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 instead of his son.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Many persons say that our sacred writers did not write in accordance with the rules of rhetoric. We do not take issue with them: the sacred writers wrote not in accord with rules but in accord with grace, which is above all rules of rhetoric. They wrote what the Holy Spirit gave them to speak. Yet writers on rhetoric have found rhetoric in their writings and have made use of their writings to compose commentaries and rules. In rhetoric, these qualities in particular are demanded: a cause (aition), a subject (hul&#;) and an end or purpose (apotelesma). Now, when we read that blessed Isaac said to his father, “Behold, you have the fire and the wood, but where is the victim,” are these qualities lacking? The one asking the question is in doubt; the one who answers the question gives the answer and removes the doubt. The fire is the cause; the wood is the subject, called materia in Latin; the third item, the purpose, is that which the child sought and which the father showed him when he as...
Thus the sacrifice was not for the sake of Isaac but for that of Abraham, who was tested by being called upon to make this offering. And of course, God accepted his intentions, but he prevented him from slaying Isaac. The death of Isaac would not buy freedom for the world. No, that could be accomplished only by the death of our Savior, by whose stripes we are all healed.
But when the ram was killed and Isaac was not killed, it happened thus because Isaac was a figure and not the reality; for in him was designated what was later fulfilled in Christ. Behold, God is contending with people in great devotion. Abraham offered God his mortal son who was not to die, while God surrendered in death his immortal Son for the sake of humankind. Concerning blessed Isaac and that ram it can be further understood that in Isaac was signified the divinity of Christ, in the ram his humanity. Just as in his passion not the divinity but the humanity is believed to have been crucified, so the ram but not Isaac was immolated: the onlybegotten Son of God is offered, the firstborn of the Virgin is sacrificed. Listen to another mystery. Blessed JRM, a priest, wrote that he knew most certainly from the ancient Jews and elders that Christ our Lord was afterward crucified in the place where Isaac was offered. Last, from the place whence blessed Abraham was commanded to depart, he ...
The mountain spit out the tree and the tree the ram. In the ram that hung in the tree and had become the sacrifice in the place of Abraham’s son, there might be depicted the day of him who was to hang upon the wood like a ram and was to taste death for the sake of the whole world.
All this, however, happened as a type of the cross. Hence Christ too said to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced in anticipation of seeing my day; he saw it and was delighted.” How did he see it if he lived so long before? In type, in shadow. Just as in our text the sheep was offered in place of Isaac, so here the rational Lamb was offered for the world. You see, it was necessary that the truth be sketched out ahead of time in shadow. Notice, I ask you, dearly beloved, how everything was prefigured in shadow: an onlybegotten son in that case, an onlybegotten in this; dearly loved in that case, dearly loved in this. “This is my beloved Son,” Scripture says, in fact, “in whom I have found satisfaction.” The former was offered as a burnt offering by his father, and the latter his Father surrendered. Paul too shouts aloud in the words “He who in fact did not spare his own Son but handed him over for the sake of us all—how will he not also grant us every gift along with him?” Up to this...
