Sacrifices Part 1: On Edge

(For background on this series, read the introduction, Ghosts Around the Manger)

“How long will you be gone?” she asked.

“A week. More. I don’t know,” he answered, dragging the long knife across the smooth stone. He lifted the weapon and examined it with old, weary eyes. A glint of the fading sun flashed off the silvery blade.

“Where are you going?”

“To the region of Moriah. More than that I do not know. He will show the way. He always does.”

She had seen him this way before; driven, focused, possessed. She twisted a strand of gray hair tightly around her finger. He had seen her this way, too; anxious, inquisitive, afraid.

“The boy should stay,” she said, searching for a reason. “I may need him.”

“The boy goes with me.”

By his tone she knew not to ask again. They had been married so long now she could read his thoughts in the set of his face, hear them in his sigh. He had decided. The boy would go.

A tear welled up in one eye and tracked down a wrinkle on her face to her mouth. It felt as cold as fear as it dried on her skin, and tasted like blood. She turned her back to him, gathered a corner of her robe and wiped her eyes. She licked her lips and spoke again.

“Why?”

He was focused on the edge of the knife, setting it at the correct angle on the stone, pulling the blade from hilt to point, hilt to point, over and over until it was perfectly honed. The sound of the sharpening pierced her ears and made her shiver. Finally he spoke.

“To worship. The boy and I are going to Moriah to worship.”

“Worship here!”

He set the stone aside and sheathed the knife. He stood, shaking the dust of the sharpening stone from the folds of his robe. Turning her shoulders until she faced him again, he lifted her chin so that their eyes met.

“God has told me to take the boy and go to Moriah to worship. He decides the place. He decides the time. He decides the . . . manner. There is nothing more to say, Sarah.”

Abruptly, she pulled away and rushed to their tent. She closed the flap behind her and collapsed on their pallet. The walls of this tent never had been able to contain the passion of her love, nor the weight of her disappointments, nor the music of her laughter. Now, they offered only a tenuous veil for her tears or the sound of Abraham’s knife once again sliding across the smooth surface of the whetstone.

A sliver of moonlight sliced through the trees casting a gray pall over Abraham as he worked the blade. He spat occasionally to rid his mouth of the acrid taste of dusty metal and stone. It reminded him of the way the word “barren,” had tasted on the lips of a childless husband. He remembered the gnawing hunger he had once felt for a promise given but long delayed. He recalled the miracle of the child stirring in his aged wife’s womb. He heard again the way she had laughed when the child was born. In fact, they had named the child Isaac; he laughs. But with the stone in his lap and the knife in his hand there was no laughter. Only the terrible emptiness of a promise once fulfilled, now withdrawn.

(Coming Tomorrow: Sacrifices Part 2: Altars)