The Fire and the Wood: Before Longing Cools

30Or we may explain these verses another way, as a lesson in doing a mitzvah while the longing still burns. At first glance, Yitzchak's words “Here are the fire and the wood” are puzzling. Why does he say them with the hei, the definite article: “the fire and the wood”? He should have said, “Here are fire and wood.” It seems we must first ask more. Why did Avraham have to take wood from his house and carry this load on a three-day journey? Was there no wood anywhere along the way? And even if you say he feared there might be no wood to be found along the whole way, why did he have to split the wood at home? He should have split it at the place where he would offer Yitzchak up. Also, why did Yitzchak say, “But where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” He should have said simply, “Where is the burnt offering?”

31To understand it, we begin with the Creator, blessed be He, Who sanctified us with His mitzvos and commanded us to keep them. He has no need for us to do His mitzvos. Rather, the “pleasing aroma” before Him is the satisfaction that He spoke and His will was done.¹ For what the Creator wants above all is that a person have a full and whole desire to do His will. It follows that “it is the intent of the heart that counts”:² if a person sets his heart to do a mitzvah for Hashem's Name with a full and whole desire, it counts before Him at once as though he had already done it, since his intent is whole. Even so, a person must do the mitzvah and complete it in deed. For he cannot know his own intent clearly enough to be sure it is whole, with a full desire. Even if he imagines that his intent to do the mitzvah for Hashem's sake is whole, he should not believe himself until he completes the mitzvah. Such is the nature of the physical body: it keeps a person from thinking with a full and whole desire.

32Indeed, Chazal said: “If a person thought to do a mitzvah and was prevented by circumstances and did not do it, Scripture credits him as though he had done it.”³ The reason is the one we have given: what counts is the intent of the heart. The Creator, blessed be He, Who tests hearts and probes the innermost parts, knows this person's thoughts, that his intent was for His Name with a whole desire, and so He counts it as though he had done it. With a king of flesh and blood it is different. When he wants to test his servants, he commands them some task to see whether they will do it wholly; but he cannot test their hearts, whether their intent to serve him is whole, true and willing. Only after they have done and carried out the service he commanded can he look at the deed they did and test their intent a little. But the Creator, may He be exalted, Who searches all the chambers of the inner being and tests the heart and the innermost parts, knows what a person truly intends, and if it is whole, it counts as done. The reverse holds too: if a person does a mitzvah in deed but does not set his heart to do it in fear and love, “it does not fly upward.”⁴

33aIt is the way of people that when it comes into their minds to do some mitzvah, the thought begins with great desire, each according to his level. When the thought and will of a complete tzaddik rise to do a mitzvah, his desire and warm longing are as great as his righteousness, and the flame of Hashem's fire burns in him to do the mitzvah in complete wholeness. This was Avraham Avinu's intent when Hashem said to him, “Take your son … and bring him up as a burnt offering”:⁵ his heart began to burn like a coal of fire and a flame. But when a person delays and is held back, tarrying before he does the mitzvah and completes it in deed, he falls from the great longing he had at first, when the thought arose in him. Avraham feared just this: that in the delay of a three-day journey he would fall from the great longing burning in his heart. So at once “he split the wood for the burnt offering,”⁶ so that the deed too would be done at once, in this same great flame. This answers why he split the wood at home and did not wait for the place itself.

33bThis is also what Yitzchak meant when he said “the fire,” with the definite article. He was saying: I saw that you had this great fire, the one known in the way of tzaddikim. And the proof that the fire of Hashem burned in you is “the wood”: when you split the wood at once, I saw that you meant to do the deed at once, as though the burnt offering were ready before you to offer that moment. That is why he said “the wood” as well. “But where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” That is: why take me as the offering? A lamb would have been enough. This answers why he named the lamb and did not say simply, “Where is the burnt offering?” Avraham answered him, “God will see for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son”: the lamb will appear then, when you too do a great deed and become the offering yourself.