Where Is the Lamb

In Copenhagen in 1843 a book appeared under a false name, Fear and Trembling, and it opens by telling this journey four times over, each version different, none comfortable. Anyone who finds this story settled has not been reading slowly.

Three days of walking. Wood on the boy's back, his father carrying the fire and the knife, the two things that could hurt him. Isaac speaks once in the chapter, and it is the obvious question, asked late: Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? The answer is your verse, followed by a line the chapter repeats on purpose: so they went both of them together. Nothing says Abraham understood what he had just said. What waits at the top is a ram caught in a thicket, offered in the stead of his son, and a ram is not a lamb. The day's need was met and the sentence left standing.

Watch the noun travel. Abraham names the place Jehovahjireh, and the saying outlived him: In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. In Egypt it is a lamb for a house, without blemish, and blood on a doorframe. In Isaiah it walks: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. At the Jordan, John looks at a man coming toward him and makes an announcement: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. In the last book it is standing and marked, a Lamb as it had been slain.

Four books, roughly two thousand years, and the noun does not change. No one of those texts carries the weight alone, which is why the answer took that long to print.

Isaac asked it walking uphill with the wood on his back, which is where it gets asked honestly. It is still open, in those words, tonight. Where is the lamb. Somebody has been answering that in public a long time and does not mind being asked again.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 353 is Father Knows Before You Ask (Matthew 6:8).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two