ABSTRACT
The entire story of Abraham and Sarah raises many questions but never more than at the climax. Abraham is like that commander. In a sense, this makes the situation of the asarah harugai malkhut, in which there is no choice, less brutal than that of the Akedah. Abraham, the Bible tells, was God’s friend, His beloved. The nearness of being together “hand in hand,” as it was, of which the psalmist speaks, might well be describing Abraham. The military commander, whose son has been chosen for death, and the Midrash’s captain and Abraham, remind the author of a story told by the sociologist Peter L. Berger and a question he addresses to his story: A child wakes up at night, perhaps from a bad dream, and finds himself surrounded by darkness, alone, beset by nameless threats.
