He said, “Now take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you of.”
World English Bible
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
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He said, “Now take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you of.”
World English Bible
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Genesis 22:2 calls Isaac Abraham's "only son" — at the moment when Ishmael is already thirteen years old and demonstrably alive, and when Genesis 25 is about to list six more sons by Keturah. So either Abraham has one son, or two, or eight, depending on the page.
Critical scholarship: Leans toward reconciliation.
Numbers
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Leviticus 18:21, Deuteronomy 12:31, and 2 Kings 21:6 condemn making your child pass through the fire as abomination. Genesis 22:2 has Yahweh himself commanding Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering on a mountain.
Critical scholarship: Genuinely disputed among scholars.
Law & ethics
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Genesis 22:2 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/genesis/22/2?version=WEB (retrieved 26 August 2026).