NOW I KNOW

An Exposition of Genesis 22:1-19 and

Matthew 26:36-46
JAMES L. MAYS

THE TESTING OF ABRAHAM

G
enesis 22 begins with a blunt, disturbing statement: "God tested
Abraham." Occasionally, National Public Radio broadcasts will
be interrupted by a harsh, grating tone followed by an announce-
ment from the emergency network: "This is a test." The opening sentence
of Genesis 22 is like that. It interrupts and demands attention to what is
about to be said: "After these things God tested Abraham." After all that
Abraham had been through with God, living a life determined by the call
and promise of God, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, here at the
end is a test. The test is whether Abraham wouldfinallyand totally commit
life to the call and promise (and therefore, because the test posed a real
alternative to following the call and promise, it was also a peirasmos, a
temptation). Abraham is commanded to take his son Isaac on a journey to
a mount in the land of Moriah and there offer him as a sacrifice to God.
Isaac, his only son, his beloved, the child through whom alone the call and
promise had reality. Give up Isaac and be left with the call and promise
only, with God only—that was the test.
Abraham made the journey. He built an altar. He bound Isaac and laid
him on the altar. He took a knife and raised it over his bound son. At that
last moment, God said, "Now I know..." Now I know that you fear God
and hold to the call and promise beyond all else, that you did not yield to
the temptation to withhold your son from me, that you did not enter into
that other possibility made possible by the test. Then, and because God
knew, a lamb was provided for the sacrifice instead of Isaac. Then, and
because God knew, God committed himself to Abraham and swore that his
descendants would be numerous and strong and crucial in God's will and
way with the world.

James L. Mays is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Old Testament Interpretation at

Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond
and general editor of The HarperCollins Bible Commentary (1988 and 2000).
519
520 Theology Today

There are many aspects of the story that provoke attention. Most of all,
of course, our human feelings are stirred and engaged by the drama of
father and son with its indescribable terror and tension. This tale of a near
tragedy draws the emotions of any who hear it into the space of its
unspoken conflicts and crisis. But the story is being described here in a
way that puts the primary emphasis on God. If we let the story be Scripture
and ask also about its witness to the will and way of God with the world,
then attention shifts to the why and what of this test for God. It is precisely
when God says, "Now I know . . . " that these questions are brought to
narrative resolution.
"Now I know"—a phrase easily imaginable on the lips of us mortals. It
is the kind of phrase one might use at the climax of some clarifying
experience with another person. The mother of an adolescent who has
made her the target of his rebellion might say to her father, "Now I know
what I put you through." The commander of a platoon might say to the one
soldier who through selfless action had saved them all from disaster, "Now
I know whom we can count on."
But the Scripture puts the phrase on the lips of God to let us know the
what and the why of this terrible test, and so to tell us how it was, as it
were, a clarifying experience for God.
What is it God now knows? "Now I know that you are a fearer of God."
That you, Abraham, from your side, the side of what you do with your life,
so far as it lies in you, to offer, yield, direct the living of your life to the
will of God, and leave the work of God to God. Even if it requires the
sacrifice of Isaac. Yes, even the giving up and handing over of Isaac who
is himself the only tangible reality of God's will and work in your life.
Why the test? "Because," God says. "Because you have done this, I will
indeed bless you . . . and by your descendants shall all the nations of the
earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice." The purpose
of the test was to discover in the obedience of Abraham the way in the
world to the will and work of God for the world. To confirm that there was
in this human a way for God to work with and for all. A "because" in a
man for the "cause" of God.

Of course, if one does not take the story seriously as Scripture, then
God's "Now I know" can be read as just a device of narrative art, an
antliropomorphic embellishment of a story whose meaning lies some-
where else in its plot. If one's reading is governed by a purely literary
interest or a history-of-religion perspective, the phrase will not center
thought—and does not in much contemporary interpretation.
But the remark stands at the climax of the narrative. It is the point of
resolution of the tension in the plot. Without it, the whole story collapses
without purpose. God is left with no reason for the horrifying command.
The test was a fraud.
For those interpreters who down the ages did read the story as Scripture,
the phrase did center attention—but often as a stone of stumbling. Com-
mentators in patristic and Reformation times wrestled with the questions
 'Now I Know" 521

implied by the phrase on the lips of God. Did God not know in advance
what Abraham would do? Would God really depend on the obedience of
a man as a reason for committing himself to humanity? Hard questions. So
explanations were proposed to protect the omniscience of God from
qualification by time and the grace of God from compromise by depen-
dence on human work.
Does it help to remember that behind these questions and devoted
efforts to resolve them lurks a prior question? The question is whether we
best intimate what God knows about us, and therefore what we can know
about God (for we know even as we are known), from concept or from
story. Such concepts as "infinite, eternal, unchangeable" so precisely
exclude our space, time, and history as to obscure our reality for God.
Stories, our story, may seem confines too narrow for God's incomprehen-
sible greatness.
But the Scripture offers us a story, so we are left with the questions. Can
there be for God a before and after lodged in a human life? A before and
after so incorporated in the reality of God that every time is defined by this
before and after? A before and after that is therefore a hapax, once for all?
Does God have a need to know about human conduct? Can what a mortal
does establish a "because" for the work of the Sovereign of the universe?
Must there be one of us whose use of life so orders and invests living that
the way of God with us and will of God for us are opened up in the flesh
of mortal existence?

