The Covenant

             My father’s god was always asking him to do strange things in strange ways. Mother’s favorite story was how they’d been the first family to move from my grandfather Teran’s home in Ur in five generations. “I thought he was crazy,” she’d smile, “hearing voices like that…but then your father’s god told me I’d have a baby…I laughed and he got angry. What? No, not your father, dear. The messenger. Nine months later…” she smiled and held her hands out as if to say, “The rest is obvious—here you are!” All her stories end with me. I’m not blind—I can see how old they are. My friends’ parents are all much younger and of course I’d heard whispers about my brother Ishmael and his mother Hagar. I was wanted—plain and simple.

            They’re not all like that you know. Babies, I mean. Some aren’t wanted—too many mouths to feed already or too few months since the wedding. My father is wealthy enough—and mother is perceptive enough—to take care of most of that under the table. An extra servant at supper when no one else was needed, leftover food dropped by a tent because, “We’d hate for it to go to waste.” Some babies aren’t wanted, but I have never been one of them. In a camp as large as ours, we have births every few months. When the babies are born, she holds them and whispers to them and you can tell: she always wanted more.

             I had a lot of freedom growing up. Father and Mother both had lots to do to make sure the camp ran smoothly, and although I helped Father with the animals and listened as he talked to his servants when he asked me to (“Someday, Isaac, this will be your responsibility.”) my most vivid memories of childhood are carefree. After the Fight, things changed.

“What?! No! Abraham, you must be out of your mind! How can you even consider such a terrible thing!?” Mother was angry. Mother and Father didn’t argue frequently and when they did, they made sure to do it quietly, where no one else could hear them. This time, Mother was standing in plain sight, in front of their tent, eyes blazing.

“Sarah, He told me to.” Father sounded tired, resigned. A little pleading.

“NO. He’s my only son. We won’t get another chance, Abraham, we’re lucky we have Isaac!” Her voice went up another octave and they were beginning to gather a crowd.

“Sarah. He told me.”

“Why?! Why, Abraham? Why would He give us something only to take it away? You must have misheard him. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—ask you to do something like that. That’s disgusting! It’s...wrong, Abraham, simply wrong.”

“Sarah, darling. He asked me to.”

“No! I won’t let you. Anything else He can have. He took my home—I left my clothes, my furniture, everything!—behind because I trusted you when you said He had asked you to leave. But this?! It’s too much! He cannot have Isaac! He’s my only son, Abraham. He’s all I have.” 

At this point, Mother was sobbing, and I was scared, although I didn’t understand why they were arguing about me. Father’s god had never talked to me in the same way He talked to Father, but I tried to do what Father told me to keep Him happy. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to make Him angry. Father tried to put his arm around her, and lead her into the tent, away from staring eyes but she got angry, and began pushing my father away from her.

“Sarah,” he tried again. “Isaac already belongs to him.” Mother stopped fighting. She just stood there, dumbfounded, as if he’d hit her.

“What?”

“Isaac already belongs to him.”

We left early the next morning. Father and I went with two of our men into the desert. When I asked him where we were going, he kept quiet, as if he were afraid of the answer. We had wood for a burnt offering on the back of the donkey. I’d participated in offering sacrifices to Father’s god before and although we’d never offered a donkey before, I saw no reason why we couldn’t. It was a long trip—two days into the wilderness. The mountain range got closer and eventually, on the third morning, Father told the men he and I would be traveling on alone. I carried the wood. Father carried the knife and a smoldering coal for the sacrifice. I thought it was peculiar—we weren’t taking the donkey with us on the next leg of our journey? I asked Father what we’d use for the sacrifice. He looked at me—I’ll never forget his face—and said, “The Lord, will provide the lamb, my son. Did I ever tell you about the first time the Lord our God spoke to me?”

“Tell me again.” If the story of my birth was Mother’s favorite, this was Father’s.

“I thought I was dreaming. ‘Abram,’ God said (they called me Abram then). ‘Abram, you will have a son, an heir. Your property will remain with your family. Abram, look up—count the stars if you can. Your descendants will number more than all the stars in the sky.’ When I told your mother, she thought I was crazy. We’d tried for many years to have a child and all the midwives thought she was barren. And I was old, too, you know. We made a covenant that night—El Shaddai, God Almighty, and I. He named me Abraham—the father of many children. As many children as there are stars in the sky! I laughed when He told me. But who wouldn’t! What a preposterous thing, to think that at so old we would have a son. You—you are the fulfillment of that promise. You’re everything we could ever have hoped for.” We reached the top of the mountain. Father looked around and began gathering rocks for the altar. This was a familiar chore and I started to help.

“No, Isaac, you sit and listen. I trust God. I don’t understand him. Your mother—she thinks I understand why God says what He says to me. But I don’t! It never made sense for me to leave Haran. We were comfortable there. I was respected. But God said to me, ‘Go’ and I left. When he showed me the stars and told me I would be a father to many, I didn’t understand that either. And the sign of the covenant! You should have heard the other men argue about that command. But I trusted that God knew where we were going and here we are. No matter how crazy the order seemed, He’s never let me down. He’s never abandoned me. It’s always made sense in the end. You are the child of the covenant, the first to be included in the promise God made to your mother and me. You’re just as much part of this as I am.” Abraham—my father—stood up, looking old; older than he’d ever seemed before. I looked around. The altar was finished, the wood ready. There was no lamb in sight. “Do you understand, Isaac?”

“What?” I said, turning towards him.

“Isaac, do you understand what I’m telling you?” There were tears in his eyes. I’d never seen my father cry before. I did understand, although I wished I didn’t. What choice did I have, really? As he bound me to the altar, Abraham kept talking, telling me of his trust in El Shaddai. “You are my child, given to me by the Lord in fulfillment of the covenant,” he repeated, raising the knife over my head. I closed my eyes in terror, irrationally glad I was tied too tightly to try to escape. “You’re just as much a part of this as I am.”

“Abraham!” My eyes flew open and I searched for the person speaking. I had never heard that voice before. But, oh, I have heard it since.

He sobbed. “Yes, Lord!”

“It is enough. Untie your son.”

We made a sacrifice to my God on the mountaintop that day, and returned home to Sarah, who cried, and held me so tightly I bruised.