Pensamento Judaico sobre Gênesis 24:67

When Abraham sacrificed the ram, he was not yet certain if that act had been accepted as a substitute for Isaac and would be considered equivalent to his having actually sacrificed Isaac physically. He called the place "the mountain where it is proper to demonstrate obedience (fear) of the Lord," to indicate what he had come to accomplish there. Beyond this, he expressed the hope that also in the future this site would be looked up to as the place where his act of obedience had been duly noted. The second call of the angel confirmed to him that his intention had in fact been considered by G-d as if he had already carried out the deed, and this would benefit the whole of mankind through his descendants, and that the world at large would know all about it. Something else created after sunset on the sixth day of Creation, and being activated when a suitable opportunity presented itself, is the "mouth of the earth" which swallowed Korach and his followers. Moses suggested that if a gehinam had not yet been created, this would be a good time to create it and to consign Korach and his followers to it. The use of the earth's "mouth" then had not yet been decreed, and awaited an opportunity for man to trigger it (compare Bamidbar Rabbah 18). The same consideration can be applied to the other examples listed in that Mishnah in Avot. Abraham returned to Beer Sheva to lead a life of spreading blessings for his fellow men (he planted the Eshel). As pointed out in the opening Midrash, the ultimate justification for subjecting the righteous to trials lies in the fact that such tzaddikim emerge spiritually elevated. When such righteous people also enjoy material success, the midat hadin, G-d’s attribute of justice, can point out that such material wealth had not been bestowed arbitrarily, but had been earned the hard way by its recipients. In Michah 6,8, we are taught that the trial of the akeydah in its applied sense had become the claim G-d has on all of us. The moral imperative which the call to the akeydah represented, and which Abraham had demonstrated to be within man's capacity to respond to, has since become the call addressed to each one of Abraham's descendants, even if no first born is needed as an actual sacrifice on the altar. The commandment to blow the shofar, the ram's horn, on New Year's day, is to remind the midat hadin, attribute of justice, of the successful trial of Abraham, and of the fact that the hachna-ah, submissive feelings, evoked in us at the sound of the shofar, are the symbolic akeydah of each one of us.