by Brian Godawa
2 Kings 3:26–27:
26 When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him… 27 he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.
Notice that the Israelites considered child sacrifice to a foreign god to be efficacious against them such that they withdrew. Whether or not it was truly efficacious, the ancient Hebrews certainly believed it was. They believed in the power of child sacrifice, evil though it was.
Texts from thirteenth century Ugarit were published in 1978 that detailed this exact same ritual of child sacrifice as part of Canaanite laws of holy war.
If an enemy force attacks your [city-]gates,
An aggressor, your walls;
You shall lift up your eyes to Baal [and pray]:
“O Baal:
Drive away the [enemy] force from our gates,
The aggressor from our walls.
We shall sacrifice a bull [to you], O Baal,
A votive-pledge we shall fulfill [viz.]:
A firstborn,
Baal, we shall sacrifice,
A child [an off spring?]
we shall fulfill [as votive-pledge].
A ‘tenth’ [of all our wealth] we shall tithe [you],
To the temple of Baal we shall go up,
In the footpaths of the House-of-Baal we shall walk.”
Then shall Baal hearken to your prayers,
He shall drive the [enemy] force from your gates,
The aggressor from your walls.[238]
Though the time period of this text is centuries before Jezebel’s day, it illustrates the exact same ritual scenario that was performed in Canaanite cities until that day and after. And it was performed unto Baal.
Deuteronomy 12:31:
31 You shall not worship the Lord your God in that [Canaanite] way…for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
Child sacrifice was one of the abominable behaviors of Canaanites that was repeatedly condemned by Yahweh (Deuteronomy 12:31).[239] It was sometimes referred to directly as “burning their sons and daughters in the fire” (Deuteronomy 12:31)[240] or “passing them through the fire” (Deuteronomy 18:10 NASB),[241] and sometimes indirectly as “shedding innocent blood” (2 Kings 21:16).[242] Those innocent victims are described as food eaten by the gods (Ezekiel 23:37-39).
Unfortunately, Israelites were guilty of breaking this command of God almost immediately upon entering the Promised Land.
Psalm 106:38:
38 [Israelites] poured out innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
and the land was polluted with blood.
Judah was guilty of child sacrifice from the days of Solomon up to the Babylonian exile:
Jeremiah 19:5:
5 [Judahites] have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind—
After Solomon’s kingdom split, Israel too was guilty of child sacrifice that led to their Assyrian exile.
2 Kings 17:17–18:
17 And [Israel] burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. 18 Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight.
Molech and his Tophet in the Valley of Hinnom in Jerusalem is the one most connected to child sacrifice in the Old Testament.[243] But he is not the only recipient of such offerings. Baal was sometimes connected with Molech as a separate but related deity. He is spoken of as being present in Molech’s accursed Valley of Hinnom.
Jeremiah 32:35:
35 They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech.[244]
Baal here could be a reference to the Canaanite deity by that name or a generic reference to “the lord” (the baal) of the valley area. But elsewhere, high places are linked to Baal’s fertility cult, while the valley is linked to Molech’s underworld cult, two distinct locations of two distinct deities. Nevertheless, an interwoven connection of the two gods and their cults is expressed in Isaiah 57.[245]
Isaiah 57:5-9:
5 you who burn with lust among the oaks,
under every green tree, [Baal fertility cult]
who slaughter your children in the valleys,
under the clefts of the rocks…[Molech Tophet cult]
7 On a high and lofty mountain [high places of Baal]
you have set your bed,
and there you went up to offer sacrifice. [to Baal]
9 You journeyed to the king with oil [Molech]
and multiplied your perfumes;
you sent your envoys far off,
and sent down even to Sheol. [valley of Molech]
The Tophet (also called Topheth) was the altar upon which children were burned in sacrifice to the deity. Everywhere the word appears in the Old Testament, it is always used in connection with the Valley of Hinnom and therefore with Molech as well.
The Valley of Hinnom, where Molech’s Tophet of sacrifice was located, became “Gehenna” (a derivative of the Hebrew), a metaphor for hell or final judgment in the Second Temple and New Testament times.[246] It is a common misunderstanding to caricature Gehenna as a garbage dump. There is no textual or archaeological evidence that it was such a thing. But it was a place of evil that was judged with fire and destruction.
In Jeremiah 7 and 19, the prophet predicts judgment upon Judah because of her worship of other gods, including child sacrifice on the Tophet in the Valley of Hinnom. He prophesies that the Babylonians will come and bring great destruction upon Jerusalem. There will be so many dead lying on the ground that the name of the valley will be changed from the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom to the Valley of Slaughter.
