_Abraham._--“My son! Is there any blemish in thee within? For the offering must be without blemish of any sort.”
_Isaac._--“My father! There is none. I swear by God and by thy life, that in my heart there is not the least resistance to the Divine will. My limbs do not tremble, and there is no quaking at my heart. With gladness do I say, The Lord be praised, who has chosen me for a whole sacrifice.”[331]
_Abraham._--“O my son, with many a wish wast thou brought into this world. Since thou hast been in it, every care has been lavished on thee. I hoped to have had thee to follow me and make a great nation. But now I must, myself, offer thee. Wondrous was thy coming into this world, and wondrous will be thy going out of it![332] Not by sickness, not by war, but as a sacrifice. I had designed thee to be my comfort and stay in old age; now God himself must take thy place.”[333]
_Isaac._--“It were unworthy of thee were I to think to withstand the decree of God, and of thee. Had the decision been thine alone, I would have obeyed.”
When they reached the top of Moriah, God said to Abraham,--
“This is the place where once Adam, when driven out of Paradise, built an altar to My name. Here also Cain and Abel offered their sacrifice. Then came the Flood, and when it was passed away, Noah offered victims to Me here. When the people were scattered from the tower of Babel, then this altar was overthrown. Now it is for thee, friend of God, to set it up again!”
Abraham built the altar, and Isaac brought him the stones. But, according to some authors, this was not so. Abraham hid his son in a cave, lest Satan should take advantage of the opportunity, with a stone or clod of earth, to blemish him.
And when all was ready and the wood laid in order, then Isaac said to his father, “Bind me hand and foot, lest in the fear of death I start and thou wound me, and so I be blemished. Fold thy garments together, and gird thy loins, and bare thine arm, and strike me with the knife and then burn me to ashes, and lay up my ashes in a coffer, and let this coffer be preserved as a memorial of me in thy house, before my mother; and when thou passest by it, bid her remember me. But remind her not of it near a well, or on the edge of a precipice, lest she cast herself down in her grief.”[334]