This is the most astonishing verse in the Akeidah. In Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 22:10, Isaac is the one who speaks. He does not beg. He does not flee. He instructs his father: Bind me properly, aright, lest I tremble from the affliction of my soul, and be cast into the pit of destruction, and there be found profaneness in thy offering.
Isaac is worried about the offering's validity. A sacrifice must be brought willingly, without blemish. If his body flinches at the knife, the offering will be rendered invalid — pesulah. So he asks to be bound more tightly than necessary. He will not allow his own fear to disqualify his father's devotion.
Then the Aramaic turns the camera skyward. The eyes of Abraham looked on the eyes of Izhak; but the eyes of Izhak looked towards the angels on high. Isaac sees the angels; Abraham cannot. And the angels speak: Come, behold how these solitary ones who are in the world kill the one the other; he who slayeth delays not; he who is to be slain reacheth forth his neck.
The heavens are watching, astonished. Two solitary monotheists in a pagan world are performing the most intimate trust in all of human history.
The Maggidim taught that Isaac's request is the moment he becomes a patriarch. The takeaway: the sacrifice is not what Abraham does with the knife. It is what Isaac does with the rope.