Child
Sacrifice
:
Abstract
The story here of the Israelites
-
from the Exodus to the
Exile and
their return
- collects all of the
Biblical references
to
child sacrifice in worship of the gods
as an explanation of the problematic “Show
them no mercy”
clause which has raised questions as to whether God
ordered genocide, and how this fits with Jesus’
words:
‘Love
your enemies…’
“Show
them no mercy”
was not
because the people in those countries sinned;
everyone does that.
“Show
them no mercy”
was not
because of idolatry;
every nation outside, and many inside Israel, did that.
The people already in the
“Promised Land” had descended to doing “despicable
things” which included
divination or sorcery, interpretations of omens,
witchcraft, casting of spells, and mediums or spiritists
who consulted the dead.
The “Show
them no mercy”
clause was given because of the horror of the particular
“despicable things”
that they did in their
worship of their gods, with
the repeated explanation that the unrecoverable worst
horror is the
sacrificing of their own children in the worship of
their gods.
The implication is that
when a culture descends to the point of
child sacrifice in worship of its gods
then it has passed a point of no return.
This claim is demonstrated in the story of Israel
itself: they did not wipe out those who had descended to
the practice of
child sacrifice
in the worship of their gods,
they intermarried with these people, turned to worship
their gods, and descended to doing even worse, as warned:
sacrificing their own children to more gods than the
people had done before them in that land!
Solomon ignored the warnings
against marriage to foreign women.
Ahijah prophesied that the
system of altars (which Solomon built at the end of his
life, in the
Valley of Ben
Hinnom,
which led eventually to the subsequent
sacrificing of their own children in their worship of
these foreign gods),
would be their ultimate downfall.
The ensuing history of Israel demonstrates that descent
to
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods
is not a recoverable situation in that the Israelites
kept returning to this practice in spite of four
clean-ups by good kings.
Parts of Israel went into Exile,
learnt lessons from their own story of failure, and
returned to the Promised Land as a miserable remnant.
Ezra-Nehemiah understood
clearly the horrors of continuing forbidden practices,
so the Israelites expelled their foreign wives with
their children because of the results of Solomon’s
disobedient practice, and they finally became
monotheistic and loyal to their God.
In punishing Israel for its sins, the Babylonians went
on the rampage and did what Israel was ordered to do –
there is no record of
child sacrifice
in the region thereafter.
The Apocrypha gives the same explanation for the exile,
child sacrifice.
By the New Testament time the
Valley of
Ben Hinnom had
been renamed “Gehenna”,
and seven times Jesus uses this as a warning of Israel’s
ultimate degradation, destruction and loss, the bite of
which is missed in the translation of
Gehenna
as “Hell”.
Seven
times Jesus knifes the Jews with the reminder of their
renaming of the
Valley of
Ben Hinnom as
Gehenna,
which is often translated limply as ‘hell’
Stephen, to the Sanhedrin, gives
child sacrifice
(“Moloch”
from the LXX - Septuagint) as
the final reason for the exile.
Child sacrifice
as the ultimate sin against the Law of Christ.
1.
Introduction
The Israelites were becoming a
theocratic nation as they came out of Egypt and faced
the taking of the Promised Land.
They are told that, in
taking this Promised Land, they are to
kill everyone there,
“you must
destroy them totally.
Make no treaty with them,
and
show them no mercy”.
(Deuteronomy
7:2).
This text raises two problems, that of genocide, and
that of how does this fit with the words of Jesus, “Love
your enemies”?
In spite of centuries of agonising over these texts no
one, it seems, has studied the complete Biblical story
of
child sacrifice in the worship of the gods,
the core of this problem, and the core of the history of
Israel’s failure, which I present with (almost) no
theological, philosophical, or ethical comment.
Israel had been chosen to be an
exemplar people, a group who showed the advantage of
living properly with their God, the real God who made
the heavens and the earth.
In this they failed, badly,
as the history shows.
If Romans is read with
proper attention to Paul’s flags as to which group of
people he is addressing in each section, then it is seen
that he is saying that the Jews were elected and
predestined to bring forth the Messiah in spite of their
failures as a people, and that election and
predestination do no apply outside this narrow setting;
there is only the Gospel for anybody and everybody else.
2. Old Testament
2.1. Why was Abraham shown the Promised Land and sent
away for 400 years?
Genesis 15:16 “In the fourth generation your
descendants will come back here, for the sin of the
Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
So what was the “sin of the Amorites” when it did reach
its full measure?
2.2. Why “show
them no mercy”?
Why were the Israelites told to
wipe out everyone
in the Promised Land?
To “show
them no mercy”?
It was not because of “sin”.
Everyone does that.
It was not because they
worshipped idols,
false gods.
Everyone outside Israel,
and quite a few inside Israel, did that.
It was much more specific.
It was because of, and only
because of, the worst of the
“detestable
things”
that they did in the
worship of their gods that
they are to be wiped out, that there is no way back when
a religion / culture reaches that extreme point
of child
sacrifice.
Leviticus 18:21
"
Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to
Molech
[or:
to be passed through
/the
fire/],
for you must not profane
the name of your God.
I am the Lord.
[…]
24
Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because
this is how the nations that I am going to drive out
before you became defiled.
[...]
The native-born and the aliens
living among you must not do any of these detestable
things,
27
for all these things were done by
the people who lived in the land before you and the
land became defiled.
28
And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it
vomited out the nations that were before you.
29
Everyone
who does any of these
detestable
things
– such persons must be cut off from their people.
30 Keep
my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable
customs
that were practised before you came and do not defile
yourselves with them.
I am the Lord
your God.
Leviticus 20:1
"The Lord
said to Moses,
2
Say to the Israelites: Any Israelite or any alien living
in Israel
who
gives [or sacrifices] any of his
children to Molech
must be put to death.
The people of the community
are to stone him.
3
I
will set my face against that man and I will cut him off
from his people;
for by giving [sacrificing] his children to Molech,
he has defiled my sanctuary
and profaned my holy name.
4
If the people of the community close their eyes
when that man gives [sacrifices] one of his children to
Molech
and they fail to put him to death,
5 I
will set my face against that man and his family and
will cut off from their people both him and all who
follow him in prostituting themselves to
Molech.
…"
Molech
was a god to whom the only sacrifice was
child sacrifice.
"22 Keep
all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the
land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you
out.
23
You must not live according to the
customs of the nations I am going to drive out before
you.
Because they did all these
things, I abhorred them."
Deuteronomy 7:1
"When
the Lord
your God brings you into the land you are entering to
possess and drives out before you many nations – the
Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites,
Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger
than you –
2
and when the Lord
your God has delivered them over to you and you have
defeated them, then
you must destroy them totally.
Make no treaty with them,
and
show them no mercy.
5
This is what you are to do to
them:
Break down their altars,
smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles
and burn their idols in the fire.
6
For
you are a people holy to the Lord
your God.
The Lord
your God has
chosen you out of all the
peoples on the face of the earth to be
His people,
His
treasured possession."
Deuteronomy 7:16
"You
must destroy all the peoples the Lord
your God gives over to you.
Do not look on them with
pity
and do not serve their gods, for
that will be a snare to you."
