It could be inferred that, within the polytheistic society in which Abraham lived, Yahweh was already known among the many gods of the region. We know of the Patriarch, and according to the Genesis narrative, Abraham was apparently not the only one who knew his God. Genesis says: “Then Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, brought out bread and wine; and he blessed him and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High…’”
In Canaanite tradition, the title God Most High (El Elyon) referred to El, the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon. He was regarded as the creator of heaven and earth, the father of the gods, and the central figure of the religious system. This name appears in Ugaritic texts and is also preserved in the Bible, where in some passages Yahweh is identified with that same title. This indicates that, in the earliest biblical context, the God of Abraham was associated with a figure already venerated within the cultural and religious environment of Canaan.
The fact that the same title is used for both does not mean they were the same being, but it does suggest that Yahweh was not yet exclusive—rather, he was one among several names of divine authority in the region. Moreover, the fact that Abraham visited polytheistic sanctuaries shows that his God could be recognized within the religious framework of other peoples. The exclusivity of one God had not yet been established, and in Abraham one can perceive an attitude of respect toward elements of pagan worship which he also used, but for different purposes.
The existence of a priest implies worshipers—that is, there were believers who visited the place regularly. There is no solid textual reason to claim that this priest served exclusively the God of Abraham, except for the later interpretation offered by the author of Hebrews in the New Testament. However, if we understand the religion of that era in its historical context, we can deduce with considerable certainty that Melchizedek was the caretaker of a polytheistic sanctuary where the God of Adam was also venerated. Abraham’s difference was that he embraced Him as his only God.
Even so, monotheism as a faith did not yet exist nor was it understood as we would understand it today. God establishes it formally later, with the Decalogue or the Covenant. Meanwhile, Abraham’s own family and descendants continued using religious forms carried from Sumer to Canaan, even beyond the destruction of the temple. A clear example of the power that ancestral polytheistic religion held over Israel is the famous episode of the golden calf, built to worship while God Himself was speaking with Moses.
The tension between emerging monotheism and dominant polytheism did not disappear with Abraham. His descendants continued to reflect that internal struggle for generations. After Joshua’s death, the Israelites began to worship Canaanite gods, especially Baal and Ashtoreth. King Solomon, influenced by his many foreign wives, built altars for pagan deities. Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom (Israel), made two golden calves to prevent the people from going up to Jerusalem. He knew the people’s religious inclination well and decided to entice them with what they most desired.
In the southern kingdom, Judah, King Manasseh restored pagan altars and worshiped all their gods. Even after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews who fled to Egypt continued worshiping the “Queen of Heaven,” a deity likely derived from the Sumerian goddess Inanna, though by then she was known as Ashtoreth. During the Babylonian exile, the prophet Ezekiel saw in a vision the elders of Israel secretly worshiping images inside the temple. Idolatry was constant in Israel’s history—from before it became a nation to long after its dispersion—because that was the religious culture into which they had been born.
One of the most notable features of the spiritual understanding Abraham received was an incipient monotheism. That singular faith struggled to flourish in an environment deeply hostile to exclusive devotion to one God. Abraham’s faith was channeled through ritual forms inherited from polytheism, and in that way it reached the time of Christianity, which ultimately replaced polytheism as the dominant system.
Although Abraham came to know the one true God, it was not until Moses that monotheism was established as a perpetual spiritual law. It was then that God chose a people for Himself, intending that they would be an example of His government among the nations. Yet Israel resisted that calling, clinging to the religious practices of the polytheistic nations it so admired.
Abraham, born in Sumer along with his family, was living in Haran with his father Terah when he received God’s call to leave his land and go to Canaan. Upon arrival, he crossed the country until he reached the sanctuary of Shechem, where the sacred oak of Moreh stood. Genesis clarifies that at that time the Canaanites inhabited the land.
In Canaanite religion, sacred trees were symbols of divine presence or access to the spiritual world. Oaks (and other large trees such as the terebinth) were regarded as sacred trees by the Canaanites and by other peoples of the ancient Near East, including Phoenicians and Arameans. High places with sacred trees were used as open-air sanctuaries. This is why Israel’s prophets repeatedly denounced worship “under every green tree” (under every oak or leafy tree, as 2 Kings 16:4, Jeremiah 2:20, and others say). In most cases, high places were altars or sanctuaries erected on hills, mountains, or elevated platforms used for sacrifice, worship, and religious rites.
According to the text, the first thing the patriarch does there is build an altar to Yahweh. These altars were not temples, but piles of stones marking places where an encounter with the divine was believed to have occurred. Over time, however, many of these sites—visited by generations of believers and associated with sacred experiences—came to be regarded as sanctuaries. And as the community grew, or as worship became organized, some of these rudimentary sanctuaries gradually developed into temples administered by priests.
The narrative then shows Abraham moving toward the Negev, but due to a severe famine he went down to Egypt and later returned to the original point, where he pitched his tents by the sacred oak of Mamre the Amorite in Hebron, and there built another altar to Yahweh.
