Where Is the Lamb: Avraham Urges Yitzchak Further

28“He said, ‘Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ And Avraham said, ‘God will see for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’” The early commentators have already asked why the Torah credits the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, to Avraham and not to Yitzchak. It seems we can explain it this way. In truth, Avraham and Yitzchak both knew that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not intend Yitzchak to be slaughtered. Avraham, whose attribute was chessed, kindness, went trusting that the two of them would come back, as he said, “We will bow down and we will return to you.”¹ Even so, they went with mesirus nefesh, the readiness to give one's life, as though Yitzchak were truly to be slaughtered. This is “He saw the place from afar”:² “the place” hints at Yaakov, of whom it is said, “He encountered the place.”³ Though Avraham saw that Yaakov would come from him [through Yitzchak], he still kept this thought far, merachok, from his heart, because he went in his wholeness, as though truly to slaughter his son.

29This is what Yitzchak meant by “Here are the fire and the wood”: here is the sign that you have done your service and your intent wholly, as befits your attribute. “But where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Where is the lamb that should have been ready by now? “And Avraham said, ‘God will see for Himself …’” Yitzchak went by his own attribute, gevurah, strength, and he wanted his ashes to be heaped up forever.⁴ Avraham told him then that the lamb “will be seen” when it is “for a burnt offering, my son”: yir'eh, “will see,” is read as “will be seen,” and “my son” as the burnt offering itself. That is: by your attribute, since you go with gevurah, the lamb will not appear until you go up on the altar as the offering. Then your thought, that your ashes be heaped up forever, will be fulfilled, and for this you must be bound on the altar and stretch out your neck. That is why the Torah credits the Akeidah to Avraham: he urged Yitzchak to do his service with greater strength than Yitzchak himself had in mind at first [to be bound in deed, not only to long for it]. May He remember for us, in compassion, the binding of Yitzchak. Amen, may it be His will.