Abraham and Isaac as Type of the Atoning Sacrifice

The Book of Mormon prophet Jacob tells us that when Abraham went “in the wilderness to be obedient unto the commands of God in offering up his son Isaac” that it was “a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son.” (Jacob 4:5).  Here is the story of Abraham and Isaac:

3) And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

4) Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

5) And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

6) And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

7) And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

8) And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

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

10) And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

11) And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

12) And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

13) And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. (Genesis 22:3-13)

The main symbolic elements in this story are Abraham, Isaac, the wood, the knife, and the fire. Here is my key to understanding the drama of Abraham and Isaac:

§  Abraham (whose name means “Father of Many”) represents God the Father
§  Isaac represents Christ (the meaning of Isaac’s name, ‘laughter’, should tell us something about Christ’s personality)
§  Isaac is like Abraham’s sacrificial lamb, or the lamb of Abraham and Christ is the “Lamb of God” (1 Nephi 11:21)
§  The wood represents the sins of all mankind, which God intends to burn away; “. . . then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost” (2 Nephi 31:17)
§  Abraham gathering the wood and chopping it up represents God the Father gathering the sins, pains, infirmities, and afflictions of all mankind prior to loading them onto Jesus
§  The action when Abraham “laid [the wood] upon Isaac his son,” represents the action of God when “the Lord [God the Father] hath laid on him [Christ] the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6); this happened in the Garden of Gethsemane – “Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane … My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death … and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:36-39)
§  The knife represents truth, which Jesus equated with the word of God in John 17:17 (“[God’s] word is truth”); and “the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit” (Hebrews 4:12); and “the guilty taketh the truth to be hard, for it cutteth them to the very center” (1 Nephi 16:2); in other words, the knife represents the guilt or remorse of conscience that we feel when we sin or break one of God’s laws
§  The fire represents the presence of God; at the final judgment, those who have been evil “are consigned to an awful view of their own guilt and abominations, which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment … And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable” (Mosiah 3:25, 27).

Like Alma the Younger and Jonah, Isaac was rescued from the worst suffering. However, God the Father was required to forsake his son (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” – Matthew 27:46 and Psalm 22:1) and let him finish the bitter cup, rather than answer his plea to remove the cup (D&C 19:18-19).