It was not because Israel was good or holy :
It was made clear that the order to “show
them no mercy”
was not because the people of Israel were especially
good or holy.
It was not because the
people of Israel were any better than anyone else
Deuteronomy 9:4
"After
the Lord
your God has driven them out before you, do not say to
yourself, “The Lord
has brought me here to take possession of this land
because of my righteousness.”
No, it is on account of
the wickedness of these nations that the Lord
is going to drive them out before you.
5
It
is not because of your righteousness or your integrity
that you are going in to take
possession of their land; but on
account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord
your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish
what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.
6
Understand, then, that it
is not because of your righteousness that the Lord
your God is giving you this good land to possess, for
you are a stiff-necked people."
Clearly God choosing Israel as his
people was a two-edged sword, there were obligations
attached to this process:
Deuteronomy 11:26
"See,
I am setting before you today a blessing
and a curse – 27the blessing if you obey the commands of
the Lord
your God that I am giving you today; 28
a curse
if you disobey the commands of the Lord
your God and turn from the way that I command you today
by following other gods, which you have not known."
There were repeated warnings,
spelling out that it was not just idolatry for which the
land was being condemned.
Here ‘detestable’ is also
tied to
child sacrifice.
Deuteronomy 12:29
The Lord
your God will cut off before you the nations you are
about to invade and dispossess.
But when you have driven
them out and settled in their land, 30
and after they
have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be
ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do
these nations serve their gods?
We will do the same.”
31
You must not worship the
Lord
your God in their way,
because in worshipping their gods, they do all kinds of
detestable things the Lord
hates.
They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as
sacrifices to their gods.
Again ‘detestable
practices’ is tied to
child sacrifice,
amongst other things which are regarded as a slippery
slope to that end stage:
Deuteronomy 18:9
"When
you enter the land the Lord
your God is giving you, do
not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations
there.
10 Let no-one be found
among you
who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire,
who practises divination or sorcery, interprets omens,
engages in witchcraft, 11or casts spells, or who is a
medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.
12 Anyone who does these
things is detestable to the Lord,
and because of these
detestable practices the Lord
your God will drive out those nations before you."
Again ‘detestable’
practices is the warrant for clearing the land of those
people, as though there is no way back once a people
descend to that depth in their religious practice:
Deuteronomy 20:16
"However,
in the cities of the nations the Lord
your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave
alive anything that breathes.
17
Completely destroy them –
the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites
and Jebusites – as the Lord
your God has commanded you.
18
Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the
detestable things they do in worshipping their gods,
and you will sin against the Lord
your God."
2.3. Why not intermarry?
Why were the Israelites banned
from intermarrying with the people already in the
Promised Land?
Because they will be led
astray to do these
detestable things :
Exodus 34:16
"And
when you choose some of their daughters as wives for
your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to
their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same."
Deuteronomy 7: 3
"Do
not intermarry with them.
Do not give your daughters
to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,
4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to
serve other gods, and the Lord’s
anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy
you."
2.4. The Choice
On the edge
of entering the Promised Land, Joshua (24:14-15)
gave the people of Israel
a choice,
to serve the gods of their fathers (the region from
which Abraham came),
put these gods away (they had been
carried right up to now!
This began at least with
Rachel, Genesis 31:19ff) or
to serve the gods of the Amorites, or
to serve their God who had led them thus far?
of following God; Joshua 24:31
“Israel served the Lord
all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders
who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the
Lord
did for Israel.”)
2.5. In the Promised Land
The people of Israel stumbled
around for years, in all their chaotic wars, and failed
to take over the Promised Land.
They failed to follow the
instructions to “show
them no mercy”;
they also intermarried with the locals, with the result
that they came to worship the gods of that area, with
consequences.
This is the background to the
famous “As for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord.”
(Joshua
24:14-15.)
Judges
2:2-3
•
"But
you have not obeyed my command.
See what you have done!
"
•
"So
… I will not drive them out before you; but they shall
become adversaries to you, and their gods shall be a
snare to you."
Judges
2:10-12
•
“another generation grew up
who did not know the Lord or the work he had done for
Israel."
• "Then the
Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord
and worshipped the Baals; and they abandoned the Lord,…
they followed other gods from among the gods of the
peoples who were all around them, and bowed down to
them."
2.6. Israel’s Royalty
Israel developed a royal system of
government, which almost seemed to work.
At first.
But this led to their
complete destruction.
The prophet Samuel was
against the appointing of a king, but he was told by
God:
1 Samuel
8:7;
"Listen
to the voice of the people in all that they say to you,
for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected
Me from being king over them."
[Samuel’s reaction to the people of Israel completely
going against his advice is a model for all Christians
in dealing with controversy :
1 Samuel 12:23
“Far be it from me that
I should sin against the Lord
by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in
the good and right way.”]
2.7. Who set up Israel for failure?
Who of their kings set Israel up
for ultimate failure?
Not one of their ‘bad’
kings.
It was Solomon
: in all his glory and wisdom! ?! !?!
The nation state of Israel made
its biggest splash on the international scene with
Solomon their ‘wisest’ ruler, but the wisdom of hundreds
of wives and concubines must be questioned, especially
with its consequences.
Solomon was the pinnacle
and the pits of Israel’s life; he was the height of its
political influence, and, like an F. Scott Fitzgerald
hero, he and his abilities which took him up were at the
same time the cause and the beginnings of his own
undoing.
He took Israel down with
him with what he set in motion.
1 Kings 11: King Solomon, however, loved many
women besides Pharaoh’s daughter
[…] 2
They were from
nations about which the Lord
had told the Israelites, ‘You must not intermarry with
them, because they will surely turn your hearts after
their gods. …
4 As Solomon grew old, his wives
turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not
fully devoted to the Lord
his God, as the heart of David his father had been.
5 He
[Solomon]
followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and
Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites.
6 So Solomon did evil in
the eyes of the Lord;
he did not follow the Lord
completely, as David his father had done.
7 On a hill east of Jerusalem,
Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable
god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable god of the
Ammonites.
8 He did the same for all
his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered
sacrifices to their gods.
Molech
: was a god to whom the only sacrifice was child
sacrifice.
Chemosh
:
a
god to whom, increasingly, sacrifice was child
sacrifice.
Here at the height of the glory of
Israel, by the person who built the temple to the Lord
their God, are the seeds of destruction sown.
King Solomon built the high
places for
Chemosh
and for
Molech,
the
gods to whom children were sacrificed.
Not that they were yet
sacrificed, but their shrines were introduced into
Israel by none other than Solomon, the “wisest” man, not
just in Israel, but in all the world.
These shrines were set up
in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
on one side of the hill on which Jerusalem stood.
The
Valley of Ben-Hinnom
is important in the rest of this story : it is the
centre of action for the rest of the Old Testament, and
it comes back with a particular bite seven times in the
words of Jesus, which bite is lost in translation, as
you will see.
The
prophet Ahijah saw the
implications of Solomon’s actions :
1 Kings 11:29
About that time Jeroboam
was going out of Jerusalem, and Ahijah the prophet of Shiloah
met him on the way, wearing a new cloak.
