One of the most significant episodes in the whole Bible is the sacrifice of Isaac. It not only tests Abraham’s faith in the severest possible sense, but also it brings Isaac, the second patriarch, to a state of enlightenment. The place where Isaac was to be sacrificed was Mount Moriah and is synonymous with present-day Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

In Hebrew, the episode of the sacrifice of Isaac is traditionally called the akeda meaning ‘the binding’ and is related to the sentence:

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built and altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood (Gen. 22:8).

Bind, or aked עקד is normally applied to sacrificial animals where the four legs of the animal are bound together to form ‘one’. In the case of Isaac his two arms and legs were bound together to form ‘one’. Effectively the act of sacrifice is the act of bringing the ‘four’ of the phenomenal world back to the ‘one’ of the Creator. It is the inverse of the Act of Creation in Genesis in which ‘the four’, the phenomenal world, is created from ‘the one’ i.e. God; hence the phrase:

‘from dust you were formed and to dust you shall return’ (Gen. 3:19).

Isaac, as the second patriarch, was unique inasmuch he is the only person to have undergone a near-death experience when he was about to be sacrificed. The binding akeda of his four limbs into the ‘one’ brought him to Paradise, the Garden of Eden. As his jugular vein was about to be cut, and his blood was about to flow upon the altar of God, he was brought back from the dead, from the ‘one’ back to the ‘four’. This made Isaac unique. He had seen Paradise,

This is seen from the word binding^[1] or akeda, עקדה, spelled: ayin-koof-daled-heh = 70+100+4+5=179. It has the same gematrical value as ‘the Garden of Eden’, גן בעדן = gimel-nun-beth-ayin-dalet-nun = 3+50+2+70+4+50 = 179 which is ½ the value for Messiah, משיח = mem-shin-yod-chet =40+300+10+8 = 358. Hence when Abraham and Isaac enter Mt. Moriah, they are in fact entering the Garden of Eden, Paradise, where all humanity began and, as we note in the post Lech Lecha is also the Land of the Messiah.

Moreover, Isaac is the first person born through the act of circumcision, through a covenant with God. He is therefore the first person to achieve a state of purity and covenant with God. From henceforth any issue from his seed, and the generations that follow, will be pure and with a covenant with God.

[1] Binding a body at death is common practice in many cultures. In Tibet, in the ceremony of sky burials, the body, the arms and the legs are bound together in white cloth and then the bound body is carried by a lama on his back around a stone altar, nine times. It is then placed on the altar and cut into pieces and offered to the vultures and eagles. Hence the Tibetan sky burial also re-enacts the return of the four into the one. Tibetans have four kinds of burial, as represented by the elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The sky burial (Air) is for the common man who offers his body to be recycled in the phenomenal world. Cremation (Fire), is for high Lamas whose bodies are considered so powerful that they should not be recycled to lower beings; water burial is for those living near water. Earth burials are considered the lowest form of burial and quite undesirable.