The Lord said: I am grateful to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were the first to make Me known in the world (Menachot 53a).

When Isaac was bound on the altar, he was thirty-seven years old (Seder Olam Rabbah 1).

The lamb for the offering, my son (Genesis 22:8). Abraham told Isaac, You are the lamb (Midrash HaGadol, Bereishit 22: 3).

When Isaac saw Rebecca separate the dough offering in purity, she became his wife (Genesis 24:67) (Bereishit Rabbah 60:16).

Blow the ram’s horn before Me on Rosh Hashonah so that I will remember to your credit the binding of Isaac, son of Abraham (Rosh Hashonah 16a).

Why didn’t Abraham bless Isaac? Because he saw in Isaac that Esau would issue from him (Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 31).

He was named Isaac because his mother, Sarah, laughed when God told Abraham of the impending birth of a son. It was a laugh that resounded through religious history, for Isaac’s life career served as a paradigm for the life of the Christian savior. Not a little disbelief surrounded the announcement of Jesus’ birth as well, who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, also descended from the loins of Abraham. Add the picture of Isaac, carrying wood, walking behind his father toward the sacrificial altar and a “lamb” mercifully replacing the thirty-seven year old “lad” before Abraham can execute His will, and the connection of the two Testament figures becomes more tenable. Isaac acts the part of the lamb; Jesus is the lamb’s fulfillment.

Isaac, despite tradition’s equalization of his personality with Abraham, never quite measures up to the deeds or personality of his father. Which is not necessarily a pejorative. Isaac is still considered one of the patriarchs and remains part of our daily liturgy which honors the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But from all accounts, Isaac is a passive figure. It is Abraham who actively pursues the destiny of Israel, through the resolution of national and familial conflict. Isaac is more contemplative. Things happen to him at least in part because he cannot seem to get out of the way.

The effect is cumulative. Beginning with the sibling rivalry with Ishmael, continuing with the infamous “trial” on Mount Moriah and the resultant death of his mother, Isaac seems directionless. Fortunately, Rebecca enters his life, and she is not afraid to make decisions. Unfortunately, some of those decisions lead to further family strife. In Rebecca’s most nefarious scheme Isaac is duped and inadvertently awards Jacob with his patrimony, depriving the sullen Esau of the birthright. The two sons of this ambivalent father become mortal enemies, bringing sadness to Isaac, who, frail and blind at the end of his life, must have wondered what all the laughter was about that heralded his creation.