The two of them were alone
out in the country, 30 and Ahijah took hold of the new
cloak he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces.
31
Then he said to Jeroboam,
‘Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord,
the God of Israel says: ‘See, I am going to tear the
kingdom out of Solomon’s hand and give you ten tribes.
32
But for the sake of my
servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have
chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one
tribe.
33
I will do this because
they have forsaken me and worshipped
Ashtoreth
the goddess of the Sidonians,
Chemosh
the god of the Moabites, and
Molech
the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in my
ways, not done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my
statutes and laws as David, Solomon’s father, did. […] 39
I will humble David’s descendants because of this, but
not for ever.
Chronicles
is much more sympathetic to David and Solomon than the
books of Kings.
For instance, Chronicles
does not record the incident of David and Bathsheba.
Chronicles records the Lord’s
appearance to Solomon after the dedication of the
temple, and records the warning given:
2 Chronicles 7:19
But if you turn away and forsake
the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to
serve other gods and worship them, 20
then I will uproot
Israel from my land which I have given them, and will
reject this temple which I have consecrated for my Name.
I will make it a byword and
an object of ridicule among all peoples.
21 And though this temple
is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and
say, ‘Why has the Lord
done such a thing to this land and to this temple?
22
People will answer,
‘Because they have forsaken the Lord,
the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt,
and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving
them – that is why he brought all this disaster on
them.”
In spite of recording this warning
to Solomon, Chronicles does not record his behaviour
mentioned in Kings of setting up shrines to his wives’
gods and his worshipping of these gods.
Selectivity in history and
thesis writing is nothing new.
2.8. The Split of the Kingdom :
When Solomon died his son Rehoboam
took over, but continued his father’s burdensome tax
system until the people revolted.
Jeroboam
was elected king of the revolting northern 10 tribes.
The northern kingdom became known as “Israel”, and the
southern kingdom, which consisted of the tribes of Judah
and Benjamin (and Levites), was referred as “Judah”.
Each kingdom decayed in its own way and timescale to
much the same end.
2.9. The Northern Kingdom.
The Northern kingdom decayed the
fastest and was wiped out first.
As the first king of the
northern tribes of Israel,
Jeroboam :
1. changed the religious symbols
of Israel, setting up two golden calves to keep people
away from worshipping in Jerusalem (1 Kings 13:28ff.),
2. changed the religious worship centre
from Jerusalem to Dan and Bethel.
3. changed the priesthood
by making priests of anyone who wanted the job.
With this almost all the
priests and Levites left for the south, so there was no
one to teach the people or the king, so that none of the
kings or the Northern kingdom turned his heart and
kingdom to God.
4. changed the religious calendar,
setting up his own holy days, his own sacrificial
system, and made priests of anyone who wanted the job (1
Kings 13:33-34).
5.
gave himself the role of priest
by burning incense on the altar in Bethel.
This adds up to, not a heresy of the old religion but, a
new religion, rather like Deistic Critical Historical
Liberal Theology is a new religion, not a heresy of
Christianity.
Jeroboam
became the evil yardstick for measuring his successors
(1 Kings 15:26, 34;
16:2, 19, 26, 31;
22:52 etc.
Ahab and Jezebel,
874-853
b.c., reign 22 years, (1
Kings 16:28 – 22:40; 2 Cr 18:1-34): Built a temple to
Baal, were as bad as it got as royalty.
The northern and southern kingdoms
combined to take on Moab,
where the first named person committed a
child sacrifice,
to
Chemosh,
the “detestable”
god of the Moabites:
2 Kings 3:26
When the king of Moab saw that the
battle had gone against him, he took with him seven
hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom,
but they failed.
27 Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed
him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city
wall.
Source:
http://cojs.org/why_king_mesha_of_moab_sacrificed_his_oldest_son-_baruch_margalit-_bar_12-06-_nov-dec_1986/
Rather than projecting their own
characteristics on to their gods, the pattern is of
these people taking on the characteristics of the gods
that they chose to worship, in a devastating comment on
their deterioration, which led first to the destruction
of the northern ten tribes of Israel.
We are not given as much
detail about the kings and the misbehaviours of the
northern kingdom, until the summary at their exile : 2
Kings 17:5-18.
Time Scale
: The northern kingdom lasted around 210 years, with 19
kings and 9 dynasties, each new dynasty arising by
murdering the previous king...
and no good kings who set about reforming or restoring
their worship.
To Exile
: In 722
b.c. the northern kingdom,
Israel, was defeated by Assyria, the population was
deported to various places listed in 2 Kings 17:6 and
18:11.
The explanation for the
destruction of the northern kingdom,
(as distinct from
“Judah”, which was the southern kingdom) : 2 Kings
17:7-23.
The kings of the northern
kingdom are recorded as bringing in worse practices than
the peoples in the land, whom the people of Israel were
imitating.
2 Kings 17:7-8
“They had worshipped other gods
and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord
drove out before the people of Israel, and in the
customs that the kings of Israel had introduced.”
15b
They followed worthless idols and
themselves became worthless.
They imitated the nations
around them although the Lord
had ordered them, ‘Do not do as they do,’ and they did
the things the Lord
had forbidden them to do.
16
They forsook all the commands of
the Lord
their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the
shape of calves, and an Asherah pole.
They bowed down to all the
starry hosts, and they worshipped Baal.
17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire.
They practised divination
and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes
of the Lord,
provoking him to anger.
Here the practice of
child sacrifice
is listed as one among many of the deformities of their
religion and religious practice.
18
So the Lord was very angry with
Israel and removed them from his presence.
Only the tribe of Judah was
left, 19 and even Judah did not keep the commands of the
Lord
their God.
They followed the practices
Israel had introduced.
20
Therefore the Lord
rejected all the people of Israel; He afflicted them and
gave them into the hands of plunderers, until
He thrust
them from his presence.
Failure even in Exile, so no return :
All the people of the Northern
Kingdom were removed into exile (732-720
b.c., 2 kings 17, 18:1-12)
, and the King of Assyria repopulated the land of the
Northern Kingdom from the rest of his empire.
When these imported peoples
got into trouble the Assyrian king had them taught how
to worship the
Lord of that land.
2 Kings 17:28.
But the priests of the
north were self-appointed, only half-heartedly learned
their lessons, and went on worshipping the gods of the
countries from which they came.
2 Kings 17:29-41.
The Sepharvites burned their
children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the
gods of Sepharvaim.
[“melech” = Molech]
32 They also worshipped the
Lord
and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people
as priests of the high places.
33
So they worshipped the Lord,
but they also served their own gods, after the manner of
the nations from among whom they had been carried away.”
“41 So these nations worshipped the
Lord,
but also served their carved images; to this day their
children and their children’s children continue to do as
their ancestors did.”
As we do today, worshipping the Lord,
but also worshipping the gods of those around us in our
materialist consumerist Epicurean culture.
Moving conquered peoples all
around was typical of the Assyrian empire, as it was
with Alexander the Great later.
The Assyrian empire was at
the end of its run of importance, was over-run and
broken up, so there was no coherence left, nor interest
in returning anyone to anywhere.
