I do not claim the following take on the binding of Isaac to be true; what I do claim, however, is that it is a possibility that my guess is true, because it’s just that: a guess.
Abraham lived in a culture where child sacrifice was the norm, so it would have been a surprise when God sent an angel to intervene. The moral of the parable is then, of course, that human sacrifice is wrong.
A problem arises, however, if you interpret the Bible literally. Why did God wait so long before teaching man that human sacrifice is wrong? Why didn’t he interrupt the first human sacrifice or, with his omnipotence and omnipresence, speak to all of mankind and teach them it was wrong before any human sacrifice was even considered?
The answer to this is very simple: the story isn’t real. Whoever wrote the story looked around at society and saw the horror that was human sacrifice. And of course, since human sacrifice was a divine command, the only way to stop it was with an opposing divine command. Hence the binding of Isaac.
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