God’s Bounty
Abraham has a problem. He confuses the literal with the metaphorical. It is a not a problem singular to him, however, but rather has been passed down to generations even unto today. Since proof of God fails to exist, attribution can only be metaphorical:
“Thou hast give me both land and revenue,
And sent me my livelihood.”
Hyperbole
The opening words of the play are metaphorical. In this particular case it is an example of hyperbolic metonymy. The reference to his heart is purely figurative language, but we all know the meaning:
“Father of heaven omnipotent,
With all my heart to thee I call.”
More Godly Metaphor
Put together worshipers and their religion and toss in the presence of God and before too long the place is swimming with metaphorical references to all those aspects of the deity stimulating worship. Even if one presupposes the literal truth, however, the phraseology can still manage to introduce a little figurative tweaking into the discourse:
“Lord of heaven, thy grace let sink,
For my heart was never half so sore”
Weirdness
No matter how profound one’s faith, there is simply no getting around the fact that this story is just plain weird. Even without the attention to details, it is a weird, but expanded upon as with this dramatic interpretation, it becomes just downright grotesque. Part of it grotesquerie is intimately connected to its creepy metaphorical imagery:
"Ah, mercy, father, mourn ye no more.
Your weeping maketh my heart sore
As my own death that I shall suffer.”
The Whole Darn Thing
Although the story of Abraham and Isaac precedes Christianity by a few thousand years, by the time this particular drama appeared, the story itself had become ingrained into the Christian myth as metaphorical foreshadowing. Whatever the original purpose of the story may have been, by the time it was co-opted by Christian writers, it had become something else entirely: a metaphor for the sacrificial story of father and son represented by God sacrificing Jesus for the salvation of humanity with the inevitable caveat, of course, that God is greater than man because He goes through the sacrifice.
