What happened on Mt. Moriah was, of course, monumental. Not only do we see a picture of the Father and the Son (in Abraham and Isaac); we also see the “vicarious” atonement. A ram caught in the thicket (even as our Lord Jesus was caught in the thicket of the sinful world) was offered “instead of” Isaac. Amen!
Something else recently caught my attention. We have often noted the comment of Moses in v14, after Abraham named the place “Jehovah Jireh” (The-LORD-Will-Provide). Moses adds: “as it is said to this day, ‘In the Mount of the LORD it shall be provided.’” You may wonder, as the writer of Hebrews notes, about the timing of God’s promise fulfillment. Heb. 11:39 says, “And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise.” Abraham did not receive it. Moses, writing the Genesis record some 500 years later, did not receive the promise. And neither did any of the generation in Moses’ time who joined him in saying, “In the Mount of the LORD it shall be provided.” They were sure it would happen, but they had already waited a long time.
You might wonder: Were they surprised? Did they think it would happen sooner? We can’t say. In the time of Jesus’ birth there were people waiting expectantly for the Savior. Simeon had a “leg up” because God told him he would see “the Lord’s Christ” before he died (Lk. 2:26). How can the righteous be so patient?
So, what I saw recently is in the details of Gen. 22:14: “It shall be provided.” Literally, “It shall be seen.” In the area of Mt. Moriah (the Mountain of the Lord in the Bible, Isa. 2:1-4; Micah 4:1-3) the fulfillment of this story will be seen, when the “vicarious” Lamb of God is sacrificed on the altar of the cross for the sins of the world. But in Hebrew, and this is not my area of expertise, “provided” is in the imperfect tense. What does that mean? Here is the Blue Letter Bible’s explanation:
Generally designates an action which is continuous, incomplete, or open-ended. Rather than depicting an action as a single event, the imperfect depicts it as a continuing process. It is therefore typically translated as a present “He is running” or a future “He will be running,” although it can sometimes be translated as a continuous past “He was running.” The meaning of the imperfect therefore has more to do with how an action took place than with when it took place. The imperfect is most often treated as a present or future because it is easier to think of present or future events as incomplete and open-ended than it is to think of past actions that way.
What the Hebrew reader understood was that this provision would certainly happen. Time was not the issue. The promise involved a process before it would be perfectly fulfilled. But certainty was the issue.
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