Because of these failures to learn any lesson from their
experience, even to the point of continuing
to sacrifice their children to their own gods
at the same time as worshipping the God of Israel, no
one from the northern kingdom returned from exile.
2.10. The Southern Kingdom.
The Southern Kingdom consisted of
the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and Levites, but
Solomon’s son, Rehoboam
(1 Kings 11:42-12:24;
14:21-31;
2 Chronicles 9:31-12:16),
led them astray at the beginning :
2 Kings 17:18 So the Lord was very angry with
Israel and removed them from his presence. Only the
tribe of Judah was left, 19 and even Judah did not keep
the commands of the Lord
their God. They followed the practices Israel had
introduced.
20
Therefore the Lord
rejected all the people of Israel; He afflicted them and
gave them into the hands of plunderers, until
He thrust
them from His presence.
Rehoboam : 1 Kings 14:21 : was 41 when he began his
reign of 17 years.
1 Kings 14:22 Judah did evil in the eyes of the
Lord.
By the sins they committed
they stirred up His jealous anger more than their
fathers had done.
23 They also set up for
themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles
on every high hill and under every spreading tree.
24 There were even male
shrine-prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in
all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord
had driven out before the Israelites.
So Rehoboam followed his father’s
example not just in taxation; his father had built the
great Temple, and had begun the worship of all these
other gods . .. …
and Rehoboam followed the
worst of his father’s habits.
Time Scale : The southern kingdom, “Judah”,
lasted
350 years;
consisted of one dynasty, the house of David;
had some good kings,
but the good that they did was always undone; and worse
could follow.
The second king, Abijam
(1 Kings 14:31-15:8;
2 Chronicles 13:1-22), son
of Rehoboam, committed all the sins of his father.
(1). After 2 bad kings came 2 good
kings,
Asa (1 Kings 15:8-24;
2 Chronicles 13:1-22) and
Jehoshaphat
(1 Kings 22:1-50;
2 Chronicles 14:1 – 16:14),
who removed many of the symbols of other religions, but
not the “high places”.
Jehoshaphat
did get rid of the remnants of male temple prostitutes.
Then came 3 bad monarchs : Jehoram
(2 Kings 8:16-24;
2 Chronicles 21:1-20),
Ahaziah
(2 Kings 8:24 – 9:29;
2 Chronicles 22:1-9), and
Queen Athaliah
(2 Kings 11:1-20;
2 Chronicles 22:1 – 23:21),
who followed the bad example of Ahab.
(2). Then came 4 good kings who
did what was right, but not completely :
Jehoash (Joash)
(2 Kings 11:1 – 12:21;
2 Chronicles 22:10 – 24:27)
did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.,
but did not destroy the “high places” where people
continued to sacrifice and worship.
Even though the priests and
people and army destroyed the temple etc of Baal.
Joash repaired the Temple.
(2 Kings 12:1-16).
Killed by his servants (2
Kings 12:19-21).
Amaziah
(2 Kings 14:1-20;
2 Chronicles 25:1-28),
Azariah
(Uzziah) (2 Kings 15:1-7;
2 Chronicles 26:1-23), and
Jotham
(2 Kings 15:32-38;
2 Chronicles 26:1-23) did
what was right, but did not remove the “high places”.
Then came one of the worst kings :
Ahaz,
son of Jotham (2 Kings 16:1-20;
2 Chronicles 28:1-27)
did not do what was right,
but walked in the way of the kings of Israel.
The first recorded
child sacrifice
in Judah is by none other than the king himself,
following the path laid by Solomon.
This selection also
attaches ‘detestable’
to child sacrifice.
2 Kings 16:2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he
became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for sixteen
years.
Unlike David his father, he
did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord
his God.
3
He walked in the ways of
the kings of Israel
and even sacrificed his son in the
fire,
following the detestable ways of
the nations the Lord
had driven out before the Israelites.
4He offered sacrifices and
burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and
under every spreading tree.
This picture shows that when the king is involved in
child sacrifice in the worship of the gods
then it becomes a huge social / cultural / religious
event.
The story of Ahaz is repeated in Chronicles.
2 Chronicles 28:1
Ahaz was twenty years old when he
became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for sixteen
years.
Unlike David his father, he
did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
2
He walked in the ways of
the kings of Israel and also made cast idols for
worshipping the Baals.
3 He burned sacrifices in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom
and sacrificed his sons in the fire, following the
detestable ways of the nations that the Lord
had driven out before the Israelites.
4 He offered sacrifices and
burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and
under every spreading tree.
He also replaced the Lord’s
altar in the Jerusalem Temple with one modelled on an
altar in Damascus (2 Kings 16:10-16).
(3).
Ahaz was followed by a good king, Hezekiah,
during whose reign the northern kingdom was destroyed :
Hezekiah,
son of Ahaz, (2 Kings 18:1 – 20:21;
2 Chronicles 29:1 – 32:33)
did what was right, removed the “high places”, cut down
many sites.
By the 6th year of his
reign Assyria had overrun the northern kingdom.
Hezekiah bought off the
Assyrians.
Consulted with Isaiah,
prayed, Sennacherib was defeated by the angel of the Lord
in the night.
(2 Kings 19, 35f).
Became ill, recovered,
showed the Babylonian envoys all the treasures of his
kingdom.
Following Hezekiah was the worst
of their kings:
Manasseh,
son of Hezekiah (2 Kings 21:1-18;
2 Chronicles 33:1-20),
worse than undid all his father’s good work.
The southern kingdom did
not learn from the events in the north, as the next
quote shows, the nation worsened to the point of putting
idols inside the temple of the Lord
their God.
2 Kings 21:1
Manasseh was twelve years old when
he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for fifty
five years.
His mother’s name was
Hephzibah.
2
He did evil in the eyes of
the Lord,
following the detestable
practices
of the nations the Lord
had driven out before the Israelites.
3 He rebuilt the high
places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and
made an Asherah pole, as
Ahab king of Israel had done.
He bowed down to all the
starry hosts and worshipped them.
4 He built altars in the temple of
the Lord,
of which the Lord
had said, ‘In Jerusalem I will put my Name.’
5 In both courts of the
temple of the Lord,
he built altars to all the starry hosts.
6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire,
practised sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums
and spiritists.
He did much evil in the
eyes of the Lord,
provoking him to anger. … 9b Manasseh led them astray,
so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord
had destroyed before the Israelites.
… 16 Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood
that he filled Jerusalem from end to end – beside the
sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did
evil in the eyes of the Lord.
2 Chronicles 33:1
Manasseh was twelve years old when
he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for
fifty-five years.
2
He did evil in the eyes of
the Lord,
following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord
had driven out before the Israelites.
3
He rebuilt the high places
his father Hezekiah had demolished; he also erected
altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles.
He bowed down to all the
starry hosts and worshipped them.
4
He built altars in the
temple of the Lord,
of which the Lord
had said, “My Name will remain in Jerusalem for ever.”
5 In both courts of the
temple of the Lord,
he built altars to all the starry hosts.
6 He sacrificed his sons in the fire
in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
practised sorcery, divination and witchcraft, and
consulted mediums and spiritists.
He did much evil in the
eyes of the Lord,
provoking him to anger.