Jeremiah 7:32–33:
32 … for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. 33 And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away.
Jeremiah 19:12–13:
12 Thus will I do to this place, declares the Lord, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth. 13 The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah—all the houses on whose roofs offerings have been offered to all the host of heaven, and drink offerings have been poured out to other gods—shall be defiled like the place of Topheth.
Yahweh says that he will turn Jerusalem itself into a Tophet of burning destruction like a sacrifice to him because of their use of the Tophet and worship of the host of heaven. This was what indeed happened when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C. And thus Gehenna (the Valley of Slaughter) became the symbol of God’s judgment upon those who violated his commands.
Recent critical scholarship has tried to argue that Yahweh himself actually commanded and accepted human sacrifice from Israelites and only later did post-exilic agenda-driven authors write propaganda into the Bible to try to discredit this “once-acceptable sacrifice.” This is an attempt to reduce Hebrew Yahwism down to evolving Canaanite religion rather than revelation from heaven. They suggest several key passages to support this contention: 1) Yahweh’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22), 2) Jephthah’s vow to sacrifice his own daughter (Judges 11:29-40), and 3) Yahweh’s explicit statement that he had previously commanded human sacrifice in Ezekiel 20:25.
Yahweh’s command to Abraham is one of the most debated passages in the Bible. That command was clearly and contextually a testing of Abraham’s faith that Yahweh didn’t intend for Abraham to perform. Such hypotheticals of testing are more reflective of a contrast with the Canaanite culture than an accommodation of it. Would Abraham be willing to do what he thought was wrong if Yahweh commanded it? A
braham was supposed to trust Yahweh’s righteousness and not lean on his own fallible fallen human understanding. That is a test of trust, not the validation of an evil.
Jephthah’s vow has also been debated for centuries about whether or not it even referred to human sacrifice rather than a life of religious celibacy (Judges11:30). But at the end of the day, the text gives no moral judgment of Jephthah’s behavior from God’s perspective. Yahweh is not shown to approve of it any more than he is shown to condemn it. An argument from silence is not an argument for anything. The story merely describes what happened. Jephthah’s performance of his vow thus remains to be judged by scriptural passages that do make moral judgments on human sacrifice as evil.
Ezekiel’s recording of Yahweh’s strange statement about statutes and human sacrifice is surely the most difficult of the passages to address. In it, Yahweh is referencing the disobedience of Israel toward him in the wilderness.
Ezekiel 20:25–26:
25 Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, 26 and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the Lord.
It sounds as if God is saying that his laws of Torah were not good and that he deliberately defiled the people by telling them to sacrifice their children. And then he gets even more strange to suggest that this was done so that they might know that he was Yahweh. It is one list of confusing contradictions against everything else written of God’s Law in the Old Testament.
The context of the passage solves the problem of misinterpretation. It wouldn’t make sense that Yahweh here would say the opposite of everything he has said throughout the Old Testament about his Law. In fact, it wouldn’t make sense to contradict what was previously said in this very same chapter of Exodus 20: that his statutes were good (v.12), that they would give life (v.11), that idols defiled them (v.7, 18), and that human sacrifice was forbidden (v.28-29, 31). Yahweh said very clearly that regarding child sacrifice, “I did not command it, nor did it come into my mind” (Jeremiah 7:31).
Context is everything. And the context of the passage is about Israel being given over to pagan control as punishment for her disobedience. The verses before Ezekiel 20:25-26 reiterates Yahweh’s warning that he would “scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries” (20:23-24). Yahweh gave them up to the godless nations around them whose gods they chose to worship.
Well, those gods had their own statutes and rules that violated Yahweh’s law. So the best translation of v. 25 is not God “gave them those statutes,” but rather as the NKJV translates, God “gave them up” to those evil laws and rules. This is what is meant by “withholding his hand” from Israel in v. 22. This is also what is meant by Paul in Romans 1 where God “gave up” the pagans to their depravity to be judged by it (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). So God gave up the Israelites to the godless nations with their godless statutes and culture that Israel was seeking after. Yahweh’s goal was that Israel would suffer from her bad choices and return to Yahweh.
The attempt to attribute child sacrifice to the Bible as if it were originally a normal part of Yahweh worship has no textual support from Scripture. The fact that many Israelites engaged in human sacrifice is simply proof of what the Bible says that they were spiritually unfaithful to Yahweh for so long that he sent them into exile precisely for sins such as child sacrifice.
