Ra’ah

You might get worried when God asks you to sacrifice your child on a mountain top, almost as worried as you get when the sermon title is in Hebrew: Ra’ah. Fear not, it’s just one word, and understanding what this word means and how it’s used can teach us a lot about who God is and who we are in relation to God.

The most basic translation of ra’ah is “to see.” In English we change or add a few letters to change the tense of the verb: see, saw, will see, etc. Hebrew is no different: ra’ah, yoreh, yireh, etc. If you look through today’s story for forms the verb “to see” you’ll only find two uses: in verse 4, “Abraham looked up and saw the place” where he would make the sacrifice; and in verse 13, “Abraham looked up and saw a ram” to take the place of his son. In the original Hebrew, however, the verb “ra’ah” is used four times. You can’t see it in the English translation, but in verse 8, Abraham tells Isaac, “God yireh the lamb for a burnt offering, my son”; and in verse 14 Abraham names the mountain of the sacrifice “Yahweh yireh.”

Given only what I’ve taught you about the basic translation of ra’ah, Abraham tells Isaac that “God will see the lamb for the offering.” What does that mean? If you look at your English translation, you will see a different word: Abraham tells Isaac that, “God will provide.” Perhaps a better translation would read, “God will see to it.”

So ra’ah can be translated to see or, see to. As I said earlier, this nuance holds a lesson about God and humanity. Take out your Bibles and look at verses 4 and 13: who sees? It is Abraham who sees. Now look at verses 8 and 14: who sees to, who provides? It is God who sees to. The distinguishing factor in translating ra’ah is the subject to whom the verb applies: Abraham sees, but God sees to. Understanding the difference between Abraham’s ra’ah and God’s ra’ah helps us to better see who God is and who human beings are in relation to God.

Terrence Fretheim makes the claim that the four uses of ra’ah in today’s narrative testify “to a progressively clearer seeing.”[1] At first, Abraham sees the mountain from far off, then he makes a statement of hope in God’s future providence, then he sees a ram caught within reach, then he names the place in the sure and certain aura of God’s provision.Ultimately, he says, it is “seeing” that saves Isaac, it is Abraham’s trust in God that enables him to see the ram that God sees to provide.[2] A similar seeing and saving occurs in the previous chapter, in the story we looked at last week. Hagar and her son, Ishmael, whom she bore by Abraham, are sent away into the desert and are dying of thirst. Hagar prays that she might be spared having to see the death of her child, but God opens her eyes and she sees a well of water (Gn. 21:16-19).

These are stories about trusting God enough to see the salvation God provides. The importance of distinguishing God’s ra’ah from our ra’ah is captured in the letter to the Ephesians 2:8-9 when Paul writes, “You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift, not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of.” We cannot see to our own salvation. Only God can do that, and has done that. In Jesus Christ, a lamb has been provided as a sacrifice for human sin. God wants our faith to enable us to see this, receive this gift, respond to this grace.

Just for fun, let’s tie this into the context of our congregation as we prepare for a Vacation Bible School based on “super heroes.” In popular culture, super heroes use their super powers to provide salvation. The heroes of our Bible stories are different, however. Their super power is seeing through faith. Faith empowers us to see things that other people can’t. As the author of Hebrew puts it, “Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see.” When we begin to teach children and youth that they are God’s heroes, we must be careful to make a distinction from the popular understanding, in which heroes create and provide salvation. Faith is our super power, by which we can see, and receive, and respond to God’s power and the salvation that God provides. Faith enables us to see and hope for God’s Kingdom in the midst of a world that looks quite different.

Faith and trust empower us. They empower our awareness of God’s providence. This awareness informs our participation in God’s plans. Abraham demonstrated his faith and trust in God when responding to Isaac’s question. “The fire and the wood are here, but where’s the lamb for the burnt offering?” Could you imagine how the story would have ended had Abraham not trusted God to provide? God’s genuine interest in testing Abraham suggests that God was not in control of the results, and that Abraham was able to respond to the test freely. What if he had responded to the test in fear rather than in faith? A simple survey of human history suggests that the story would probably have ended in human-on-human violence.

This is the other popular understanding of “heroes” of which we must be wary and wise. We’re used to heroes who punch and pound their way to victory, who employ violence in the pursuit of problem solving. Our lust for violence is more than satiated by comics, television programs, movies and, heck, even the news.

We live in a culture where it is cool to be cruel. How do we make peace appealing? Are you kidding me? Is that really the question we have to ask? How is peace NOT appealing? In my mind, the question we should be asking is: how have me managed to make violence so appealing? How did death and destruction become forms of entertainment? How is it that heroes who hit and shoot are more celebrated than heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ?

It all comes down to how we see things, doesn’t it? In sin, we are tempted to take salvation into our own hands and to only see the solutions that serve our own needs. By the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Christ, our eyes are opened to see the truth: that we cannot see to our own salvation. Only God can do that, and indeed God already has. Rather than dishing out violence to defeat his enemies, Jesus absorbs their violence on the cross. In his resurrection he enables us to see what the power of God has seen to. We who are called to follow Jesus Christ are called to be a very different kind of hero. We are called to be heroes of peace. If we can teach this to our children, then we can, indeed, give them super powers. We empower them to participate as peacemakers in the Kingdom of God, and to help bring God’s bright, beautiful tomorrow into being.

Can you see it?

[1] Fretheim, Terrence. New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. I: Genesis. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994). Page 495.

[2] Ibid, 499.