7
He took the carved image he had
made and put it in God’s temple, of which God had said
to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in
Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of
Israel, I will put my Name for ever.
8
I will not again make the
feet of the Israelites leave the land I assigned to your
forefathers, if only they will be careful to do
everything that I commanded them concerning all the
laws, decrees and ordinances given through Moses.”
9
But Manasseh led Judah and the
people of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil
than the nations the Lord
had destroyed before the Israelites."
Kings does not record the reform of Manasseh of 2
Chronicles 33:10-17.
Amon, son of Manasseh did what was evil (2 Kings
21:19-26, 2 Chronicles 33:21-25),
(4).
Following the worst came the best of their kings :
Josiah, son of Amon (2
Kings 22:1 – 23:30;
2 Chronicles 34:1 – 35:27)
found the book of the Law,
2 Kings 23:1-25 describes all the
reforms of Josiah, worth reading to see how far the
Israelites had sunk, and includes: 10
[Josiah] desecrated
Topheth,
which was in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
so no-one could use it
to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech
[Milcom].
…
13
The king also desecrated the high places
that were east of Jerusalem in the south of the Hill of
Corruption – the ones
Solomon king of Israel
had built for
Ashtoreth
the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for
Chemosh
the vile god of Moab, and for
Molech
the detestable god of the people of Ammon. …
So Solomon’s altars to these ‘vile’ gods had lasted for
over 300 years!
25
Neither before nor after Josiah
was there a king like him who turned to the Lord
as he did – with all his heart and with all his soul and
with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of
Moses.
26
Nevertheless, the Lord
did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger,
which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh
had done to provoke him to anger.
27
So the Lord
said: ‘I will remove Judah also from my presence as I
removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I
chose, and this temple, about which I said, ‘There shall
my Name be.’
Josiah’s reforms are also recorded
by the Chronicler:
2 Chronicles 34 – the reforms of
Josiah, who read the books of the law, and all the
curses therein.
v. 22 the prophetess Huldah
said that nevertheless, the curses would be carried out
as written, but not in Josiah’s reign.
2 Chronicles 35:18 The
Passover had not been observed like this in Israel since
the days of the prophet Samuel…
Following their best king were 4
kings who did what was evil, Jehoahaz
(2 Kings 23:31-33;
2 Chronicles 36:1-4),
Jehoiakim
(2 Kings 23:34 – 24:5; 2 Chronicles 36:5-7), Jehoiachin
(2 Kings 24:6-16;
2 Chronicles 36:8-10), and
Zedekiah
(2 Kings 24:17 – 25:30;
2 Chronicles 36:10-21), and
that was the end:
Zedekiah,
(2 Kings 24:18f)
did evil, everyone became
worse, including the leaders.
2 Chronicles 36:12
[Zedekiah] did evil in the eyes of
the Lord
his God and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the
prophet, who spoke the word of the Lord.
… 14
Furthermore, all the leaders of
the priests and the people became more and more
unfaithful, following all the detestable practices
of the nations and defiling the temple of the Lord,
which
He had consecrated in Jerusalem.
15
The Lord,
the God of their Fathers, sent word to them through
His
messengers again and again, because
He had pity on his
people and on
His dwelling place.
16
But they mocked God’s messengers,
despised
His words and scoffed at
His prophets until the
wrath of the Lord
was aroused against
His people and there was no remedy.
… [the remnant of Israel went into exile to Babylon]
21The land enjoyed its
Sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested,
until the seventy years were completed in fulfilment of
the word of the Lord
spoken by Jeremiah.
[and in Leviticus 26:31-35]
The Chaldeans and Babylonians overcame Judah the
southern kingdom, and carted them off into exile in 3
stages.
The blame for the exile is again laid at Manasseh’s feet
in:
2
Kings 24:3
Surely these things happened to
Judah according to the Lord’s
command, in order to remove them from
His presence
because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done, 4
including the shedding of innocent blood.
For he filled Jerusalem
with innocent blood,
and the Lord
was not willing to forgive.
Why was the reform of Josiah not
enough to overcome the heritage of guilt of Manasseh?
Is it because of the story
of repeated backsliding that something more drastic was
needed to burn the idolatry out of Israel?
That anything else would
again be temporary once they had degenerated so far as
to resort to
child
sacrifice?
Isaiah and Jeremiah both record that the
child sacrifice
returned after Josiah’s reforms.
When the Babylonians
came through to wipe out Judah and send the remnant into
exile, they went further on the rampage, with the result
:
1.
that they wiped out all the
high places and religious systems, so that there is no
record of worshipping of foreign gods by the Israelites
after that.
2.
that there appears to be
no child sacrifice in that region thereafter.
So in punishing the
Israelites for failing to do what they were told, the
Babylonians appear to have gone on to do what the
Israelites were supposed to have done.
Babylon
:
In the 19th c.
b.c. the Amorites
founded their dynasty at Babylon.
Hammurabi (1792-1750
b.c. was their most
famous king.
Alexander the Great died in
Babylon in 323
b.c..
Tiglath-pileser III reigned as
king of Assyria and simultaneously as regent of
Babylonia from 728-727
b.c.
Sennacherib reigned as king of
Assyria (704-681
b.c.) and of Babylon
(704-703
b.c.) attempted to take
Jerusalem from Hezekiah.
(2
Kings 20:12)
Listed as part of the Chaldean
revival of the Babylonian empire.
Nebuchadnezzar
II (605-562
b.c.) carried King
Jehoiachin of Judah and his family into exile.]
2.11. Return from Exile
Ezra and Nehemiah record their advice for
-and
the expulsion of-
the foreign wives and their children by the returned men
of Israel.
Importantly for my thesis
of child sacrifice, Nehemiah credits this move to the
avoidance of the corrupting example of Solomon and his
foreign wives noted above.
(Nehemiah 13:23f)
So the Bible closes the circle for me,
in blaming Solomon
for this complete mess.
2.12. The Prophets and Psalmist
The prophets have a consistent
message of speaking against idolatry and injustice, and
usually see both as connected; worshipping false gods
leads away from correct behaviour to corrupt behaviour,
the teleology of life is lost. The prophets spoke nothing
new, ever, but they merely repeated and applied the
covenant curses recorded in the Pentateuch[1].
This appears to be so in
relation to the subject of
child sacrifice.
Molech
is almost spat out by the writers as the detestable
god
to whom children were sacrificed.
2.12.1. The Major Prophets :
Isaiah
The prophetic view of God is of
Him being very active in
what happens, including taking responsibility, as in
Job, for the bad things which happen to people:
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord,
do all these things.
Isaiah 54:16b
And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc.
The need to act in these terrible ways is because of
what humans, in this case the Israelites, do:
Isaiah 24:5
The earth is defiled by its people;
they have disobeyed the laws,
violated
the statutes
and broken the everlasting covenant.
6
Therefore a curse consumes the earth;
its people must bear their guilt,
Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,
and very few are left.
Later, the prophet explains the reasons for the coming
disasters:
Isaiah 57 :5
You burn with lust among the oaks
and under every spreading tree; (i.e., idolatry)
you sacrifice your children in the ravines
and under the overhanging crags
9
You went to Molech with olive oil
and increased your perfumes.