This makes even more sense if we recall what historian Georges Roux said: archaeological evidence of Ubaid-period temples along the Euphrates shows that ancient villages grew around a sanctuary rather than around a castle, as would happen centuries later in Europe. Sanctuaries were spiritual and communal centers. In the biblical narrative, we can see that Abraham treated these places with great respect and reverence.
Then comes the episode in which God promises him descendants. But Abraham asks for proof, which clearly contrasts with the image of unshakable faith that is often transmitted to us about the patriarch. Perhaps we should understand that all of us—even the one called the Father of faith—must grow in our trust in God.
I remember that when I was a child in the faith, I also used to ask God for proof. Over time I stopped, because I learned to trust His Word. This happens to us because we hear, we feel… but we do not see what we have been promised. Sometimes, however, I still feel tempted to ask for a sign—not because I do not believe what God told me, but because of myself: fear of being mistaken, fear that it was not Him but my own thoughts.
God can speak in many ways: through thoughts, through a clear inner voice. Sometimes you realize instantly that it is not something produced by your own mind. But because I know the mind is the battlefield of spiritual warfare, I am very cautious and distrustful of any voice received that way. Sometimes there is no other way, and they must speak like that because something is urgent. Even so, I thank God that, in my case, most of the time He speaks through dreams.
The text continues by saying that God responds to Abraham’s request for proof through a ritual known in the ancient world: a covenant made by cutting animals, a practice common in Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, and Canaan. Later, that covenant is confirmed through circumcision, another preexisting custom among many Semitic, Egyptian, and Arab cultures.
In chapter 18, Yahweh appears to Abraham by the oak of Mamre, a place that had already been used as a sanctuary. Later, in Beersheba, Abraham plants a tamarisk—a tree also considered sacred—and invokes the name of God there. All of this shows that Abraham pitched his tents near known sanctuaries or sacred trees, using those spaces as points of connection with the divine.
Even burials reflect this logic. Sarah is buried in the cave of Machpelah, located near the sacred oak of Mamre. That was not a random choice. It was situated in an environment that already carried sacred significance. Abraham had built an altar there, and there he chose to bury his wife. More than practical, it was symbolic: uniting the place of worship with final rest, spiritually claiming the territory, and re-signifying it for his God.
Jacob buries Rachel along the road near Bethlehem and sets up a pillar over her grave. Although no sanctuary is mentioned, the use of the pillar—common in ancient cults—and its proximity to a symbolic city suggests that place became a point of spiritual memory.
Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, is buried beneath an oak near Bethel, and the tree is named Allon-bacuth, meaning “Oak of Weeping.” In a culture where trees were sacred and natural spaces carried spiritual meaning, this was not accidental. It was a way of inscribing loss into the sacred landscape, as they had already done with stones, altars, and pillars.
These ancient men preserved the only religious system they knew: one created by human beings to honor their gods.
Abraham did not invent new forms; he used existing ones to bear witness to his God. Although it is not stated whether he offered sacrifices on those altars, it is clear that through his actions Abraham deliberately left marks in sacred places of polytheism as testimony to the God he served. The patriarch knew what he was doing.
In the biblical narrative, there is no record that Abraham offered sacrifices to God, except in the episode of Isaac. But that passage is questionable for several reasons. According to Higher Criticism, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac does not belong to the original Genesis text but is a later addition, possibly from the northern tribes of Israel and associated with the Elohist source. More importantly, the idea that God would demand the sacrifice of a human son contradicts His character profoundly.
If we consider the voice of the prophets, we will see that not only is the mandate of Isaac’s sacrifice put into question, but it is clearly stated that God never commanded human sacrifices—nor did such a thing ever enter His mind. The prophetic ministry arose precisely to confront the people’s erroneous spiritual beliefs, beliefs that led them to practices God considered abominable.
In the time of the prophet Jeremiah, God denounces this firmly: “They have built the high places of Baal… to make their sons pass through the fire as burnt offerings to Molech—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jeremiah 32:35). According to studies of ancient religions, this Baal was originally the Sumerian god Enlil, though under another name.
As we know, Enlil was regarded as the creator of the religious system itself, including sacrifices, priesthood, and liturgy in the high places, as cuneiform records of the first human civilization indicate. These beliefs, adopted by neighboring peoples and inherited by the Israelites, shaped a system that drifted away from the true God, whose voice the prophets tried to restore. Jeremiah’s words make it clear that God not only rejected human sacrifices, but regarded them as repulsive.
It should also be noted that when God says, “I did not command it, nor did it enter my mind,” He is making clear that He does not incite sin nor command perverse acts. From His own words we can infer that He would not test someone’s loyalty by asking them to commit an abomination, because He knows the human heart. So how can that character be reconciled with the story of Abraham and Isaac, where God is presented as asking for what He Himself condemns?
The New Testament develops that scene as a test of faith. It says that God wanted to test Abraham by asking him to offer his son as a burnt offering. But does God, who knows hearts, need to push a man to the extreme of requesting a killing in order to test his loyalty? Does God need to tempt a human being with an act He later condemns as an “abomination”?