THE TESTING OF CHRIST

The answer to all these questions is "yes." We can see how and why this
is so, and whither these Old Testament questions are tending, when we
bring them to the New Testament account of Jesus in Gethsemane.
Gethsemane, a place not far from Mount Moriah. Gethsemane, also a place
like Moriah where a test is undergone and a time arrives, a test and time
that informs what God knows about us and, therefore, what we know
about God.
The Gethsemane story tells about the very last action of Jesus before he
is handed over and placed in the power of others. The preparation for his
passion that began with his anointment for burial (Matt 26:6-13) and was
centered in the Passover with the disciples (26:26-29) reaches its final
scene in Gethsemane. Here the failure of the disciples will reach its
climax. Three times he asked them to be the companions of his crisis, and
three times they fail him. And they will, all of the disciples, depart
Gethsemane in flight, leaving him to endure his destiny alone. Here Jesus
announces the reality of the crisis he faces: "Behold, the hour is at hand,
and the Son of Man is handed over into the power of sinners." Here Judas
initiates a narrative of "handing over"; he hands Jesus over to an armed
mob. They hand him over to judgment by the court of the High Priest. The
court hands him over to the court of the governor. Pilate, intimidated by
the crowd, hands him over to the troops to be crucified.
522 Theology Today

It is in this threshold story of transition to a time when Jesus' story

becomes a story of what others do to him, that we are told something about
him that is different, something we have not heard before. From the time
of his baptism, he has gone the way and done the work given him by God.
Neither the testing of Satan, nor the opposition of officials, nor the blind
weakness of his disciples could deter him. In full knowledge of the destiny
that would climax his career, he walked the course without wavering.
There is no word of apprehension, uncertainty, strain, or inner turmoil. It
all unfolds as if there were in his very self a perfect concord with his
vocation.
Until Gethsemane. Now, when the time had come for him to be handed
over into the power of others, he is gripped with unsettling grief and
troubling uncertainty. He tells the disciples of the deathly sorrow that has
possessed him and asks their support in his anguish. This one time he turns
to the disciples in need. He takes this deathly sorrow to God in prayer, Son
to Father, as child crying to parent for help. This one time he thinks of,
looks to, and speaks about his own wish and want: "Let this cup pass from
me." He speaks of his own will alongside the will of God.

"Cup" is a metaphor. "Will of God" belongs to the vocabulary of divine

sovereignty. The actual, tangible, personal reality of cup and will for him
was to be handed over. To be betrayed by Judas, deserted by all the
disciples, and denied by Peter. Handed over completely and helplessly to
the power of others who would from then on decide and determine his way
and destiny. In the helplessness, he was to be alone, utterly by himself. All
others were either deserters, onlookers, or perpetrators. Because having to
drink the cup was the will of the Father, the handing over was also the
doing of God. Therein lay the true terror of the cup: The power and
purpose of God were behind and within the evil and cruelty of the men
who would dispose of him. Accepting the will of God meant for him the
absence of God. Around the cross, men would snarl, "He trusts in God; let
God deliver him now, if he desires him" (27:43). And he would say, "My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (27:46). This final cry would
be his confirmation that he was truly "handed over" and totally alone.
"Cup" is the Old Testament metaphor for the judgment of God and its
contents are the wrath of God against the wicked (Jer 25:15; Isa 51:17; Ps
75:8). To drink the cup is to undergo the judgment and suffer the wrath.
The metaphor discloses that the passion of Jesus was more than humili-
ation and pain; it was a subjection to judgment. On the historical and
public level, the judgment of Jesus is obvious enough. Clearly in the arrest,
trials, condemnation, verdict, and execution, men were putting Jesus
through judgment. That is what the Gospel narrative tells, and until all is
done and Jesus is dead there is no hint that it is all anything more than the
tragic judicial assassination of an innocent. But the metaphor of drinking
the cup as the key to the meaning of the will of God reveals that Jesus
knew that this human judgment was the form and instrument of the wrath
of God. We are to read about this human miscarriage of justice as the
 'Now I Know" 523

paradoxical enactment of a cosmic, transcendent purpose. The innocent

will be judged by the guilty. The righteous one will stand in the place
where sinners should stand. The Son of God will have to bear the wrath
of God against the wickedness of the world. In his judgment, our judgment
was done, he in our place. That was the cup he was given to drink.

