Child Sacrifice and the Bible

Part II of our study (see March issue for part 1).

Larry G. Herr is presently engaged in postgraduate studies in Carthage, Tunisia.

IN A PREVIOUS article (March, 1976) we discussed the nature of the Punic rite of child sacrifice, mentioning its continuity with the homeland of Phoenicia and thus with the Canaanites whom the Israelites dispossessed. It was from these practices of child sacrifice that the newly arrived Israelites were repeatedly counseled to refrain (Deut. 18:9-12). Unfortunately this counsel was not always followed. Consequently, despite all commands to the contrary, we find the practice resurfacing. The "theologians" in favor of such a practice may have presented distorted and simplistic evidence to support their position. After all, they may have reasoned, wasn't their own "founding" father, Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son at the request of the same God who later asked His people to refrain from the practice? Wasn't Jephthah, who had invoked the name of Yahweh (translated as "the Lord" in most English Bibles), bound by the third commandment to fulfill his vow and offer his daughter to Yahweh, the very God who had forbidden the practice (Judges 11)? Might not the third commandment (he had used the name of Yahweh in his vow and could not take it in vain) take precedence over the command against child sacrifice?

Furthermore, on a more complex level, it has been suggested that Israel's God, Yahweh by name, is the same God as the great head of the Canaanite pan theon, El (but only under a different name by which He held a unique relationship with Israel, i.e., much like the Muslim Allah and the Biblical Jehovah are different names of the same God). This evidence comes from Exodus 6:3 where the name of God is formally changed from patriarchal El Shaddai (the Shaddai form of El) to Yahweh. Now, it happens that Baal Hamon, to whom the Punic worshipers offered their children, is none other than the Punic form of this god El, as well (both Baal Hamon and El are identified with Kronos by the Greeks). It is thus not surprising that the less careful of the ancient Israelites fell for subtle temptations based on certain apparently confusing aspects of their religious and national history.

Moreover, their superstitious belief in the potency of the act of child sacrifice was illustrated during their attack on the rebelling Moabite king, Mesha, when that king, acting in what to him was the direst of crises, offered his son as a burnt offering upon the city wall (2 Kings 3:27). The Israelite reaction to this act seems to have been one of fear of the "great wrath" to come upon them. The Hebrew words and structure do not support an interpretation of righteous indignation here; furthermore, if righteous indignation at an extreme abomination had been their sentiment, it would have been their religious, moral, and military duty to press the siege even harder, which they did not. The simple statement that "they departed from him, and returned to their own land" probably illustrates the fact that in spite of the commands by Yahweh to the contrary, the Israelites still superstitiously believed in the potency of child sacrifice. At any rate, this deed won the day for Mesha since the lifting of the siege brought independence to Moab. We learn of this in dependence from the famous Moabite Stela on which King Mesha records his successful rebellion against Israel.

The repeated Biblical prohibitions against child sacrifice, the frequent ac cusations against certain kings who delved into the practice, as well as the purge of Josiah that destroyed the tophet at Jerusalem in the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom (2 Kings 23:10), all at test to the limited use, at least, of this gruesome rite in both Israel and Judah. What did this practice entail and to what extent can we amplify it?

In the article on child sacrifice in the ancient Near East (March, 1976, issue) it was stated that in Punic circles the technical term for the type of sacrifice usually involving an infant was called a mulk.* The Hebrew equivalent of this word occurs eight times in the Old Testament as molek (or molechk and ch represent the same Hebrew letter). Prior to the discovery of the Punic steles by archeologists it was thought that this was a god of the Ammonites, fol lowing 1 Kings 11:7. However, in the Punic steles this word was definitely not a divinity. A glance at the parallel passages (1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23: 13) at once solves this predicament, for it is immediately seen that these verses state Milcom to be the god of the Ammonites. Thus, in the days before vowels were written (vowels were not written into Biblical texts until well after the time of Christ), a sloppy scribe mistranscribed mlkm simply as mlk, an easy mistake since mlk is not only the consonantal spelling involved in our word molek but also the spelling of the Hebrew word for "king" (melek). Thus 1 Kings 11:7 should have Milcom as the correct god of the Ammonites, not Molech.

