Sometimes It's Good To Be Bad (Parashat VaYeira)

At the end of this week's parasha, Hashem instructs Avraham to take Yitzchak and sacrifice him.  Avraham obeys, wakes up early and takes Yitzchak, two servants, wood for the sacrifice, and saddles his donkey to travel to the place that Hashem showed him.  When they arrive, Avraham builds an altar, ties up Yitzchak and places him on the altar to be sacrificed.  He takes the knife in his hand and extends it at which point an angel calls out to him and instructs him not to kill Yitzchak.  As the pasuk states, the angel told Avraham "do not send forth a hand on the lad nor do anything to him."

Rashi explains that the reason the angel added not to do anything to Yitzchak is because, upon being told not to slaughter him, Avraham argued that he would have come for no reason and pleaded with Hashem to at least let Avraham cut Yitzchak and extract some blood as an offering.  Hashem's response was not to touch Yitzchak at all after which the angel states "now I know that you are G-d-fearing."

Why is it that when Avraham had the knife in his hand and was ready to kill his son who he loved so dearly, it wasn't clear that he was G-d-fearing, rather only after he didn't kill him??

I once heard a beautiful explanation as to why...

In actuality, the test of Akeidat Yitzchak was a two-part test.  Part one was a test to see if Avraham was willing to sacrifice his son.  Part two was a test to see if he was willing to not sacrifice him.  As is indicated by the Rashi quoted above, once Avraham was given a commandment by Hashem - he had difficulty with the idea of not completing it.  Therefore, it was only after he accepted the task of not fulfilling the commandment that Hashem knew how G-d-fearing he was.  Very often we get so caught up in our desire to keep Hashem's Torah that we fail to recognize the cases when Hashem doesn't want us to.

As a member of Hatzalah, I am sad to see that I have experienced far too many calls on a motzei-Shabbat where a person is experiencing chest pain or the like.  When we question the patient as to when the pain began, he states that it started on Shabbat.  When questioned further why he didn't call earlier, the patient responds he didn't want to desecrate Shabbat.

It was only after Avraham didn't slaughter Yitzchak that Hashem saw he was G-d-fearing!!  Sometimes, the test is not will we keep the commandment - rather, will we violate it!

May Hashem grant each of us the wisdom and understanding to differentiate between when we should do the right thing, and when the wrong thing IS the right thing.  With this wisdom, may we be zoche to always follow Hashem's commandments (even when He is commanding us to violate a previous one) and in this zechut may we see the coming of Mashiach speedily in our days...

Shabbat Shalom!