{"id":84565,"date":"2020-12-06T15:12:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T13:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=84565"},"modified":"2020-12-06T15:12:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T13:12:52","slug":"psalms-and-the-akedah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/psalms-and-the-akedah\/","title":{"rendered":"Psalms and the Akedah"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"84565","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34243,"related_cahpter":"627","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Was it a private test or public display?\r\n\r\n","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A verse in this psalm features prominently in a midrashic take on the binding (<\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">akedah<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) of Isaac.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To my mind, two issues predominate in analyzing the story told in Genesis 22. One is whether it is conceivable that the God who excoriated child sacrifice in the Torah (Deut. 12:31, 18:10) could ever have desired the death of Isaac. Another is that an omniscient deity knows what His subjects are capable of without having to \u201ctest\u201d them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An often-overlooked Midrash leads with this verse in its attempt to resolve the latter issue by suggesting that God was not testing Abraham; rather He was providing him with an opportunity to put his implicit faith in God on public display.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cGive those who fear You because of Your truth a banner for rallying\u201d (6). Raising after raising, increasing after increasing, in order to elevate them in the world like the banner of a ship. Why all this? \u201cBecause of Your truth,\u201d so that Your attribute of justice will be adorned throughout the world. Should anyone claim that You are arbitrary in enriching people, impoverishing them, or making them sovereign; that You [randomly] made Abraham a king and enriched him; we can reply: Can you act as he acted? Should he ask: How did he act? We may reply that after fathering a son at age 100, he experienced great distress when instructed to take his only son, and he did not delay. This embodies \u201cGive those who fear You because of Your truth a banner for rallying.\u201d (B\u2019reishit Rabbah 55:1)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And this connects in an additional way: in grammatical terms, the critical word <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nissah<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Gen. 22:1) can derive from either the verbal root N-S-H, to test, or N-S-S, to wave\u2014as a flag or banner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>image:\u00a0Rembrandt\u2019s \u201cSacrifice of Isaac,\u201d St. Petersburg\u2019s Hermitage \/ 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