To what was Jesus referring in the life of Abraham when he told the Jews, “Abraham your father rejoiced that he would see my day, and he saw it and he was glad”? This dissertation will demonstrate the intentionality of Jesus’s choice of seeing words in John 8:56 that allude to Genesis 22:1-19. The intimation is confirmed by acknowledging three main observations of Genesis 22:1-19. First, this pericope contains eleven seeing words. Second, this narrative is rich in the typology of the day of Jesus, such as, the father giving the son to consummate the covenantal relationship, the son’s willing sacrifice of himself to death, and the substitutionary sacrifice given by God and hung on a tree to name a few.
Typology in itself is also a form of seeing. It is the seeing of an object, person, or event that prefigures a future object, person, or event before the existence of its antitype. Throughout the Old Testament the Israelites saw through faith the numerous representations of their coming Messiah and his substitutionary death on the cross and physical resurrection in manifested objects, people, and events in their day centuries before the existence of the antitype in fulfillment. Third, it is solidified by Abraham’s rejoicing that Yahweh saw Abraham’s need and spared the life of Isaac, as it were, resurrecting him from the dead.
Because of the richness of the seeing words in the testing of Abraham and the binding of Isaac (Akedah) in this pericope of Genesis 22:1-19, one of the key themes emerges, “Abraham sees that Yahweh sees.” Through the typology used throughout Genesis 22:1-19, Abraham saw the day of Christ. Abraham saw the day of redemption. In Isaac, he saw the son fulfilling all obedience and righteousness, even willfully submitting to death. In the ram, Abraham saw the far greater substitutionary atonement in the one who would permanently atone for man’s sin, the one and only beloved son who would become the resurrected one, and the believer’s resurrection hope. Abraham saw all of this through his son Isaac and the substitutionary ram. Furthermore, Abraham heard the voice of pre-incarnate Yeshua-Yahweh himself in Genesis 22:11 and 15. Therefore, it is defended that Jesus purposefully chose the keyword “saw” in John 8:56 to point back to the theme of Genesis 22:1-19, “Abraham sees that Yahweh sees.”