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midrash session 11
(1) "And the angel of God called from the heavens and he said Avraham Avraham" -- (2) two times as [one] who yells in the midst of distress: (3) what are you doing? (4) Avraham turned his face to him. (4) The angel said to him: what are you doing? (5) "Do not send your hand to the boy!"
(6) Avraham said to him: who are you? (7) He said: I am an angel. (8) Avraham said to him: when the Holy One blessed be he said to me to sacrifice [1] my son he himself spoke to me, and even now if he pleases he will speak to me. (9) Immediately the Holy One blessed be he opened the firmament and the cloud and he said to him: (10) "by myself I swear".
(We are now about halfway down the first image, right after the "5" at the end of the line.)
(11) Avraham said to him: You swore and I swear that I will not descend from (this) altar until I will say all that I need. (12) He said to him: speak. (13) Avraham said to him: did you not say to me "count the stars... thus will be your seed"? (13) The Holy One blessed be he said: yes. (14) He said to him: from whom? (15) He said to him from Yitzchak. (16) He said to him: as the name was to me [2] I should have said to you: (17) yesterday you said to me: "as in Yitzchak will be called to you seed", (18) now you are saying to me: "offer him there as a burnt offering" --
(Last line of the first image, one word remaining.)
(19) I conquered my inclination and I did not reply; when the children of Yitzchak will be sinners and [find themselves?] in distress [t'hei? [3]] they will remember to themselves the binding of Yitzchak (?) [3] it is thought (?) before you as if his ash is burned upon (?) [4] the altar and you will be filled upon them [with] compassion and you will forgive [to] them and you will redeem them from their distresses.
(That's one long sentence... We're in the middle of the fourth line.)
(20) The Holy One blessed be he said to him: you said for yourself and I will say for myself: (21) Yitzchak's future sons (will?) [5] sin before me and I judge them on Rosh Hashana, though if they beg that I seek (?) in them merit and remember to them the binding of Yitzchak -- (22) there will be blasts before me of this ram's horn. (23) He said to him: what ram's horn? (24) He said to him: turn to behind you... immediately "and Avraham lifted his eyes and he saw here a ram".
[1] "to sacrifice" -- the word is l'hakriv, to bring a sacrifice (korban).
[2] This is probably an idiom for something.
[3] "t'hei nizkar lahem"; I don't know the first word, and it sure seems like the same root as the "viyhei" a few words later. Drop-letter root? Since neither the hei nor the alef can provide the hint of a dageish to tell me which letter is missing, I'm unclear how to proceed.
[4] "gabbei"?
[5] "lachato" (lamed-chet-tet-alef) looks like an infinitive but it only makes sense as future tense?
Or, a little more loosely, because I think I have the gist of it even
while stumbling over some words, from (11):
Avraham said to him: you swore, and now I swear that I will not budge until I say what I need to say to you. And God said to him: ok, go. And Avraham said: did you not tell me to count the stars and these would be my descendants? God said: yup. Avraham said: well then, from whom did you mean? God said: from Yitzchak. Avraham said: I should have told you when you sent me on this quest -- yesterday you said Yitzchak's descendants will be my legacy and now you tell me to sacrifice him?! What's up with that? But I held my tongue and didn't reply, but now I say to you: when Yitzchak's children sin and are in distress, they will remember this incident and it should be to you as if his ash was actually burned upon the altar, and you should be filled with compassion and forgive them and redeem them on account of this korban (even if it didn't actually happen).
God said to him: you had your say; now it's my turn. Yitzchak's sons will sin before me and I'll sit in judgment over them on Rosh Hashana, and they'll beg me to see their merit on account of the binding of Yitzcah, and if they're sincere they'll blow this shofar before me loud and clear. Avraham said: what shofar? God said: look behind you -- and there was a ram caught in the thicket.
(End loose translation, begin commentary.)
This midrash seems to be saying that the (or "a") point of the akeidah was to give us, Yitzchak's descendants, a basis for pleading for forgiveness on the day of judgment: great-great-...-great-grandpa Avraham nearly brought the offering you asked for, so it should be as if it happened and that should cleanse us. Um, what? Jews don't do atonement by proxy, especially atonement by proxy human sacrifice. I wonder what the rabbis are saying here.
Well, the next study session should be interesting. :-)
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(19) enter into
[3] the root is hey-yud-hey. "To be" That verb is really really irregular in several languages.
I think you got the idea right.
As for atonement by proxy: We do, but not like Catholics (or Christians generally). The following story from the Gemara may illustrate my point: R' Akiva saw a man who was covered with boils and ash. R' Akiva asked him who he was and what his story was. He said that he had died and was in Gehinnom (loosely: hell) but that if his son said Kaddish and got the community to sanctify G-d's name he would be released. So R' Akiva found the son, who was illiterate. He taught the son to read Hebrew/Aramaic, and all the prayers, and how to say Kaddish. The father came to R' Akiva and thanked him.
So whatever the father did to end up in Gehinnom in the first place was forgiven because the son did good things in his father's merit. I can achieve forgiveness from G-d for someone else, but I can't grant forgiveness from G-d to someone else. In both the Akeidah and the R' Akiva case, the person in need of forgiveness was unable to do the act that gains merit himself, so it was done by another.
To say it another way, potentially clarifying the matter: a person confesses to a priest that he did sin x. Instead of saying, "I, as G-d's agent, forgive you, if you do meritorious deed y", he says, "In order to gain G-d's forgiveness, I will do on your behalf meritorious deed y".
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I had failed to consider that the final hei might become an alef in Aramaic. Oops. (I don't understand terminal alefs in Aramaic, but I know they happen more frequently than in Hebrew.)
So whatever the father did to end up in Gehinnom in the first place was forgiven because the son did good things in his father's merit.
Interesting midrash. Doing something specifically for his father feels a little different than someone pre-emptively doing something to provide merit for future transgressions; that's where I see the Christian theme. But you're right that Judaism does have the concept of, essentially, helping someone else out of his transgressions through your own mitzvot, and that's interesting too.