The Binding of Isaac is terrifying in the Torah. In the Targum, it is something else entirely. Isaac was not a passive child led to slaughter. He was thirty-six years old, and he volunteered.
It started with a fight. Ishmael boasted that his circumcision at thirteen proved his devotion, since he could have refused. Isaac answered: "If the Holy One, blessed be He, were to require all my members, I would not delay." God heard this declaration, and that is what triggered the trial. The Binding was not arbitrary. It was a response to Isaac's own words.
On the third day of travel, Abraham saw the cloud of glory hovering over Mount Moriah—a visible sign invisible to the servants, who were told to wait behind. The altar Abraham built was not new. The Targum says it was the same altar Adam had originally constructed, destroyed in the Flood, rebuilt by Noah, and destroyed again in the generation of the Tower of Babel. Abraham was the fourth builder of the same sacred altar.
At the moment of sacrifice, Isaac asked his father to bind him tightly so he would not flinch and render the offering unfit. Then the Targum describes a split screen: Abraham's eyes looked at Isaac. Isaac's eyes looked at the angels in heaven. Abraham could not see them. The angels wept, crying out, "Come, behold how these solitary ones kill the one the other!" The ram that appeared was no ordinary animal—it had been created during the twilight of the sixth day of Creation, prepared since the foundation of the world.
After the binding, the angels carried Isaac to the school of Shem, where he studied for three years. And Sarah? Satan told her Abraham had killed their son. She cried out, choked, and died from the shock. The Binding of Isaac cost Sarah her life.