imagine. Well, we can imagine. So let's do some imagination, okay? The year after my book, Abraham's Silence, was published, I got an email from an Old Testament scholar at Columbia Theological Seminary named Bill Brown, publishes under William P. Brown. And Bill Brown inquired if I'd ever written a script of what Abraham might or should have said if he spoke up to God. He said, if I had written it, please send it to him because he wanted to use it in one of his classes the next day. I wrote it that afternoon and sent it to him. Perhaps I could share it with you. I'm going to project the words. Now, if you want the full text of what Abraham might have said, I'm going to give a link for a PDF you can download with that entire prayer and that we're going to give to Upper House and they can send it out to everybody who wants it. You'll notice I've put a few biblical references in parentheses or actually in square brackets, maybe. I'm not sure what I did here. And these indicate that I've drawn language from Abraham's intercession for Sodom and Moses' intercession of the golden calf. Because some of those language, those phrases are perfectly suited to what Abraham should have said. After these things, God tested Abraham. He said, Abraham, his faithful servant, answered, Here I am. Take your son, said the Lord, your only one whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you. And Abraham was dumbfounded. Was this God speaking? The God he'd come to know? Abraham knew there were many gods, as many as the peoples of all the lands he had passed through, from Urt in Mesopotamia to Haran in Aram, to the towns and cities of Canaan. And many of them required child sacrifice as a sign of devotion. Could his God be asking this too? He thought he had been coming to know the character of the one called El Shaddai, that this one was different from the gods of the nations. Could God really mean for him to kill his own son? Why? What would it prove? How could this be God's will? Abraham was shell-shocked and silent for a time. But then he plucked up his courage, and with the chutzpah that would come to be recognized as emblematic of the later people descended from him, Abraham spoke up. At first his voice was quavering. Ah, Lord God, are you really asking me to kill this young innocent lad? Do you really want me to live with the everlasting memory of his blood on my hands? Do you want to subject me to a lifetime of nightmares and flashbacks of me taking a knife to his young neck? You really want to give me PTSD, is what I'm asking. He doesn't use that language, of course. Have mercy, Lord. I know I've not been close to this boy, not nearly as close as to my firstborn Ishmael. That boy I loved, and you forced me to send him away. Now you want me to kill the only son I have left. Isaac was always Sarah's favorite. Do you know what this will do to her? She will die too, if not physically, she'll die inside. She and I already have problems between us because of Hagar and Ishmael. I know it was her idea, but it backfired. Sarah is already distant from me. Do you want to drive us further apart? But if you don't have pity on me or my wife, Lord, have pity on the boy. He has done nothing to deserve this. Why should his life be cut short just to show my dedication to you? Do you want his last memory of me to be of his father, tying him down like a sleep sheep for slaughter, then taking a butcher knife to his neck? You can't want that, Lord. Are you angry with me? Why does your wrath burn hot against me, the one who brought who you brought out of Urah the Chaldes and out of Haran to this land? What have I done to so offend you, Master of the universe? Plus, you made a promise to me and to Sarah that through this boy our descendants would become a great nation. What'll become of your promise then? No, I'm gonna hold you to your word, Lord. I have told many of the peoples of this land whom I've met of what you pledged to do through the line of Isaac. But if they hear of this that you've commanded his death, for whatever reason, do you know what how that will look? It will reflect badly on you. The Philistines and the Egyptians, whose kings I deceived, that Sarah was my wife. My sister, sorry, will hear of it, and they will think that it was with evil intent that you gave me this boy, only to kill him on the mountains and consume him from the face of the earth. And then Abraham was silent, wondering if he had overstepped his bones. He remembered that when he pled for Sodom, he modulated his boldness, admitting that he was just dust and ashes. And he twice asked God not to be angry with him for interceding for that evil people. His boldness came from his concern for Lot and his family living in Sodom. What would become of them if God destroyed that evil city? He'd asked God to save the city, there could be found 50 innocent people there. God agreed. So he asked the 45, then 40, then 30, then 20. But he stopped at 10. He didn't have the courage to ask God to save the city for less than that. But Lot and his family were eight at the most. At the time he didn't think he could push God quite that far. It seemed like asking too much. But now, what did he have to lose? So Abraham dug deep and found his courage and his voice again. And he cried out, I know I am far from innocent. Lord, take me instead of my son. Whatever you do, do not kill this innocent boy. Will you really sweep away the innocent with the wicked? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the innocent with the wicked, so that the innocent fare as the wicked. Far be that from you, shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just? No, Lord, I plead with you, change your mind, turn from your fierce wrath, and do not bring this evil upon your chosen one. And the Lord changed his mind about the tragedy he was about to bring on Isaac. God spoke from heaven, saying, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have understood that I am indeed a God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, showing love to thousands. Indeed, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But what good would it do to just tell you that? What would those mere words mean to you? But by your bold intercession for your son, you've attained true knowledge of the God you serve. Indeed, you dare to call on me to be faithful to my own promise. That demonstrated your trust in me, and trust is better than blind submission. So, yes, Abraham, I have granted your request. Isaac is redeemed by your prayer. Go in peace and enjoy life with your wife Sarah and your son, whom you are beginning to love. And God departed from his servant Abraham. It wasn't clear before Abraham's intercession that he had much love for Isaac, but now, having stood up for him, defending him against God's seeming desire to slay him, a few sparks of love began to flow between father and son. And Abraham began to nurture that love and fan the sparks into a fire with the hope that his family might be healed. And Abraham taught his children and his household the way of the Lord. And his descendants were known from then on for their surpassing mercy and generosity to all the families of the earth. Indeed, they were a blessing to all nations. Thank you.