The story can only be understood fully in the light of the religious customs of Abraham's day, according to which human sacrifice was not uncommon. (See II Kings 3. 27, also 21. 6, 23. 10 and Jeremiah 32. 35.) Viewed in this light God's asking Abraham to sacrifice his son meant nothing which to a contemporary of Abraham would have seemed essentially inconsistent with the divine character. It is God's forbidding the consummation of this act which is the innovation, so that this lesson teaches in a narrative form the same idea which later received its legal formulation in Leviticus 18. 21 and 20. 2-5. The chapter has therefore a twofold message; (1) that to be the elect of God requires of us the willingness to sacrifice any personal desire and even natural affection in obedience to him, and (2) that God's will, to which He claims obedience, is a benevolent one and does not demand or desire human sacrifice. The idea that God does not desire human sacrifice was a great moral discovery and this narrative in our Bible gives us an interesting illustration of how such new spiritual insights in general are born; namely through the willingness to commit ourselves completely to whatever vision of truth is ours at the time. It was because Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac in accordance with his previous sense of what duty demanded of him, that this new revelation of God's will as opposed to human sacrifice was granted him. Had he, while sharing with his contemporaries the belief in the legitimacy of human sacrifice, hesitated to live up to this idea when it involved suffering for himself, he would never have been given the understanding that God does not desire human sacrifice. Our standards of morality are at all times imperfect, but it is only those who commit themselves without reservation to whatever standard they really hold that are the discoverers of new moral truths. The part that Isaac played in the incident is but vaguely suggested in the Biblical narrative. The _agadic_ elaborations of the story frequently represent Isaac as knowing what fate was intended for him and fully acquiescing in it. That Isaac probably had his misgivings is suggested by the question, "Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" At all events he must have known what Abraham's purpose with regard to him was when he was being bound to the altar and, as the narrative records no protest, the Rabbinic conception of the part Isaac played is not contradictory to the Biblical story. The teacher is therefore justified in imparting the story in a way which would imply that Isaac lent himself willingly to Abraham's designs regarding him.