| Bear's Den – Isaac Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Long comment, I was thinking about this song and had time to kill, haha. I think this song references the Biblical story of Isaac and Abraham. In the Bible, Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Abraham followed God's command. Abraham took his son up into the mountains, built a sacrificial altar, tied his son to the stone and was preparing to plunge the knife into Isaac when an angel appeared and basically told Abraham, "You passed the test, God knows you obey him so you don't actually have to follow through and kill your son." This song focuses on Isaac's experience during this story, "Isaac I have never seen you look so afraid / With your head pressed so hard against the stone / You look so alone." He knows his father's about to kill him, he's feeling the fear of imminent death and the pain of knowing that his father is willing to do that to him, and probably wondering if his father ever really loved him at all. "..your life just fell apart." The verse that says, "a father's love / Must be earned / While your mother need not learn / How to love you," seems to be referencing Abraham's actions to earn his "father's" (God's) love that parallels the fact that Isaac probably felt he didn't have his own father's love when he was about to be sacrificed by him. Also the line about his mother not needing to learn how to love him makes me think that if Isaac was nothing more than a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered, she shouldn't get attached to him as a son to be loved. Here is where my interpretation gets more speculative and is just my personal spin on it, I think the song is sung from the point of view of the angel, who loves Isaac (either romantically or like you would love a child, who knows what angels are thinking). I think it's the angel because of lines like, "I watched it from afar / Yes I watched as the clouds began to part" (may be watching from above the clouds) and "Isaac can you see me now" (an angel wouldn't be seen by humans normally, the only time Isaac would have seen this angel was when it came down to stop his father from killing him). Also, Abraham and Isaac were alone on the mountain aside from the angel watching them, and at one point the narrator describes watching Isaac lying on the stone and seeing the look on his face. I think the angel loves Isaac for the obvious reasons of lines like, "I've known you all my life / I worshipped the ground you walk upon," and, "I'm gonna give all my love to you," and because the speaker in this song is so deeply sympathetic to Isaac, being familiar what he's feeling, kind of lamenting the fact that he was put in this horrible situation and basically saying, "I can't understand why your father didn't love you more." I always thought Isaac's story was a sad one. Imagine Abraham untying him and them walking down the mountain together and Isaac living the rest of his life knowing his father was going to kill him. I think this song is acknowledging the tragedy of this situation for Isaac. |
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