"Please. . ."

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah: and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." (Genesis 22:1-2)

The Hebrew for "Take now thy son" is not simply the imperative, "Kach" -- "Take," but "Kach-na" -- "Please take." "Na" is the "particle of entreaty," which is the means of phrasing a polite request. It appears with a command in only one other place that I can find (via the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon): Isaiah 7:3, where God tells Isaiah to go meet Ahaz King of Judah to give him a message concerning the kings of Syria and Israel. It is not clear whether verses 10-25 are part of the same conversation between Isaiah and Ahaz or from another time, but they are notable and perhaps there is a connection: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (v. 14)

In Genesis 22, God is asking a hard thing of Abraham. And he says "please."

Abraham could have said "no." At the least, he could have argued or pled for mercy. He did so for the people of Sodom; would he not do so for his son, his only son whom he loved? "No. Let me alone; let me live with my family and be at peace. Do not ask this thing of me." God might have accepted that. He did, after all, ask politely. The covenant of God that Abraham would be the father of many nations was irrevocable; it would have stood.

But the Promise would have come about in some other way, and Abraham would not have been part of it. It is only after these things that the LORD tells him that "in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Abraham's obedience here is comparable with that of Our Lady. She, too, doubtless knew that becoming part of the Story in the manner that was asked of her would be hard.

It may be that in all of Scripture, God asks no harder thing of anyone than he did of Abraham -- save one, and he also was free to refuse:

"And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt." (Mark 14:36)