offering was called "a sacrifice."

But the people who worshipped idols often did what seems to us strange
and very terrible. They thought that it would please their gods if they
would offer as a sacrifice the most precious living things that were
their own; and they would take their own little children and kill them
upon their altars as offerings to the gods of wood and stone, that were
no real gods, but only images.

God wished to show Abraham and all his descendants, those who should
come after him, that he was not pleased with such offerings as those of
living people, killed on the altars. And God took a way to teach
Abraham, so that he and his children after him would never forget it.
Then at the same time he wished to see how faithful and obedient Abraham
would be to his commands; how fully Abraham would trust in God, or, as
we would say, how great was Abraham's faith in God.

So God gave to Abraham a command which he did not mean to have obeyed,
though this he did not tell to Abraham. He said:

"Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love so greatly, and
go to the land of Moriah, and there on a mountain that I will show you,
offer him for a burnt-offering to me."

Though this command filled Abraham's heart with pain, yet he would not
be as surprised to receive it as a father would in our day; for such
offerings were very common among all those people in the land where
Abraham lived. Abraham never for one moment doubted or disobeyed God's
word. He knew that Isaac was the child whom God had promised, and that
God had promised, too, that Isaac should have children, and that those