T H E KNOWLEDGE OF G O D
In this hour of being handed over and judgment, Jesus gives voice to the
deathly sorrow of his time and task. It is the voice of the anguish of a spirit
that is willing joined to flesh that is weak. In thatflesh-weakenedwilling,
he must be himself and speak of his own will alongside of and distinct
from the will of the Father. He knows the inner conflict in himself between
spirit and flesh, between what he intends to do and what he tends to do. It
is never more clear in the gospel story how much he is one of us and like
us. Like us, he is riven in the face of time and task given by God. He has
entered into the testing/temptation created by the conflict between human
willing and divine vocation. He exhorts his disciples to pray not to enter
into such testing. But his testing, though similar, is unlike any that they or
any would ever face, because of who he was and what he had to do. He
is the Son, and he is given the cup to drink by the Father. His sonship is
tested here as surely as in his initial testing by Satan (4:1-11). Only this
time there is no outside adversary; the testing is within his very self as Son.
So hisflesh-encumberedspirit prays, "If it be possible, let this cup pass
from me; . . . that is what I want." In his weakness, he appeals to the
infinite possibilities belonging to the power of God. He seems to appeal to
God against God. The prayer poses some other possibility left to the
choice of God as an alternative to the cup as the plan of God. And, of
course, all things are possible with God. That is known from the impos-
sible birth of Isaac to aged Sarah and Abraham (Gen 18:14) and from the
very teaching of Jesus (Matt 19:26). The prayer reaches for a sonship without
the cup, a being the Son apart from the necessity of drinking the cup.
Yes, all things are possible with God. But in some other possibility, to
whom would the cup of the wrath of God against the wickedness of the
world pass? To the guilty, the sinners, the wicked—to all who belong to
these categories? Then we would be indeed without hope in the world. To
no one? Then God would be through with the world and have left it to the
experience and result of its wickedness. One begins to see the problem,
and the looming answer to the question, Why did God become human?
Yes, all things are possible with God. But in Jesus of Nazareth the divine
possibility already stood there in Gethsemane in human form. Being spirit,
flesh, and Son, he combined in himself the possibilities posed by the
testing he had entered with the impossibility that belonged to being Son.
There was only one possibility in and by which the oneness of the Son
with the Father could be enacted—only one possibility for incarnating the
way and work of God in human flesh and blood: the cup, the cross, the cry,
524 Theology Today

the confession that saw the truth of it all: "Truly this was Son of God"
(Matt 27:54).
So the Son prays to the Father a prayer that contains its own answer, just
as his humanity is the form of his sonship: "Let this cup pass, but not as
I will, but as you will." A human will in spite of itself consenting to be
invested wholly in the divine will and work. The Son validating and
justifying precisely by his self-denial God's election of him to be the one
in and by whose human life the inclusion of all humanity in God's way and
work is validated and justified. The shift in the form of the second prayer
shows that Jesus yields to the impossibility that belongs to his sonship:
"My Father, if it is not possible for this to pass unless I drink it, thy will
be done."

Did the Father need to know whether the Son would, in his prayer, add
the second clause—and enact it? Add to "Let this cup pass from me" the
concluding "Not as I will but as you will"? If there were no choice from
below, then there would have been no true Son of Man who could, because
he was truly one of us, stand for us in our place. If there were no costly
concurrence with the Father's will, then there would have been no spirit
and flesh that were truly Son of God and could be God for us. How these
two answers hold together as one belongs to the mystery of the oneness of
Father and Son. Both answers, the Scripture tells us, are true. There is now,
in the reality of God, because of Gethsemane and Golgotha, a knowledge
of us mortals that is at the same time a self-knowledge. There is crafted
into the "always" of God the particularity of a time and place. So perhaps
within the mystery of the Trinity there is an unending whisper over our
broken incomplete existence: "Now I know . . . Now I know."

"Because of resurrection, the discipling community can echo

in the world what is murmured in heaven: 'Now we know. '"

In the Gospel narrative itself, there is, of course, no response from God
to Jesus' prayer, no affirmation by the Father of the obedience of the Son.
The handing-over proceeds and the cup is drained. Only then and after
three days of death is there response, not a word but a work: resurrection!
Then it comes clear that what one of us did with his life opened up for us
and with us God's way and work in the world. There is a discipling of all
nations and a baptismal incorporation of all people into the oneness of
Father, Son, and Spirit. For the discipling community, the hour of Jesus
informs all time. In the resurrection, the passion has become a presence
that is "with you always, to the close of the age" (Matt 28:20).
Because of resurrection, the discipling community can echo in the world
what is murmured in heaven: "Now we know." Now we know, when we
 "Now I Know" 525

take the cup, that he has emptied it of judgment in the pouring out of his
blood andfilledit with the forgiveness of sin (26:28). Now we know, when
we pray, as he taught us, and say, "Thy will be done on earth," that the will
of God has already been done for us. And when we add, "Lead us not into
testing," we know he is with us whenever we are tested by time and task
that comes to us with the call to be his disciples.
What wondrous knowing and being known is this!

ABSTRACT

Twice in the biblical story, the purpose of God for the world depends
decisively on the obedience of faith. When Abraham binds Isaac on Moriah's
mountain and when Jesus prays, "Not my will, but yours" in Gethsemane's
garden, something crucial happens for the course of God's way with the rest
of us. The scriptural accounts, Gen 22:1-19 and Matt 26:36-46, are con-
nected by the theme of "testing," and each has a narrative location that is
climactic and pivotal for its literary context. This exposition seeks to read
each text in its own right, but to understand each theologically in connection
with the other. The reading prompts a vision of God in whose divine reality
human historical actuality has become profoundly present.
 ^ s
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