Abraham, as we know from contemporary archives, came from a legal background where it was mandatory to seal a contract or covenant with an animal sacrifice. The covenant with God was of such transcendent enormity that it demanded something more: a sacrifice of the best-loved in the fullest sense, though as the subject of the sacrifice was a human being, it was made abortive, thereby remaining valid-but formal and ritualistic rather than actual. Isaac was chosen as the offering not only because he was Abraham’s most precious possession but because he was a special gift of God’s, under the
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