In Parashat Vayera, God orders the Binding of Yitzchak: “And bring him up as a burnt offering (le-ola)” (Bereishit 22:2).
Rabbi Yona ibn Janach (Ribag) notes one of the meanings of the letter lamed when it is added to the beginning of a noun may be “for” or “in place of.” He writes:
"For I believe that God, may He be blessed and praised, when He wanted to show to all creation the travails of Avraham, peace be upon him, and the rewards He gave him for his suffering, He spoke to him with a phrasing that encompassed two understandings. One of them is what the masses will understand, and the second is what individuals may understand in it, and this is what “And bring him up as a burnt offering” accomplishes.
The masses’ understanding is what is connoted by the verse’s simple meaning – that is, to offer him as a sacrifice… However, its individual meaning is the following: bring him up there, on one of the mountains, in place of a burnt offering — that is, God wants Avraham to bring Yitzchak up to the mountain to Him at the time that God will desire that Avraham bring him a sacrifice.
Avraham initially applied the masses’ meaning, and God foresaw that this common meaning was what would initially occur to him, but He wanted to show people his travail and the rewards He gave him for it, and when Avraham achieved the matter that God wanted from him, namely bringing his son up to the mountain, the Blessed One called from the heavens: That will do, Avraham."
In other words, it was never God’s intention for Yitzchak to be slaughtered. He commands, “And bring him up as a burnt offering,” knowing that Avraham will interpret the phrasing of the command in the usual meaning (what the masses would understand). However, the true meaning, God’s true intent in this command, is for Avraham to bring Yitzchak up to the mountain in place of an ola – that is, in such a way that he will be considered by God as an ola. Otherwise, it may be that God would have phrased the command without the lamed.
Ribag makes the following conclusion with regard to the eternal nature of the Torah:
"This is it, and may the Lord God grant you success in it, for in my mind, it is a pleasing matter, fine and wondrous, though no one else seems to have apprehended it… But this will negate the confusion of one who demands that we accept the Torah’s mutability."
There is no question that Ribag is responding here to a common Muslim claim that the incident of the Binding of Yitzchak proves that God changes His mind; just as God rethinks His command to sacrifice Yitzchak, they argue, so He may rethink the commands of the Torah, exchanging Moshe’s revelation for Muhammad’s. Ribag counters that, in actuality, God does not change His mind over the course of this story; He never commanded Avraham to kill Yitzchak.
This is a good example of a confluence and cooperation between the science of language, biblical exegesis, and the sphere of faith and philosophy.