BOB DYLAN SINGS, “GOD SAID TO ABRAHAM, “KILL ME A SON””

Genesis tells us that on a certain occasion Abraham was about to sacrifice his son because God had asked him to do so. Many theologians believe that this story shows how much Abraham loved God. They completely ignore that the demand for such a sacrifice and the willingness to obey it are completely immoral.

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
the next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”

To understand this story we need to know a bit more about its historical context. Abraham was born in Canaan where in ancient times, and particularly at the time in question, religion demanded the sacrifice of the firstborn. Isaac was not Abraham’s firstborn – previously he had Ishmael from Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian servant –, but he was nevertheless Sarah’s firstborn. This ritual apparantly demanded the sacrifice of the first birth of every womb.

Whereas Jews and Christians are familiar with the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Muslims are familiar with the story of God asking Abraham to kill Ishmael. In both cases Abraham was ready to kill his son, but God told him not to do so, but offer a ram in place of his son. Whereas Muslims tell the story of Ishmael, because the Arabs are descendants of the son of Hagar, Jews tell the story of Isaac, because they are descendants of Sarah.

Taking into account this religious tradition of sacrificing the firstborn leads to a new interpretation of this story. Instead of regarding Abraham as a brainless immoral being, we can now regard him as the person who put an end to these terrible sacrifices.

Abraham demonstrates here that he is a true genius. As he is a foreigner in Canaan – he was born in Ur (Sumeria) – and these sacrifices are a tradition imposed by religion, he knows that he cannot openly condemn them. Doing so would mean confronting the whole of society and thereby making lots of enemies. By announcing that he was going to sacrifice his firstborn, and that God told him at the last moment not to harm his son, but to sacrifice a ram instead, he encouraged people to put an end to those sacrifices.

By referring to God’s authority, all those people who had sacrificed their firstborn in the past did not have to feel guilty about having obeyed the dictates of the priests, and for priests it was now very easy to rectify without losing face. Moreover, by changing the sacrifices of the firstborn to sacrifices of animals, these people did not lose their jobs.

Some cynics claim that the idea that in ancient times the religion of Canaan demanded these sacrifices of the firstborn is nothing but an attempt to justify Abraham. They simply cannot imagine a tribe that would not rebel against such a kind of religion. But there exist written testimonies of sacrifices of children. Roman historians, for instance, write about the Carthaginians, who were descendants of the Phoenicians – Phoenicia (Sidon) belonged to Canaan – immolating large numbers of children in order to gain the support of their God in their struggle against Rome.

The study of history requires a great deal of flexibility. What is unimaginable today was not necessarily so in the past, nor will be in the future. For instance, let us take the vast number of people who were sacrificed in Aztec temples to ensure that after the sun finished its cycle it would start a new one. We do not understand how they came to believe such a thing and therefore find it difficult to imagine that people would be capable of sacrificing so many lives. However, since the Spanish ‘conquistadores’ wrote about those sacrifices we know that they indeed took place. Therefore, the fact that we do not understand how our ancestors could have been capable of sacrificing their firstborn does not mean that these sacrifices did not happen.