But one important way of understanding the Akedah is that it is Abraham gaining the revelation that God does not want human sacrifice. This is a new trajectory for worship. At Moriah human sacrifice met its Waterloo—at least as a rite for what will become the Hebrew people. If Abraham is the father of monotheism, Abraham is also the father of the abolition of human sacrifice. When Abraham laid down the knife on Moriah and offered a ram instead of his son, humanity took a huge step in the right direction. (A thousand years later the Hebrew prophet Hosea would announce that God does not desire
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