These stories are very different in the original languages. In the Hebrew text the story in Gen 22:11-16 refers to God as Elohim in vv. 1,3,8,and 9. But, just as Abraham’s hand is raised with the knife to sacrifice Isaac, the text says that the angel of Yahweh stops him (v11). The verses in which Isaac is spared refer to God as Yahweh (vv11-14). These verses are followed by a report that the angel speaks for a second time and says, “…because you DID NOT withhold your son from me…” So the four verses that report that Isaac was not sacrificed involve both a contradiction and a change of the name of the deity. In the original version of this story Isaac was actually sacrificed and the intervening four verses were added subsequently, when the notion of human sacrifice was rejected. Of course, the words “you did not withhold your son” might mean only that Abraham had been willing to sacrifice his son. However it must be noted that the text concludes (v19),”And Abraham returned to his servants.” Isaac is not mentioned. Moreover, Isaac never again appears as a character in the tradition in which God is called Elohim. Interestingly, a later midrashic tradition developed the notion that Isaac actually had been sacrificed. This tradition is discussed in S. Spiegel’s “The Last Trial.” (New York: Schocken, 1969; Hebrew edition 1950).

The Bible actually regulates human sacrifice. “Nothing, however, that someone vows unconditionally to Yahweh may be redeemed, nothing he possesses, be it human being or animal or field of his ancestral property. What is vowed unconditionally is especially holy and belongs to Yahweh. A human being vowed unconditionally cannot be redeemed but will be put to death” – Leviticus 27:28-29. Besides the story of the near sacrifice of Isaac one of the Bible’s more horrifying and indefensible stories is the Israelite general’s sacrifice of his virgin daughter described in Judges 11:29-40. “When the two months were over she went back to he father, and he treated her as the vow that he had uttered bound him. She had remained a virgin” (Judges 11:39). Despite the absurd claims to the contrary from Christian apologists the Hebrew text makes it very clear that Jepthah did indeed sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering to Yahweh.