The Question of Prophetic Certainty

The Question: How Did He Know?

God tells Abraham to bind Isaac, his son. It is a terrible command.

So how did Abraham know that this voice was truly the voice of God? Perhaps it was a demon come to make him stumble? Perhaps an illusion, a figment of the heart?

Prophecy Is Not a Text, but Seeing

This question assumes that prophecy is like a letter: one receives a message, and then must check who sent it and what it says. In other words, it would require interpretation (explanation, analysis).

But prophecy is not like that. It is an immediate perceptual experience: the prophet grasps the divine word directly, just as we grasp the world through our senses.

Think of a healthy person who sees a table in front of him. He does not ask himself, "Perhaps my eyes are deceiving me?" He simply sees. The certainty is not the conclusion of a calculation, but part of the seeing itself.

So too with Abraham. He did not "infer" that the word came from God. He perceived it with absolute certainty, and he had no doubt at all about the source of the command.

This is also what Maimonides writes (Guide for the Perplexed III:24): the Binding of Isaac teaches that what the prophet perceives in prophecy is completely certain to him. Otherwise, Abraham would not have hastened to slaughter his only son.

The conclusion. Abraham did not hesitate and did not look for proofs, because prophecy was not a hypothesis for him but a certainty – the certainty of one who sees with his own eyes.