The obvious connection that child sacrifice has with the modern practice of abortion is not hard to catch, and thus the parallels between Jezebel’s day and our own are instructive. Phrases like “sacrificing children in temples of Molech” or “on the altars of convenience” are used by pro-lifers of abortion clinics because the willing murder of one’s own offspring in order to bring benefit to a person’s life or to escape personal suffering is exactly what the motivation was behind child sacrifices of the ancient world. In the same way that the ancient world pleaded with the gods through child sacrifice to save them from the suffering of diseases, famine, or wars, so today’s culture pleads to Molech through abortion to “save” women from the suffering of poverty, “oppressed status,” or gender wars.
True believers in child sacrifice who were mothers of that ancient time considered it difficult but necessary to sacrifice their babies, just as true believers in abortion today will admit the difficulty of their act while demanding it a necessary right to sacrifice their babies. “Safe, legal, and rare” has resulted in a universal sacrament.
In the end, there is just no legitimate moral argument for murdering innocent children. And as in ancient Israel, the child sacrifice of abortion marks the beginning of the end of a civilization by the judgment of God.
Outside the Bible, child sacrifice in Phoenician culture (like that of Tyre’s) has a significant presence in both textual and archaeological evidence. Among the most ancient texts that reference it are the following that wrote about the city of Carthage in North Africa, a settlement of Phoenicians.
Fourth-century BC Greek author Kleitarchos [paraphrased]:
“Kleitarchos says that out of reverence for Kronos [the Greek equivalent of Ba’al Hammon], the Phoenicians, and especially the Carthaginians, whenever they seek to obtain some great favor, vow one of their children, burning it as a sacrifice to the deity if they are especially eager to gain success. There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos [Baal], its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing, until the contracted (body) slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the “grin’ is known as “sardonic laughter,” since they die laughing.”[247]
First-century BC Greek historian Diodorus Siculus:
“In their zeal to make amends for their omission to sacrifice the noblest children, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion sacrificed themselves voluntarily, in a number not less than three hundred. There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus, extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereupon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.”[248]
Second-century AD Greek author Plutarch:
“No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums [so that] the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.”[249]
Though these texts speak of Phoenician child sacrifice in locations geographically removed from Canaan, they actually confirm religious and cultural connection to Jezebel’s Tyre. The city of Carthage was founded by Dido of Tyre shortly after Jezebel’s death.[250] As Henry Smith explains, “The evidence indicates that the Phoenicians brought this barbaric practice to Carthage from Canaan, and therefore, evidence of child sacrifice at Carthage provides evidential support for the historicity of the biblical accounts which mention such sacrifices.”[251]
Critical scholars have recently sought to discredit or diminish the descriptions of Phoenician child sacrifice in both biblical and classical historians by complaining of prejudice in the authors who describe the sacrifices. In other words, biblical prophets used poetic hyperbole against polytheists, and Greek and Roman authors wrote propaganda about their enemies, such as Carthage, in order to paint them as barbarians and to justify their own barbarity.[252]
But this doesn’t really fit the facts. First, because authors of different eras and vastly different cultures all wrote about the child sacrifice of Carthage. That is the def
inition of legally sound corroborating eyewitnesses.
Secondly, both Greeks and Romans practiced infant exposure, leaving unwanted infants to die of exposure to natural elements. So they didn’t condemn the killing of infants—because they practiced it. Their interest was not moral but theological.[253]
Thirdly, the archaeological evidence confirms that both biblical and classical authors knew what they were talking about. Such physical evidence of child sacrifice has been found in Phoenician colonies all over the western Mediterranean. The most famous of sites is the Tophet at Carthage, North Africa, already referenced above.
Lawrence Stager and Sam Wolff, archaeologists who had excavated the site described it this way:
The Carthaginian Tophet is the largest of these Phoenician sites and indeed is the largest cemetery of sacrificed humans ever discovered. Child sacrifice took place there almost continuously for a period of nearly 600 years…we nevertheless estimate the size of the Carthaginian Tophet during the fourth and probably the third centuries B.C. to be, at the minimum, between 54,000 and 64,000 square feet. Using the density of urns in our excavated area as a standard, we estimate that as many as 20,000 urns may have been deposited there between 400 and 200 B.C.[254]
The excavation site involves several levels that cover time periods from 800 B.C. to about 146 B.C. Earlier dates are below the water level and not accessible. Each level consists of urns that contain the charred bones of children, both boys and girls, from newborn to three-years old, mixed in with charred bones of goats and sheep. These burnt sacrifices were made to Tanit and Baal-Hammon, the patron goddess and god of Carthage. Tanit is the equivalent of Astarte in Canaan. Some say Baal-Hammon is the equivalent of the high god El. But in Canaan Astarte was the consort, not of El, but of Baal, the “Most High.” So Baal-Hammon is most likely the equivalent of the Canaanite Baal-Hadad.