Abraham: "I might have reproached Thee, and said, O Lord of the world,
yesterday Thou didst tell me, In Isaac shall Thy seed be called, and
now Thou sayest, Take thy son, thine only son, even Isaac, and offer
him for a burnt offering. But I refrained myself, and I said nothing.
Thus mayest Thou, when the children of Isaac commit trespasses and
because of them fall upon evil times, be mindful of the offering of
their father Isaac, and forgive their sins and deliver them from their
suffering."
God: "Thou hast said what thou hadst to say, and I will now say what I
have to say. Thy children will sin before me in time to come, and I
will sit in judgment upon them on the New Year's Day. If they desire
that I should grant them pardon, they shall blow the ram's horn on that
day, and I, mindful of the ram that was substituted for Isaac as a
sacrifice, will forgive them for their sins."[248]
Furthermore, the Lord revealed unto Abraham that the Temple, to be
erected on the spot of Isaac's offering, would be destroyed,[249] and
as the ram substituted for Isaac extricated himself from one tree but
to be caught in another, so his children would pass from kingdom to
kingdom—delivered from Babylonia they would be subjugated by Media,
rescued from Media they would be enslaved by Greece, escaped from
Greece they would serve Rome—yet in the end they would be redeemed in a
final redemption, at the sound of the ram's horn, when "the Lord God
shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the
south."[250]
The place on which Abraham had erected the altar was the same whereon
Adam had brought the first sacrifice, and Cain and Abel had offered
their gifts to God—the same whereon Noah raised an altar to God after
he left the ark;[251] and Abraham, who knew that it was the place
appointed for the Temple, called it Yireh, for it would be the abiding
place of the fear and the service of God.[252] But as Shem had given it
the name Shalem, Place of Peace, and God would not give offence to
either Abraham or Shem, He united the two names, and called the city by
the name Jerusalem.[253]
After the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, Abraham returned to Beer-sheba,
the scene of so many of his joys.[254] Isaac was carried to Paradise by
angels, and there he sojourned for three years. Thus Abraham returned
home alone, and when Sarah beheld him, she exclaimed, "Satan spoke
truth when he said that Isaac was sacrificed," and so grieved was her
soul that it fled from her body.[255]