Binding of Isaac

Mosaic "Sacrifice of Isaac" – Basilica of San Vitale (547 AD)
The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio (1603), in the Baroque tenebrist manner

The Binding of Isaac (Hebrew: עֲקֵידַת יִצְחַק, romanized: ʿAqēḏaṯ Yīṣḥaq), or simply "The Binding" (הָעֲקֵידָה, hāʿAqēḏā), is a story from chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. In the biblical narrative, God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac at Moriah. As Abraham begins to comply, having bound Isaac to an altar, he is stopped by the Angel of the Lord; a ram appears and is slaughtered in Isaac's stead, as God commends Abraham's pious obedience to offer his son as a human sacrifice.

Especially in art, the episode is often called the Sacrifice of Isaac, although in the end Isaac was not sacrificed. Various scholars suggest that the original story of Abraham and Isaac may have been of a completed human sacrifice, later altered by redactors to substitute a ram for Isaac, while some traditions, including certain Jewish and Christian interpretations, maintain that Isaac actually was sacrificed. In addition to being addressed by modern scholarship, this biblical episode has been the focus of a great deal of commentary in traditional sources of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.


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