Figures

Isaac

Patriarchs

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Isaac." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/figures/isaac.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Isaac. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/figures/isaac

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-isaac,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Isaac},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/figures/isaac},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Isaac, in Hebrew Yitzhak, he laughs, is the second of the three patriarchs of Israel, the long-promised son of Abraham and Sarah born to them in old age. In the Book of Genesis he is bound upon the altar at Moriah when God tests Abraham and is spared at the last by the ram caught in the thicket, an episode central to Jewish and Christian reflection on faith and sacrifice. He married Rebecca and fathered Esau and Jacob, through whom the covenant passed. Islam honors him as the prophet Ishaq, a gift announced to Abraham by the angelic visitors. He is the child of promise and the heir through whom the covenant was carried.

Facts

Disputed

Historicity

Historicity debated 4

Lester L. Grabbe's Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (2007) examines the patriarchal narratives against the archaeological and textual record for the second millennium BCE and finds no extra-biblical evidence for Isaac, and that the patriarchal narratives generally cannot be securely placed in any second-millennium setting. Judaism, Christianity and Islam nonetheless hold him to be a historical patriarch, the son of promise through whom Abraham's covenant passed to Jacob.

Mythic Association

The Genesis account of the Binding of Isaac, in which Abraham nearly sacrifices him at God's command before a ram is substituted, names him as the son involved, though Islamic tradition more commonly identifies the son as Ishmael. 2

The rabbinic and Christian tradition, following Genesis 22, names Isaac as the son bound for sacrifice at Moriah; the Quran does not name the son at all, and while a minority of early Muslim exegetes read the unnamed son as Isaac, the majority position, and the modern popular consensus among Muslims, holds it was Ishmael, reflecting a genuine, unresolved divergence in how the three Abrahamic traditions each claim their own founding covenant narrative for their own patriarch.

Identity

Gender

Male 1

Scholarship

How Its Legacy Is Contested

Genesis recounts that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice him on Mount Moriah before an angel stayed his hand and a ram was offered instead, the episode known as the Akedah, though Islamic tradition, drawing on the Quran's own unnamed account of the same test, holds by majority opinion that the son so nearly sacrificed was his half brother Ishmael rather than him. 2

Life

Place of Activity

Genesis places much of his life around Beersheba and Gerar in the Negev, and the binding of Isaac at Mount Moriah, where he was nearly sacrificed by his father Abraham before an angel intervened, became one of the most theologically significant episodes across Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. 2

Attestation

Traditions Revering This Figure

Judaism 3

Traditions Revering This Figure

Christianity 3

Traditions Revering This Figure

Islam 3

Position Profile

Key Text

Genesis 22 narrates the binding at Moriah; most Muslim exegetes read the Quran's parallel account at Surah As-Saffat 37:99-113 as concerning his brother Ishmael rather than Isaac himself. 2

Practice

Lineage

Son of Abraham and Sarah, born to them in old age after decades of childlessness; father, by Rebecca, of the twins Esau and Jacob. 2

Origins

Origin of the Name

His name, he laughs, recalls two separate episodes of laughter in Genesis, Abraham's own incredulous laughter at the promise of a son in his old age and Sarah's laughter when she overhears the same promise repeated to her, so the name commemorates the disbelief that preceded his birth rather than any event of his own life. 2

Veneration

Shrine or Burial Place

Tradition holds he is buried alongside Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Leah and Rebecca in the Cave of Machpelah at Hebron, a site venerated by both Jews and Muslims and enclosed today within the shared complex known as the Ibrahimi Mosque to Muslims and the Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews, among the few sites in the region held sacred by both across many centuries. 1

Learn More

The Son of the Promise, and the Binding

Isaac is the second of the three patriarchs of Israel, the son born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, the child of the promise, whose very name (Yitzhaq, he laughs) recalls the laughter with which his aged parents greeted the news of his coming. He is the least active of the patriarchs in the Genesis narrative, more often the object of events than their agent: sought a wife, Rebekah, brought to him from Abraham's kin; father of the twins Esau and Jacob; deceived in his blindness into blessing the younger over the elder.

The episode that dominates his story, and one of the most searching narratives in scripture, is the Akedah, the binding. In Genesis 22 God commands Abraham to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice; Abraham obeys to the last moment, binding his son upon an altar and raising the knife, and is stopped only by the angel, a ram caught in a thicket taking Isaac's place.

The text is spare and terrible, and it has drawn commentary in every generation, on Abraham's obedience, on Isaac's silence and apparent consent, and on the God who tests so fearfully and then relents.

Whose Son Was to Be Bound: The Divergence of the Traditions

The binding became a foundational memory in each of the Abrahamic faiths, and it is a place where they part.

In Judaism the Akedah is read as the supreme trial of faith and of covenant loyalty, recalled in the liturgy of the New Year, when the ram's horn (shofar) is sounded in part as a remembrance of the ram that redeemed Isaac. Later tradition dwells on Isaac's own willingness, sometimes to the point of treating him as a self-offering.

Christianity read the near-sacrifice typologically: the beloved son carrying the wood of his own offering up the mountain became a figure of Christ carrying the cross, and the father who did not spare his son an image of God's own gift, so that Isaac bound on the altar prefigures the crucifixion.

Islam honours Ishaq as a prophet, but the near-sacrifice it commemorates, in the account most widely held, is of the other son, Ishmael (Isma'il), the Qur'anic narrative does not name the son, and the classical tradition came predominantly to identify him as Ishmael, whose intended offering is memorialized at the feast of Eid al-Adha. The single story of a father, a son and a substituted ram thus sits at the heart of three traditions that disagree about which son lay on the altar.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Genesis 22:1-2

This source names Isaac directly: "opening of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac."

Source The Holy Bible, American Standard Version (1901), verse-per-line textAmerican Revision Committee

Hebron

This source names Isaac directly: "the graves of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah."

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)

Isaac Blessing Jacob (Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 25.110.16)

This source names Isaac directly: "painting showing the blind Isaac laying his hand on Jacob, disguised in Esau's clothing and goatskins at his mother Rebecca's urging, to bestow the blessing intended for his elder son."

Source Isaac Blessing Jacob, accession 25.110.16 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Jacob (Wikipedia)

This source names Isaac directly: "that their aging, nearly blind father Isaac would mistake him for Esau and give him the firstborn's blessing."

Source Jacob (Wikipedia)

The Binding of Isaac and the Sacrifice of Ibrahim

Named as the son in Genesis