A chance remark by a student in a course that I am teaching on the Akeda — the story of the binding of Isaac — led me to view the festival of Purim in a new light. The student noted that there are many stylistic parallels between the Akeda narrative and the Book of Esther.

Without giving the remark too much further thought, I responded, “Of course, they are both stories of peril and a last-minute reprieve.” In the Akeda, it was Isaac, and in Esther, it was the Jewish people — but Isaac represents the entire Jewish people. He, in his own person, was in fact the totality of the covenanted community at that time. He was the future that was in peril. “It’s the same story,” I concluded, and went on with the class.

But after the class, the broader issue continued to percolate. I was struck, first, by the contrast between the giddiness that pervades our celebration of Purim and the sense of doom that overcame the community in Shushan in the days prior to their rescue, as well as the terror that accompanies my reading of the Akeda. On Purim, what we celebrate is our redemption — and properly so — but the fact that for a moment our future as a people was imperiled is well repressed.

On further thought, however, it is not at all repressed. The giddiness is simply the other face of the same coin; the relief at having been saved from the gallows emerges as unbridled levity. In contrast, at the end of the Akeda story, Isaac disappears. No levity there.

Then I reread the haftara for this Shabbat, Shabbat Zahor. No levity there either. King Saul is commanded to obliterate Amalek but doesn’t quite complete the task. Shmuel, the prophet, speaking in God’s name, is furious. Saul did not destroy all the flock nor did he kill Agag, the Amalek king. The result is that Samuel rips the kingship from Saul and then proceeds to kill Agag.

But to pursue the issue of thematic parallels, the Shmuel/Saul/Agag story and the Akeda both deal with the theme of obedience to God. In both cases, what God commands is obedience, even in the face of what might be called humanistic considerations. Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son, and Saul is commanded to obliterate all traces of Amalek, even their cattle, even their king. Abraham passed the test, but Saul failed it. Abraham is praised for having obeyed God, but Saul loses his kingship because he disobeyed God.

None of this affects how we react in a personal way to the two stories. What I have called the “humanist considerations” have led some to suggest that Abraham really failed the test, that God really wanted Abraham to refuse; others find the story terrifying — a justification of child abuse. And in some circles, the Shmuel/Saul/Agag story is eliminated as the haftara for Shabbat Zahor (in favor of a chapter from Esther), precisely because it exalts a God who demands even more bloodshed.

Which brings us finally to God. God, of course, does not appear in Esther — at least that’s the conventional view. But it seems clear that at least to the canonizers of the Tanach, God was omnipresent in the events, albeit as a hidden hand; that’s why, after all, they included the book in the Scriptures.

But God, explicitly, sets into motion both the Akeda and the obliteration of Amalek. These two overt appearances of God belie our almost intuitive tendency to view God as warm, compassionate, and nurturing, the image of God conveyed, for example, in that extraordinary liturgical poem, “Adon Olam.” The God of “Adon Olam” is one “into whose hand I entrust my spirit when I sleep and when I awake, and with my spirit, my body too, God is with me; I shall not fear.”

In contrast, the God of the Akeda and of the Amalek narratives is forbidding. Our ancestors realized that no human being can literally “know” God. But rather than feeling inhibited about this limitation, they felt liberated and proceeded to portray God in infinitely varied ways — most of them positive, upbeat ones: the “Adon Olam” God — but sometimes in forbidding tones. Hence the story of Abraham’s trial and Amalek’s destruction.

The result is the infinite theological richness of our Torah.