Genesis 22:13: “And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.”
I never really considered the significance of the ram being caught in the thicket. My initial thought was, well God had to have the ram held in place by something. But as I thought about this, I recalled reading about an archeological discovery made back the thirties in Southern Iraq in the area that was known as Ur. This was Abraham’s home town.
British Archeologist Charles Leonard Whoolley was excavating the Death Pit of Ur. This was a graveyard site for kings and nobility from the land of Ur. He found an object guarding the tomb that he called the Ram in the Thicket because it resembled the story in Genesis 22. The image is not so much that of a ram, goat or young bull that appears to be caught in a thicket, but is actually more a picture of a horned animal standing on its hind legs eating something at the top of a bush. This is dated at about 2050 BC. The picture of a horned animal reaching for a high branch would bear out this date as this is when there was a 300 year draught in the land of Ur and goats or similar horned animals would have been reaching high on bushes to eat because such feeding in the wild was scarce due to the draught. Abraham lived or was born about 1815 BC so he would have been born during this draught and more significantly when this symbol of a horned animal reaching high on a branch to feed was a known symbol. No one really knows what the symbol represents. It is speculated, however, that this somehow represented the gods of that era taking a soul up to heaven. Another idea, which I think is more logical, is that the horned animal reaching up a thicket trying to get the last morsel of food was a picture of the struggle to survive during this 300 year draught. The horned animal could be a representation of Amar-utu a horned animal which represented one of their Mesopotamian/Akkadian gods. It was a common practice to offer a human sacrifice i.e., child to this god in return for food, and water to sustain physical life as well as to obtain eternal life. The horned animal reaching for that last morsel of food symbolizes Amar-utu providing out of the scarcity of the land.
The word thicket in the Hebrew is savek which means to entwine, or an entwining vine, tree or brush. It is not really a bushy type plant as we would imagine. In fact a fairly good picture of a savek can be found on the internet if you google up Ram in a Thicket. The word ram is derived for a sort of an all-purpose root word aval which is a word for any animal with horns. It could be a goat, deer, ram or horned bull.
Considering the words for ram and thicket and looking at the picture of the Mesopotamian god guarding the Death Pit I would not be surprised that when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God told him to look behind him where he saw an image similar to one he may have seen as a child growing up in the land of Ur to which many children were similarly sacrificed. He saw the image of Marduk or as it is known in the Akkadian language Amar-utu which means the calf of Utu (the sun god) or the young bull of the sun. Amar-utu would fit the Hebrew word aval which translators render as a ram but could also be rendered as a young horned bull. The god Utu is often pictured with horns. As indicated earlier, many children were sacrificed to this god during this time of draught and famine in hopes that the young bull of Utu would provide rain.
So when Abraham took the ram or young bull and sacrificed it instead of his son he was putting to death, so to speak, the pagan god Amar-utu, the god of his youth and declaring his complete loyalty to the God Jehovah that revealed Himself to him. God was declaring that He was a God that demanded no human sacrifice of a child to obtain life and life eternal but instead He would offer His own son as a sacrifice to bring life and life eternal to him and to us. Just as Utu demanded the sacrifice of one’s son in order to grant life, God also demanded the sacrifice of a son, only it would be His Son to grant not only life but eternal life.
When times get rough, as they are now for many believers, we tend to get desperate and turn to many things to survive or find security. Sometimes we will sacrifice things very dear to us in hopes that it will get God’s attention. In making these sacrifices of our time and finances we may expect to God think: “Oy, what this person is willing to give up for me, surely I must provide what he wants.” Instead he may be telling us to look behind us and see his aval (ram, young bull) in the thicket.” Where the gods of this world demands a sacrifice of what is most dear to us (time, health, time with family etc.) to give us the security we need, God is making no such demands from us, only to accept his gift of what was most dear to Him. In accepting this gift, we will find life and life eternal.
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