This leaves us with seven occurrences of the word molech, each of which is used in the context of child sacrifice. Unfortunately, the "pre-archeology" translators of the Bible did not know that there was a particular Canaanite sacrificial rite called a mulk (in He brew, molek), and so, taking the scribal error of 1 Kings 11:7 as a basis, they translated all the passages as if the child sacrifices were being offered to a god named Molech. Now, with the help of the understanding which archeological excavations have given us, we know that the phrases in question should be translated as in this example, "Any man . . . who gives any of his children for a molech-sacrifice shall be put to death" (Lev. 20:2).

We can thus say that in both the Phoenician/Punic and Israelite cultures there existed a specific sacrificial rite known in both realms by the same cor responding technical name. Further more, the fact that the rite was definitely borrowed by its practitioners in Israel from the Canaanites (Deut. 12: 29-31) would indicate the common origin in Canaan/Phoenicia for the particular forms of child sacrifice practiced both in Israel and in the Punic world. It should thus be clear that we are able to use our knowledge of the Punic rite to illustrate that practiced in Israel and Judah.

Though there must have been other tophets in Israel and Judah, the best known is the tophet of Jerusalem in the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom west of the city. This infamous place of evil fires has forever been etched in our concept of the word gehenna, which is nothing more than a combination of two Hebrew words ge hinnom, "Valley of Hinnom." This tophet, like those of Sardinia, was outside the city, and like most of its Punic siblings had no temple associated with it.

Isaiah's Description

Unfortunately, all the texts (but one) that mention the existence of child sacrifice do little more than forbid it or condemn the person who did it. Some texts, however, mention "sons and daughters" indicating no sexual preference, as in the Punic rite. The most instructive text is found in a profound poem written by the prophet Isaiah utilizing his Israelite knowledge of the rite as a means for describing metaphorically how Yahweh would punish the archenemy, Assyria, using Assyria's death in a sacrificial holocaust for the salvation of Israel. The first two verses of Isaiah 30:27-33 show Yahweh in power and anger going forth to battle, which in verse 31 is seen to be against Assyria.

Verse 33 says that a tophet has long been prepared (translated as "burning place" in the R.S.V.). The use of this technical term is important as it provides the interpretive key for the rest of the passage. The second phrase of the verse uses the Hebrew term mlk, understood by those who wrote the vowels more than 1,000 years later as melek, "king," but which would make far more sense in a tophet context as molek, the technical sacrificial term, since the passage describes so accurately what an Israelite molek-sacrifice was. (In ways like this, archeology helps us catch ancient scribal mistakes.) The third phrase gives us a picture of the fiery pit, similar to the pit in Carthage, waiting to receive its helpless victim, "its fire pit made deep and wide" (italics supplied). Also of interest is the use of music along with the ceremony (verse 32) since it also occurred in the Punic rite.

Since this passage does not reflect an actual historical event, it should be evident that Isaiah is here describing Assyria's upcoming demise in the language of the typical molek-sacrifice ceremony with which his readers were acquainted. We are then justified in using the text to help describe the typical child-sacrifice ceremony as it was practiced in Israel. Furthermore, the many similarities it has with the Punic rite encourage us to make further analogies, though care must be expressed in being dogmatic about them.

We have already seen how the king of Moab performed the act during a grave crisis that faced his city, much like the Carthaginians did under siege, and one may suggest that Ahaz and Manasseh, both condemned for offering their children, may have done so in similar times of crisis. Another similarity here is, of course, the nobility of these royal children. The existence of a special precinct for the rite, the tophet, would indicate a more or less regular practice of the rite, possibly yearly, like the Punic cities. That molek-sacrifices were offered for special individual re quests is suggested by the fact that, in spite of orthodox religious disapproval and the existence of righteous kings who evidently did not perform the rite, it continued to exist. It is hard to explain this tenacity unless one posits a separate influential group of people who continued the practice on an individual, nonofficial level. Whether rich persons could purchase infants of poor individuals to use in the rite is not known, though oppression of the poor by the rich is well known from the invectives of the prophets.

In Israel, the practice seems to have been brought to a close by Josiah (2 Kings 23:10) in his reforms of the seventh century B.C., and does not seem to have cropped up again in Israel after the exile. This may have been at least partly due to the fact that the Persians were in control of the Near East at that time and it was they, according to the classical authors, who banned the rite from Phoenicia itself. Only in the western Phoenician colonies, now independent from the motherland, did the practice continue until Rome banned it there too.


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Larry G. Herr is presently engaged in postgraduate studies in Carthage, Tunisia.

May 1976

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