Does God Tempt People? Genesis 22:1 and James 1:13 (Alleged Bible "Contradictions")

 

Many people claim that there is a contradiction in the Bible between James 1:13 and Genesis 22:1. Here is quote from Islamic apologist Bassam Zawadi from his article on the Answering Christianity website titled "Contradictions In The New Testament That Have No Good Answer":

"James 1:13 says God tempts no man but Genesis 22:1 says that God tempted Abraham"

Here are both of the texts in questions:

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” (Genesis 22:1 ESV)

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:13 ESV)

I will focus primarily on the verse from the book of Genesis.

It should be noted that the passage from the book of Genesis says that God tested Abraham, not that God tempted him in the way James 1:13 might use the word.  The majority of translations used the word "tested". The only others I could find (though there might be others) that used the word "tempted" were the Douay-Rheum, the KJV, and the Brenton Septuagint Translation. All the others used the word "tested".

The word translated "tested" or "tempted" here is the Hebrew word נָסָה. Here is the definition given by Brown Driver Briggs (I had to snap a picture of it from an online version so I could not copy and paste it)

As you can see, Genesis 22:1 is listed by this lexicon as an example of where the word נָסָה is used in the sense of "to test" or "to try". I underlined it in red where you can see Gen. 22:1 listed. This should be read that God "tested" Abraham, not that God "tempted" him. Thus, there is no contradiction here.

It may be objected that James 1:13 and Genesis 22:1 in the LXX (Septuagint) use the same Greek word which is translated as "tested" or "tempted" (as it is in James 1:13). However, it needs to be remembered that Genesis was originally written in Hebrew, not Greek. Therefore, the Septuagint cannot be the deciding factor in this particular discussion. 

Moreover, scholars have recognized the meaning of "tested" in Genesis 22:1. Here is what Victor P. Hamilton says in his commentary on Genesis:

"The text clearly makes the point that what follows is a divine testing, not a demonic temptation." (Victor P. Hamilton, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament: The Book of Genesis: Chapters 18-50, pg. 101)

There is no contradiction between Genesis 22:1 and James 1:13, since "tested" or "tempted" is being used with different meanings and this is hardly a "contradiction" that has no "good answer" as Zawadi said in his article.