You sent your ambassadors far away;
You descended to the grave itself.
[…
]
11
Whom have you so dreaded and feared
that you have been false to
Me,
and have neither remembered
Me
nor pondered this in your hearts?
Is
it not because I have long been silent
that you do not fear
Me?
12
I will expose your righteousness and your works,
and
they will not benefit you.
13
When
you cry out for help,
let your collection [of idols]
save you!
The wind will carry all of them off,
a mere breath will blow them away.
But
the man who makes
Me his refuge
will inherit the land
and possess
My holy mountain.
Jeremiah
2:23
How can you say, ‘I am not defiled;
I have not run after the
Baals’?
See how you have behaved
in the valley;
consider what you have done.
..
The reference to what they had done in the valley is to
the
Valley of Ben Hinnom
where the
child
sacrifices
occurred, a charge that they could not run away from.
3:24
From our youth shameful gods have consumed
the fruits of our father’s labour
-
their flocks and herds,
their sons and daughters.
25 Let us lie down in our shame,
and let our disgrace cover us.
Jeremiah 7 – the people of Judah had become so bad that
God was going to destroy them, so angry and determined
was God that
He said to Jeremiah –
7:16
So do not pray for this
people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not
plead with Me, for I will not listen to you.
17
Do you not see what they
are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of
Jerusalem?
[They all worship false
gods, disobey God and refuse to listen.] v. 28c ‘Truth
has perished; it has vanished from their lips.’
7:30 ‘The people of Judah have
done evil in my eyes, declares the Lord.
They have set up their
detestable idols in the house that bears
My Name and
have defiled it.
31
They have built the high
places of
Topeth
in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom
to burn their sons and daughters in the fire
– something I did not command nor did it enter
My mind.
32 So beware, the days are
coming, declares the Lord,
…
Jeremiah blames the sins of
Manasseh as the cause of the exile, along with the
pattern of backsliding from every stage of previous
lessons taught to Israel.
God no longer trusts them
to reform and stay on the way of wisdom.
Jeremiah 15:4
I will make them [Israel/Judah]
abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth because of
what Manasseh son of Hezekiah king of Judah did in
Jerusalem. [...] 6
You have rejected Me,” declares the Lord.
“You keep on backsliding.
So I will lay hands on you
and destroy you; I can no longer show compassion…”
In this next speech to the
leaders, Jeremiah has taken
the elders and priests to the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
the site of the detestable
shrines set up by Solomon, and the site of their
sacrifice of their children to the gods.
Jeremiah 19:3b
Listen!
I
am going to bring a disaster on this place that will
make the ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.
4
For they have forsaken
Me
and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned
sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their
fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew,
and they have filled this place with the blood of the
innocent.
5
They have built the high places of Baal to burn their
sons in the fire as offerings to Baal
– something I did not command or mention, nor did it
enter My mind.
6
So beware, the days are
coming, declares the Lord,
[...]
15b ‘Listen!
I am going to bring on this
city and the villages around it every disaster I
pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked
and would not listen to My words.”
Repeated in Jeremiah 32:30ff,
as Jerusalem was under
siege … 32.32
The people of Israel and Judah
have provoked me by all the evil they have done – they,
their kings and officials, their priests and prophets,
the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem.
33 They turned their backs
on me and not their faces; though I taught them again
and again, they would not listen or respond to
discipline.
34 They set up their abominable idols
in the house that bears My Name and defiled it.
35They built high places for Baal
in the Valley of Ben Hinnom
to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech,
though I never commanded, nor did it enter
My mind, that
they should do such a
detestable thing and so
make Judah sin.
[What does this last sentence say about God’s
omniscience?]
Jeremiah 49.1… ‘Has
Israel no sons?
Has she no heirs?
Why then has Molech taken possession of Gad?
Why
do
His people live in its towns?
… [ But things will reverse when God acts…]
3…
for Molech will go into exile,
together with his priests and officials.
Ezekiel
5:11
Therefore as surely as I live,
declares the Sovereign Lord,
because you have defiled my
sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable
practices, I myself will
withdraw my favour; I will not look on you with pity or
spare you.”
Ezekiel feels God’s pain in watching his people’s
behaviour, and makes four points :
(1)
Ezekiel uses the phrase ‘detestable
practices’ much more than
the other prophets, and in each case it does seem to be
referring to
child sacrifice:
it is at least included in the “detestable
practices”.
Ezekiel gives three
emphases of importance in this story.
Ezekiel 6:8
"But
I will spare some, for some of you will escape the sword
when you are scattered among the lands and nations.
9 Then in the nations where
you have been scattered captive, those who escape will
remember me – how I have been grieved by their
adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and
by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols.
They will loathe themselves
for the evil they have done, and for all their detestable practices.
10 And they will know that
I am the Lord;
I did not threaten in vain to bring this calamity on
them."
Ezekiel 7:8
"I
[the Lord]
am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger
against you; I will judge you according to your conduct
and repay you for all your detestable practices.
9I will not look on you
with pity or spare you; I will repay you in accordance
with your conduct and
detestable practices among
you.
Then you will know that it
is I the Lord
who strikes the blow."
(2).
God takes the
sacrifice of the children of Israel
personally, it is the
sacrifice of His children,
in this chapter of metaphorical theological history of
Israel.
Ezekiel 16:20
And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me
and sacrificed them as food to the idols.
Was your prostitution
[normal idolatry] not enough?
21You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the
idols.
… 35 ‘Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord!
36This is what the
Sovereign Lord
says:
Because you poured out your
wealth and exposed your nakedness in your promiscuity
with your lovers, and
because of all your detestable idols,
and because you gave them your children’s blood,
therefore [I will punish you…]
(3). The Israelites became more depraved than the people
previously in the land.
47
You not only walked in their ways and copied their
detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon
became more depraved than they.
16:60
"Yet I will remember the covenant
I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will
establish an everlasting covenant with you. … 63Then,
when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you
will remember and be ashamed and never again open your
mouth because of your humiliation, declares the
Sovereign LorD."
Sodom was not as bad as Israel has become – Ezekiel
16:48!
Ezekiel 20 is a theological
history of Israel, with a list of their failings,
culminating in the accusation of their practice of
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods.
Ezekiel 20:25 I also gave them over to statutes
that were not good and laws they could not live by;
26I let them become defiled through their gifts – the
sacrifice of every firstborn
– that I might fill them with horror so that they would
know that I am the Lord.
… 30b Will you defile yourselves the way your fathers
did and lust after their vile images?
31 When you offer your gifts – the sacrifice of your
sons in the fire
– you continue to defile yourselves with all your idols
to this day.
44
You will know that I am the Lord,
when I deal with you for my name’s sake and not
according to your evil ways and your corrupt practices,
O house of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.
Ezekiel 23:36
The Lord
said to me; “Son of man, will you judge Oholah [Samaria]
and Oholibah [Jerusalem]?
Then confront them with
their detestable
practices.
37 for they have
committed adultery and blood is on their hands.
They committed adultery
with their idols;
they even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to
me, as food for them.
38 They have also done this
to me: At the same time they defiled my sanctuary and
desecrated my Sabbaths."
