The text of Stravinsky's Abraham and Isaac (1963) is drawn from the Book of Genesis. Stravinsky's setting is in Hebrew, a language the composer had no familiarity with when he received a commission from the Israel Festival Committee in 1962. Stravinsky had previously set only Russian, Slavonic, English, Latin, Italian, and French texts; in composing this work, he called upon his friend Sir Isaiah Berlin to instruct him in the meaning and spoken nuances of the Hebrew text.

Abraham and Isaac is scored for a small orchestra: two flutes, alto flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, horn, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, and string quintet. The vocal line, however, is clearly the centerpiece, the ensemble mainly providing accompaniment. The baritone serves as narrator but does not dramatize the text by representing the different characters; as Stravinsky insisted, the soloist "does not impersonate the protagonists but tells the whole story."

The work is divided into six parts performed without interruption. The text and music are closely connected, reflecting the composer's close attention to the natural syllabic stresses of the Hebrew language. Stravinsky's treatment of the text falls into two main categories: at times lyrical, or "bel-Cantor ... melismatic," in his words, at others recitative-like or sprechstimme in style. Absent from the work are expressive effects or what Stravinsky called "musical descriptions or illustrations of the text," a feature the composer indeed shunned in most of his mature works.

Abraham and Isaac falls into Stravinsky's serial period; accordingly, the melodic and harmonic material is derived from a twelve-note series. However, Stravinsky stressed the importance of the series' smaller units (i.e. hexachords) and made free use of added octaves and fifths. Abraham and Isaac features the use of canon; in typical Stravinskian style, the music is also rhythmically vigorous and metrically complex.

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