Abraham and Isaac
Given that the basic definition of “priest” is one who offers sacrifice”, we move on to Abraham who was told by God [Genesis 22] to take his son Isaac and offer him as a burnt offering, an order which Abraham sets out to obey with a silent readiness which may appal the unsuspecting reader.
Abraham has already [Genesis 15: 7-20] cut animals in two for God to pass through the middle as a sign of the covenant which God was making with him, but these were not actually sacrifices.
Stained glass window at the Melkite Catholic cathedral in Roslindale, Massachusetts depicting an angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac
Other peoples did offer their first-born children to God, something which Israel found repugnant. In Israel the offering was always commuted to that of an animal, as we see in the Abraham story where the sacrifice of the boy is replaced by the sacrifice of a ram caught by its horns in a bush.
We saw last week that a very primitive presentation of the idea of sacrifice saw a God who enjoyed the fragrance of cooked meat as it rose to his nostrils. This notion disappears in the Abraham story. Rather than God being appeased by something tasty, we have moved on to a more sophisticated idea of ‘sacrifice’ linked to a covenant between God and humans.
It still did not require a priest to make this sacrifice; anybody could. The idea of a ‘professional’ priest first emerges from the contact of Israel with the civilisation of the Pharaohs in Egypt, as we shall see.