(4). the admixture of religions :
*39
On the very day they sacrificed their children to their
idols,
they entered my sanctuary and desecrated it.
That is what they did in my
house.
Here the Israelites are
worshipping the Lord,
and worshipping the gods of
the surrounding peoples and culture, even on the same
day – just as we do now. .. …
2.12.2. The minor prophets
...get into the same act, or in the same vein.
Hosea
13
13:1
When Ephraim spoke, men trembled;
but he was exalted in Israel. But he became guilty of
Baal worship and died. 2 Now they sin more and more;
they make idols for themselves from their silver,
cleverly fashioned images.
all
of them the work of craftsmen.
It is said of these people, “They offer human sacrifice
and kiss the calf-idols.”
3 Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the
early dew that disappears,
like chaff swirling from a threshing-floor,
like smoke escaping through a window.
Micah 6
:
is
well known for verse 8, but it is preceded by a horrific
suggestion in 7b, which is roundly rejected by the more
famous phrase.
6 With what shall I [Israel] come
before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with
calves a year old? 7 Will
the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten
thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man,
what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To
act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with
your God.
16 You have observed the statutes
of Omri and all the
practices of Ahab’s house
and you have followed their
traditions. Therefore I
will give you over to ruin and your people to derision;
you will bear the scorn of the nations.
Zephaniah 1
– warning of coming destruction – against Judah
–
4
“I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against
all who live in Jerusalem. I will cut off from this
place every remnant of Baal, the names of the pagan and
the idolatrous priests -
5 those who bow down on the
housetops to worship the starry host,
those who bow down and swear by the Lord and who also
swear by Molech
[...] 9 On that day [of the Lord] I will punish
all who avoid stepping on
the threshold
[Dagon worshippers] who
fill the temple of their gods with violence and deceit.”
Remember that
Molech
was the god to whom the only sacrifice was
child sacrifice.
2.12.3. The Psalmist : 106
Psalm 106:
[After describing the
problems that the people of Israel had in keeping to
God’s ways in the exodus …]
34
They did not destroy the peoples
as the Lord had commanded them, 35 but they mingled with the nations
and adopted their customs. 36 They worshipped their
idols, which became a snare to them.
37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to
demons. 38 They shed innocent blood, the blood of their
sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of
Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.
39 They defiled themselves by what they did; by their
deeds they prostituted themselves.
40 Therefore the Lord was angry with his people and
abhorred his inheritance. 41 He handed them over to the
nations, and their foes ruled over them.
Thus the Psalmist also agrees with the explanation of
and reason for the exile given here.
3. The Inter-Testamental period
Between the writing of the Old Testament and of the New
Testament, writers give the same explanation of the
problems in the Promised Land.
Wisdom (?) of Solomon
12:1-11f; 3f, “Those who
lived long ago in your holy land you hated for their
detestable practices, their works of sorcery and unholy
rites,
their merciless slaughter of children, and their
sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood.
These initiates from the
midst of a heathen cult,
these parents who murder helpless lives…”
[...]
14:23 “they
kill children in their initiations,
or celebrate secret mysteries”
In the inter-Testamental period “Gehenna”
became the Hebrew word for the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
with its “Topeth”
which was derived from an Aramaic word meaning “fire
place”, with the Hebrew vowels for ‘shame’ inserted.
This was the site on which
they sacrificed their children.
Also in this inter-Testamental period “Gehenna”
became the metaphor for
hell
or
eternal damnation,
1 Enoch 27:2f; 90:26f;
2 Esdras 7:36-38.
This is how “Gehenna”
is translated in Matthew 5:22, 29-30; 10:28; 18:9;
Mark 9:45;
James 3:6.
It is also used in Matthew
13:42, 50; Mark 9:43; and Matthew 25:41.
In the NIV, NRSV, ESV, the word “hell”
has a footnote to “Gehenna”,
but without this background of what
Gehenna
was in their history, the child sacrifice
that they did in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
then the modern reader is disconnected from the
historical reality of the bite of this reference by
Jesus.
This translation removes the
sting, the bite, that Jesus puts into his words, that
Jesus is saying – if you continue on your present path,
and do not clean up your act, then you are on the same
path to the ultimate sin and disgrace of your forebears?
Thus “Hell” is not so much
a place as it is the result of your own continued
choices; God’s worst punishment is to leave you to the
consequences of your own choices.
4. The Atheists
Lucretius
(~99-55b.c.)
: De rerum natura, his great Latin Epicurean materialist
poem.
Lucretius said that there are acts done in the name of
the gods that would be utterly condemned in other areas
of life.
Animal sacrifice is ineffectual.
Sacrifice is horrific if the victim is a human...
His worst example was the myth of
Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis
at Aulis to obtain a favourable wind for his navy.
Plutarch
(<50 – 120a.d.)
argued that in such cases it is not that religion is
wrong, but that the gods have been misrepresented.
Lucretius wrote “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum"
: (“Such
is the terrible evil
[human sacrifice]
that religion was able to urge”)
Voltaire
sent this to Frederick II,
the Great, of Prussia, in
1737 to promote secularism, with Frederick the Great
changing the universities of Germany from Pietism to
Deism and turning them into instruments of the state.
[This
connects with my Deism thesis, and helps explain the
downgrading of the Old Testament as Scripture in the
18th century rise of Deistic Critical Liberal Theology
and since, the inability to explain this ghastly episode
because the underlying causative factor of
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods
had not been explicated.
This made it easier, in
turn, to deny the inspiration of the New Testament
also.]
5. New Testament
5.1.
The New Testament reason given for the wipe-out of
Israel
and the sending of the remnant into Exile:
Acts 7:43, Stephen to the Sanhedrin, quoting Amos
5:25-27 (Septuagint LXX), to explain the exile,
43
You have lifted up the shrine of Moloch
and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to
worship.Therefore I will send you into exile beyond
Babylon.
Again,
Moloch
is the
'god'
to whom the only sacrifice was
child sacrifice.
5.2. The
Valley of Ben-Hinnom,
Gehenna,
Topheth,
Hell
Old photo of Hinnom Valley
The
Valley of Ben-Hinnom
is on one side of Jerusalem.
Solomon had set up the
shrines and altars to his wives’ gods, including
the gods Molech and Chemosh.
Israel had descended to
sacrificing their children to more gods
than those nations that had
already
been there – as they had
been told they would do.
Jeremiah had taken their leaders into this
Valley of Ben-Hinnom
and told them that it was because of what they did
there
-
the child sacrifice
etc.
- that they would be wiped out and
that
only a remnant
would
survive.
Those who returned from exile recognised the site of
their ultimate disgrace, and by the time of Jesus the
Valley of Ben-Hinnom
was known by its Hebrew name,
Gehenna.
The critical central part
of the valley, the place where the
children were sacrificed,
known as
Topheth,
which now had the Hebrew vowels for “shame” inserted
into it.
Gehenna,
the
Valley of Ben Hinnom,
had become the rubbish dump of the city, where the fire
burned continually to burn up the smelly rubbish.
“Gehenna”
had become, for some, a symbol for hell.