The spiritual logic of the prophets clashes with this idea. Jeremiah’s message and that of other prophets not only denies the spiritual legitimacy of human sacrifice, but shows a God who abhors that practice and attributes it to the corruption of the people’s beliefs.
The New Testament itself says clearly in James: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself tempts no one.”
This verse is direct: God tempts no one. The text even clarifies that God cannot be tempted by evil, establishing an absolute distance between God and any malicious kind of testing.
Yet this stands in direct tension with Genesis 22:1, which says: “After these things God tested Abraham…” (some translations say “tempted” instead of “tested”), and even more with New Testament theology, which interprets that episode as the model of supreme obedience and compares it to the sacrifice of Jesus—as if God needed a demonstration of obedience based on willingness to kill, or any action He regards as evil. How can the same God who says “it never entered my mind” in Jeremiah, and “He tempts no one” in James, have asked Abraham to kill his son as proof of faith?
James also implies that if someone tempts, it is not God. In that context, temptation comes from evil desire or from the evil one, as other passages interpret it. This lends weight to the suspicion that the narrative of Isaac’s sacrifice does not reflect the true voice of God, but rather a construction influenced by religions that did practice human sacrifice.
Certain New Testament interpretations and Levitical texts distorted the image and character of God, presenting Him as a being who demands bloodshed to satisfy justice, aromas of roasted fat to calm anger, and sacrificed animals as food. This ritualistic vision influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of atonement, which presents Jesus as the ultimate victim.
Yet this perspective distorts the essence of a just and merciful God. A truly just God does not require the death of an innocent person to exercise justice. Which of us, being imperfect, would demand the death of a righteous person as the price for repairing harm? That is logic contrary to love and justice. It replaces mercy with ritualism and turns God into an image He is not.
As I mentioned in The Falsification of the Voice of God, the author of Hebrews did not recognize the sacrificial system as a human error; he replaced it with an even more radical figure: the sacrifice of a man. This was not a simple spiritual reinterpretation, but a doctrinal maneuver that fit the religious thinking of certain sectors of his time.
After the destruction of the temple, several groups within Judaism—such as the Pharisees and the scribes—began to move away from sacrificial ritual, prioritizing study, prayer, and justice. This transition reveals that even those who had copied, taught, and defended the system no longer considered it valid or necessary.
It is reasonable to think the author of Hebrews belonged to the circle of scribes or the priesthood, given the technical knowledge he demonstrates of Levitical laws. His attempt to justify the end of sacrifices by appealing to a new covenant with a “superior” sacrifice was not simply an act of faith, but a conscious maneuver by those who once again manipulated God’s Law to adapt it to a new context.
After the year 70, with the temple destroyed and the sacrificial system interrupted, religious groups faced a crisis of identity: how to relate to God without temple, altar, priesthood, and blood. Already in the sixth century BC, during a similar crisis, God confronted the people’s false security—the belief that their temple and rituals would protect them regardless of disobedience.
In that context, God declared through Jeremiah:
“Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh is this!’ … You trust in deceptive words that do not profit. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and go after other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before Me in this house that bears My name and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to keep doing all these abominations? Has this house, which bears My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I Myself have seen it, says Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 7:4, 11)
With these words, He denounced trust placed in a building while the people lived in injustice. The temple, instead of being a place of encounter with the divine, had become a refuge of hypocrisy and lies. And yet, centuries after that warning, after the destruction of the second temple, some chose to build a new doctrine on the same foundation: a more “perfect” sacrifice offered in place of the old system, but with the same ritual logic God had already rejected.
Some, like the Pharisees, preserved identity through study of the Law, prayer, and ethics. But others, like the author of Hebrews, sought a theological escape in order to avoid acknowledging a truth the prophets had already declared centuries earlier: that the sacrificial system was not instituted by God, but created by human beings, and that in Israel its writing was the work of scribes. To sustain that structure, some reinterpreted the death of Jesus as a unique and eternal sacrifice. This formula solved two needs at once: replacing a lost and increasingly discredited ritual, and justifying continuity of belief in the sacrificial religious system within a new framework. Yet this doctrinal answer does not acknowledge that the real problem was not the absence of the temple, but the very foundation of the sacrificial system itself—whose legitimacy had already been denounced by the prophets.
The same caste of scribes who wrote in God’s name that sacrifices were a “perpetual statute” now declares—also in His name—that they have expired. But God had already warned against this falsification: “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the Law of Yahweh is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie” (Jeremiah 8:8). And in the same prophetic message, God says plainly that He never ordered or demanded sacrifices or burnt offerings. The letter to the Hebrews thus becomes the doctrinal face of a silent decision that had been forming: abandoning a declining system without admitting its human origin.
This is the story of a religious system that was maintained, adapted, and finally disguised under new forms, but was never recognized for what it truly was: a human invention attributed to God. In the third part we will see how this system not only survived, but remains in force to this day.