Why did God provide a ram instead of a lamb to replace Isaac?

[tonychanyt]

Gen 22:

7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

Isaac and Abraham expected a lamb offering. It foreshadowed the substitutionary atonement of our Lord when He died in our place on the cross as the Lamb of God. John 1:

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

But then Abraham did not sacrifice a lamb:

13 Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

It was a ram, not a lamb as expected. Why?

A ram is a fully grown male sheep, whereas a lamb is a young sheep. Both imageries/symbols are essential as types of Christ. A ram was used as the burnt offering on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:5). Further, Jesus was the Passover lamb on the Cross (1 Corinthians 5:7).

God provided a ram to replace Isaac as a type of Christ to foreshadow the true Lamb of God who was to come two millennia later.