Seven times Jesus warned his disciples against
committing sins that would lead them to
Gehenna,
that if they made the wrong choices then they too could
end up in the rubbish dump : the warning of their
possible future was out of the depth of the worst of
their own past:
Matthew 5:22, 29, 30;
23:33.
Mark 9:43, 47. Luke 12:5
When Gehenna is read as “hell”
the bite of the reminder of the depths of their own
depravity of
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods,
is missed.
Sort yourselves out or you
will end up this bad also…
“Hell”
is the consequences of your own choices.
As noted above.
6. Chronology / timetable
The timescale involved indicates
that God does not issue on-the-spot fines.
He gave people 400 years,
twice, in which to see and feel the horrors of the
results of their choices and change.
They did not.
God gave the southern kingdom of
Judah 130 years after the northern kingdom was wiped out
to reform.
They did not.
With no instant connection between
sin and punishment, there was time to change, = repent.
This time was
misinterpreted :
Isaiah 57:11:
"Whom
have you so dreaded and feared that you have been false
to me, and have neither remembered me nor pondered this
in your hearts? Is it not
because I have long been silent that you do not fear me?"
Wisdom (?) of Solomon 12:10 “but judging them little by little
you gave them an opportunity to repent.”
Ezekiel 20:26 “I let them become defiled through
their gifts – the
sacrifice of every firstborn
– that I might fill them with horror so that they would
know that I am the Lord.”
“Deuteronomy explains [child
sacrifice in the worship of their gods]
as the custom of the indigenous population of Canaan.
The Israelites practiced
this type of worship from about 735
b.c. until about 575
b.c..
The reference to
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods
in Jeremiah and Ezekiel show that Josiah’s reforms did
not eradicate it;”
[2]
i.e., at least 160 years of
the practice of
child sacrifice in their worship of other gods
by Israel, time to learn, react, revolt against their
own behaviour.
Once developed, then the
people of Israel repeatedly fell back into the practice
of
child sacrifice in their worship of other gods,
even after four reforms by good kings.
The whole society had
become so corrupt, degenerate, that
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods
could not be eradicated, even by the king removing all
those sacred sites.
7. Conclusion :
The “Destroy
them utterly”
and “Show
them no mercy”
clauses were given,
Not for sin,
not for idolatry – everyone
had both of these.
It was for the “despicable
things” that the people
already in the Promised Land did
in worshipping their gods.
In particular it claims,
implicitly, and demonstrates, that
child
sacrifice in worship of their gods
marks an unrecoverable degeneration of a religion /
society / culture.
The materialists Epicurus and Lucretius agree that child
sacrifice is the worst thing done in the name of
religion.
The history of Israel supports
this claim, and extends it to say that this is an
unrecoverable stage for a religion / society / culture.
Israel did not follow their
instructions, instead they intermixed and intermarried
with the
child-sacrificing
people of the Promised Land, and descended to
sacrificing their children
to more gods
than the people had before them, as they were warned
they would.
This history of Israel also shows that the degeneration
of a religion / culture / society to
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods
is an unredeemable situation, with their repeated return
to
child sacrifice in the worship of their other gods
in spite of four clean-ups by good kings.
Only after the work of Ezra
and Nehemiah after the return of the remnant from Exile
did the Jews finally clean up their act and become
monotheistic and loyal to their God.
This is a l-o-n-g, coherent, sorry, story from the
Exodus to the Exile to the return of the remnant before
Israel had learnt its lessons.
Israel did not follow their instructions to
wipe these people out utterly.
Further, against warnings the Israelites mixed with and
intermarried with the locals and began to worship their
gods, as warned.
The result was that the people of Israel descended to
child sacrifice,
and to
sacrificing their children
to more gods
than the people before them in the land, as warned.
They show, by lack of recovery of good sense even after
4 clean-ups by good kings, that once a culture descends
to the point of
child sacrifice in the worship of their gods....
there is no way back.
Jesus warns that we are no different, that we are
subject to the same temptations to err, which can put us
on the slippery slope to our own
Valley of Ben-Hinnom,
our own “hell”,.
Jesus has knifed the Jews
with the worst of their own history, and the bite of his
comment is lost when translated generically as “Hell”.
* * * *
Here follow a few comments . .. …
8. The Law of Christ : why child sacrifice is the
ultimate sin.
1. Love the Lord
your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
and a second is like it : (Wow!
We need a sermon on this
connecting comment)
2. Love your neighbour
as yourself.
The great sin against the first half – idolatry.
The great sin against the second half – injustice.
“On these two laws hang all the
Law and the Prophets”.
So this Law of Christ sums
up 27 books of the Old Testament:
The Law
(5 books)
The Former Prophets
(6)
The Major Prophets
(3)
The Minor Prophets
(13)
(Daniel was counted among
the prophets when Jesus said this; it was moved out to
the writings after the destruction of the Temple.)
5 + 6 + 3 + 13
=
27
books
of the O.T.
are summarised by the Law of Christ.
Child sacrifice – the ultimate sin
:
Child sacrifice is the ultimate
sin against the first half of the Law of Christ,
you
sacrifice this child to a god that is no god,
and is the ultimate sin against the second half of the
Law of Christ – because you take this child whom you
have made in an act of co-creation with God, your child
to whom you specifically, personally, owe all the love,
care, protection etc. of parenting, and instead of
loving and caring this child,
you kill it
– for what?
Why sacrifice your child?
The more important your offering,
the greater the gift to the god.
Your child, your most
important / valuable possession, is the greatest thing
that you can offer to the god.
But and still and however - How
can you actually do this??????
As the atheists said, this
is the worst action within religion, and, as shown with
this study, it is heavily condemned biblically as the
worst thing that humans can do, so bad that it is an
unrecoverable situation for a religion / culture /
people.
9. Abraham and Isaac
:
Can you imagine God saying –
“Look at that!
These humans really will do
this sort of thing – sacrifice their children to – to
what?!
For what?!
Even this Abraham fellow,
whom I thought was a pretty decent, sensible sort of
bloke to carry out my plans.”?
Like the training of Moses for leadership, this story of
the ‘sacrifice of Isaac’ is built in at the beginning :
this episode was to teach Abraham, and his descendants,
that this was what they were NOT to do, that God would
provide the sacrifice, firstly in the Temple sacrificial
system, and eventually with his own Son.
Previously, Abraham had argued / negotiated with God
over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, why did he
not do so over this instruction?
10. The crucifixion of Jesus.
This, was the ultimate sacrifice that God would provide;
needs the doctrine of the Trinity to see why it is
not
child sacrifice.
It is God himself feeling
the worst that we can suffer – [Spufford, “Unapologetic”,
useful on this, God’s coming and feeling of our pains
with the incarnation and all associated life and death.]
*******
Q. Is abortion the modern
child sacrifice?
A common question, I have
found.
No, I don’t think so. (**)
1.
Child sacrifice
was performed in a public ceremony of
worship of their gods.
2. Abortion is not mentioned in
the New Testament.
The Early Church Fathers
treat abortion under the rubric of
‘thou shalt not kill’ with
no reference to
child sacrifice.
3. Jesus’ warnings against descending to ‘hell’
have no reference to abortion but to other temptations
and actions that might lead us equally as far astray.
*******
