When Abraham lays Isaac on the altar, he hears a voice crying-out from heaven “Do not lay your hand upon the boy-child” (Gen 22:12). Abraham, in some sense, wasn’t planning to “lay his hand on the child” though, right? Wasn’t he going to sacrifice him? Why doesn’t the voice say “Don’t sacrifice the boy-child” instead? Certainly, that would have been more accurate.
The language of “laying the hand” however, establishes the image of sacrifice in the scriptures. From here on out when someone lays their hand on someone/something it designates a marking-out and setting-apart for sacrifice. It designates them as belonging to the kuleana of the altar of God. This is particularly true of creatures marked-out as “sons”: hands are laid on Joshua, the son of Nun; hands are laid on the sacrifices of the Levitical system, they are called “sons of the herd”; the Levites have hands laid on them when they take the role of Israel as “firstborn sons”.
The gospel of Mark employs the same word from Gen. 22:12 (LXX) when describing the arrest of Jesus in the Garden. “They laid their hands on him” (Mk. 14:46).
Here is the true Son of Abraham, the final son of the herd, the greater son of Nun (“Jesus” is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Joshua”). On him hands are laid in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. God has raised-up an heir for the Patriarch on whom hands can finally be laid. No angel voice harks from heaven this time, no ram in a thicket is found caught, there is no escape. Christ complete the movement of Abraham’s obedience. He is not the boy-child Isaac, He is the Son of Man. And for the sins of all of the sons of Man he dies and gives his life as a ransom.
We are invited into the sonship of Jesus in baptism. With him we have hands laid on us, the hands of the pastor at baptism, the hands of the bishop at confirmation and ordination, marking us as those who belong to the fire of the Spirit. Following Jesus, we “present our bodies” on which hands have been laid, “as living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1).