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The sheep once spared · José Saramago

Brief quotation · the desert scene · 2017 edition, p. 262

Sacrifice, then, or there will be no covenant […]

Portuguese original · brief quotation

Sacrifica então, ou não haverá aliança […]

Reading notes

Jesus earlier spared a lamb. In the desert, God demands the grown sheep as a sacrifice, and Jesus obeys. Saramago confirms this sequence in his 1991 interview. This is a modern novel, not an episode from the canonical Gospels.

The condition of the covenant puts care to the test: can Jesus keep protecting a life when commanded to do the opposite? This reading concerns God as a character in this novel; it does not describe every religious understanding of God.

Comparison with Genesis 22 reveals a difference: Isaac’s sacrifice is stopped there; the sheep dies here. A shared concern with obedience does not make the endings equivalent.

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