22:5 So he11 said to his servants, “You two stay12 here with the donkey while13 the boy and I go up there. We will worship14 and then return to you.”15
tnHeb “And Abraham.” The proper name has been replaced in the translation by the pronoun (“he”) for stylistic reasons.
12
tn The Hebrew verb is masculine plural, referring to the two young servants who accompanied Abraham and Isaac on the journey.
13
tn The disjunctive clause (with the compound subject preceding the verb) may be circumstantial and temporal.
14
tn This Hebrew word literally means “to bow oneself close to the ground.” It often means “to worship.”
15
sn It is impossible to know what Abraham was thinking when he said, “we will … return to you.” When he went he knew (1) that he was to sacrifice Isaac, and (2) that God intended to fulfill his earlier promises through Isaac. How he reconciled those facts is not clear in the text. Heb 11:17–19 suggests that Abraham believed God could restore Isaac to him through resurrection.