Was Isaac also Tested?
More than Abraham in the Akedah
The story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac in Genesis 22 has generated centuries of interpretation, in part because of the difficulty its violence presents to readers. One aspect of the narrative that has drawn a lot of attention, especially among early interpreters, is Isaac’s complete silence throughout the episode. The Hebrew text offers no indication of Isaac’s thoughts, feelings, or responses as the story progresses, a silence that interpreters across Jewish and early Christian traditions found both puzzling and a natural point where they could find additional meaning. Rather than accept Isaac as merely a passive victim in his father’s test, many interpreters began to read his silence as evidence of something quite different: his active consent.
This interpretive choice appears in a variety of texts ranging from the book of Judith to the writings of Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, where Isaac’s lack of resistance becomes reshaped into a description of willing participation. The logic behind this reading draws partly from practical observation, Abraham was elderly, while Isaac was old enough to carry wood and ask questions, suggesting he could have fled if he had chosen to do so. By interpreting Isaac’s quietness as deliberate acceptance rather than helpless submission, these traditions effectively reimagined the narrative as a dual test, with Isaac facing his own trial alongside his father. This reading eventually found its way into early Christian texts like 1 Clement, where it continued to shape how readers tried to make sense of an inherently violent and troubling narrative.
In spite of everything let us give thanks to the Lord our God, who is putting us to the test as he did our ancestors. Remember what he did with Abraham, and how he tested Isaac, and what happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia, while he was tending the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother. For he has not tried us with fire, as he did them, to search their hearts, nor has he taken vengeance on us; but the Lord scourges those who are close to him in order to admonish them.” (Judith 8:25-27)
When they were jealous of him, God said to him: “Sacrifice for me your child and offer for me that which I gave to you.” Abraham did not contradict him and immediately went forth. As he went, he said to his son: “Now, my son, I offer you for a burnt offering and surrender you to him who gave you to me.” The son said to his father: “Listen to me, father. If a lamb from the flock is accepted as an offering to the Lord as a pleasant aroma, and if sheep are destined for slaughter due to the sins of men, yet man is set to inherit the earth, how can you now say to me: ‘Come and inherit a life secure, and a time that cannot be measured’? What if I had not been born in the world to be offered as a sacrifice to him who made me? And this shall be my greatest fortune among all men, for no other such thing shall happen; and through me shall generations be taught, and by me shall peoples learn that the Lord has deemed the soul of a man worthy to be a sacrifice to him.” (Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities)1
The book of Judith represents an early form of this tradition, presenting the testing of Isaac as an established fact, mentioning it in passing alongside the trials of Abraham and Jacob without elaboration or explanation. Judith’s speech to the elders treats Isaac’s test as something already understood and accepted within the tradition, a brief reference that assumes the audience knows what this means. Pseudo-Philo, by contrast, takes an entirely different approach by creating an extended dialogue that gives Isaac an articulate voice he never had in Genesis. In this retelling, Isaac delivers a lengthy speech that frames his potential death as his greatest honor, explaining that through his sacrifice future generations would learn about human honor.
This kind of expansive storytelling represents a common technique in interpretive literature, where authors add conversations or internal dialogues to biblical narratives in order to clarify motivations and resolve ambiguity2. What Judith assumes, Pseudo-Philo spells out in detail, reshaping Isaac from a silent figure into almost an eloquent philosopher who stoically accepts his role. The contrast between these two shows how the same underlying interpretive tradition could function at different levels, sometimes as a simple fact, other times as an opportunity for creative theological exploration.
Abraham tells Isaac that he is to sacrifice himself: Isaac, however, since he was descended from such a father, could be no less noble of spirit than Abraham, and received these words with delight. He said that he never would have been worthy of being born in the first place were he not now to carry out the decision of God and his father and submit himself to the will of both. (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities)
Josephus adopts a similar strategy when describing Jewish history for his Roman audience in the Jewish Antiquities, though his purposes appear somewhat different. Like Pseudo-Philo, Josephus adds dialogue and an emotional perspective not found in the Genesis story, presenting Isaac as receiving the news of his impending sacrifice with delight and declaring himself unworthy of life if he failed to submit to God’s and his father’s will. This elaboration serves multiple functions in Josephus’s larger project of explaining Jewish customs and history to skeptical or curious Roman readers.
By portraying Isaac as nobly accepting his fate, emphasizing his aristocratic and philosophical attitude, Josephus takes what might appear to a Roman perspective as a barbaric episode and rewrites it into a story of virtue and honor that resonates more with their values. The added details demonstrate Josephus’s familiarity with the tradition while also revealing how it could be used to make Jewish scripture more palatable to outsiders. Rather than leaving readers to puzzle over why Isaac remained silent or why Abraham would proceed with such a disturbing act, Josephus provides the interpretive framework, ensuring his audience understands this as a test of both father and son, each displaying admirable qualities of faith and courage.
Let us therefore hold on to His blessing, and let us see what are the ways of blessing. Let us study the records of the things that have happened from the beginning. Wherefore was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith. Isaac with confidence, as knowing the future, was led a willing sacrifice. Jacob with humility departed from his land because of his brother and went to Laban and served; and the twelve tribes of Israel were given to him. (1 Clement 31:1-4)3
The early Christian text of 1 Clement demonstrates how this tradition crossed boundaries by the end of the first century. The author lists Isaac alongside Abraham and Jacob as examples of faithful ancestors, describing Isaac as a ‘willing’ sacrifice with confidence and knowledge of what was to come. The casual manner in which 1 Clement presents this detail suggests the author assumed the tradition was already familiar to the audience, treating it as straightforward historical fact rather than as interpretation requiring defense. This incorporation reveals something significant about how early Christian communities engaged with Jewish texts and traditions.
Rather than limiting themselves strictly to what appears in the Hebrew scriptures, early Christian writers drew freely on the traditions and literature that had developed around those texts, accepting expansions and elaborations as legitimate ways of understanding biblical narratives4. This Isaac tradition had become so established within Jewish interpretive circles that when Christian authors encountered it, they absorbed it into their own theological discussions, using it to make points about faith and obedience without acknowledging any distinction between the Genesis narrative itself and the later traditions that had grown around it.
Kugel, James L. The Bible as it Was (pp. 174-175) Harvard University Press, 1998
Huizenga, Leroy Andrew The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew (pp. 92-93) Brill, 2009
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