Genesis 22:6-18: "The Binding of the Child" beyond gender
6 And High Parent took the wood of the rising-offering and laid it on They Will Laugh, their child; and they took the fire and the slaughtering knife in their hand, and the two of them went together.
7 And They Will Laugh spoke to High Parent, their parent, and said, “My parent.” And they said, “Here I am, my child.” And they said, “Here are the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb for a rising-offering?”
8 And High Parent said, “These Are will see to the lamb for a rising-offering, my child.” So the two of them went together.
9 And they came to the place of which These Are had told them, and High Parent built the altar there, and set the wood, and bound They Will Laugh, their child, and laid them on the altar upon the wood.
10 And High Parent sent out their hand and took the slaughtering knife to slay their child.
11 And the messenger of Future Present called out to them out of the skies, and they said, “High Parent, High Parent.” And they said, “Here I am.”
12 And they said, “Do not reach out your hand against the young teenager, do not do anything to them. For now I know that you are Elohin-fearing, and you have not spared your child, your singled one, from Me.”
13 And High Parent lifted up her eyes and saw and here another sheep caught in the thicket by the horns. And High Parent went and took the sheep, and raised it up for a rising-offering instead of their child.
14 And High Parent called the name of that place Future Present Will See; as it is said to this day: in the mountain where Future Present shall be seen.
15 And the messenger of Future Present called to High Parent a second time out of the skies,
16 And she said, “By Myself I swear, Future Present’s speech, because you have done this thing, and have not spared your daughter, your singled one,
17 For blessing, I will bless you, and greatly will I multiply your offspring as the stars of the skies, and as the sand on the seashore; and the offspring will take possession of the gates of their enemies;
18 And by your offspring all the nations of the land will be blessed, because you have listened to My voice.”
Often, when I teach Toratah, I’m asked: what would a Bible beyond gender look like? For years I wasn’t sure how to approach this in the Biblical text. After all, Hebrew is a binary language, and names are literary devices that not only gendered but also carry meaning relavant to the story. English, with its neutral forms, offered an opening to explore—but what about the names themselves? What if I translated them into their meanings? The passage above is a proof-of-concept, applied to the story of the Akeda.
I translated the Divine’s names Elohin as These Are and Tehovah as Future Present.
Future Present (time), from יְהֹוָה/תְהֹוָה Jehovah\Tehovah.
These Are, from Elohin\Elohim אֱלֹהִים/אֱלֹהִין.