Child Sacrifice and Molech in Ancient Israel

Religious faith, hope, and devotion can inspire human beings to do truly amazing, but also shocking acts of piety. And perhaps there's nothing more awful, awful in both the sense of horrible, but also somehow full of awe, outstandingly awful act of religious ceremony than human sacrifice. And of human sacrifice, none more dreadful. None more singularly dreadful. than child sacrifice. And in the imaginary of the Western world, that most horrible act of devotion is associated with the demonic deity Moloch, or Molech. Often depicted in art as a brazen beast with fiery, outstretched arms set to receive a helpless infant, the image of Moloch has inspired horror from the poetry of John Milton to contemporary game theory. But who was this demonic deity? Was there ever such a nightmarish God in the ancient world? And if not, what do we know about the sacrifice of children in ancient Israel? Did Yahweh, the ancient Israelite God, command the sacrifice of children? And how did this most extreme act of religious devotion come to an end eventually detested by the final editors of the bible let's explore what is among the most alarming and grotesque religious practices the act of child sacrifice in ancient israel of the merch of the channel and if you're new to the study of western esotericism and you really want to get into reliable sources make sure to check out my study guide where you can see a whole list of various things you may be interested in from gnosticism to magic and reliable books on those topics of course if you're interested in historical books on topics in the occult and the mystical make sure to check out esoterica rare books where you can pick out historical tomes on those subjects You can find all those links in the description and in the pinned comment below. But now to the less-than-cheery topic of the demonic deity known as Molech, or the act of child sacrifice known as the L'molech in ancient Israel. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. When the poet John Milton arrayed the fallen angels to plan their outrages against God, Moloch is among the most ferocious with a seemingly infinite appetite for violence and gore. This horrid king, besmeared with blood of human sacrifice and human tears, argued for nothing less than a full frontal assault on heaven, bringing the full fiery fury of hell against the very gates of heaven. Fast forward. to contemporary game theory where Moloch has become the name for a kind of monster which all of the players can see but are all doomed by it right before their very eyes. It drives them inexorably to group loss and failure. Moloch or Molech, the Masoretic and the Septuagintal slash Vulgate traditions of the biblical text actually contain two distinct ways of pronouncing this name, and this name has become among the most horrifying. of the demonic deities. A fiery beast in whose arms are placed the most precious and innocent of sacrifices. A living infant who is viciously incinerated alive, seemingly, all to the insidious din of drums and flutes and the clash of cymbals, perhaps to drown out the screams of the infant. Child sacrifice to an ancient deity named Moloch continues to fire the imagination of everyone from game theorists to conspiracy theorists alike, unfortunately. But was there ever even a deity known as Molech in the past to whom children were sacrificed? To get at this question, let's present what I call the traditional view. This position is that there was, in fact, an ancient Near East deity named Molech or Molach from the root in Western Semitic, which actually means king, though in Eastern Semitic it actually denotes something like a royal advisor. This deity was conspicuous in that Children were sacrificed to it. by burning or as the Bible typically has it by passing them through the flames This could be both male and female children. Further, the site of that sacrifice was known as a Tophet, with the most infamous one being located in the Valley of Hinnom, just south of Jerusalem. That site would also become associated with Gehinnom, the precursor to what would become, well, hell. This deity was venerated by at least two Israelite kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, but was seemingly also worshipped in the wider Mediterranean world, and is attested most famously by the numerous Tophets, found in Punic, North Africa, many of which, tens of thousands of which, contained the incinerated remains of babies and young children. In the traditional view, this deity was indigenous to the Canaanites, the people that the Israelites allegedly displaced in the invasion, or the broader Near East more generally, but... And the traditional view was actively opposed by the Yahwists, whose literature flatly forbid passing one's children through the fires to Moloch. And in a sense, this traditional view still has a great many scholars that defend it, both secular and religious, and they do so on three major evidential grounds to support that view. One, the plentiful amount of the North African Punic Tophets, this term by the way was never used by the Carthaginians themselves, which shows extensive evidence of child sacrifice among the Semitic Phoenicians. Secondly, the specific phrasing of the prohibition in the Hebrew Bible as whoring after Molech, a phrase that's almost always used in the Bible to elicit worship of non-Yahweh deity by the Israelites. And three, the apparent existence of a pan-ancient Near East deity, Malik or Mulk, who's typically associated with the Neitherworld deity Nergal. And to their credit, scholars like Buber and G.C. Heider have gone to great lengths, long monographs, to bring the traditional view into line with contemporary archaeological findings and biblical criticism, generally speaking, especially in trying to establish the existence of a Malik deity or a Mulk deity associated with the Chthonic deity Nergal via ancient Near Eastern deity lists. theophoric name markers, and careful analysis and reading of the Hebrew Bible. But, this is a big but, detractors of the traditional view have emerged beginning in especially the early 20th century, really in 1935 with the work of Ido Eisfeld. Where a Malik deity is attested, admittedly, and sometimes associated with the underworld deity Nergal, there is no connection of that deity to human sacrifice, much less child sacrifice, in the ancient literature connected with those deities. Further, many of those ancient names with the Malik theiform, a theiform is just a divine name attached to a personal name, like Elijah, Eliyahu in Hebrew, which means my God is Yahweh, the Yahhu part being part. of the Theonym. I just wish she was named Yahu. So much more fun, Yahu. Well, many of those names are found only in a very specific Eblei context. They're not found overall in the Ancient Near East. Further, we expect the name Malik, if itself is a divine name, it will be written in those languages with what is called a divine determinative, the dingyir sign. This is a star-shaped symbol attached to the names of gods and goddesses when you have them written out in these languages. But that's a contested issue. We don't really see that. As mentioned, this potential Malik-Nirgal deity is just not really associated with human, much less child sacrifice. But there's a kind of directional problem of the sacrifice as well. The child sacrifices associated with Moloch and ancient Near East sacrifices more generally are typically burnt, or Ola sacrifices, which rise into the air because they're being burned. They don't descend into the netherworld which we would associate with a chthonic netherworld deity like Nergal. Further, the language most often used in the Hebrew Bible for this kind of sacrifice, l'molech, is unusual. Firstly, this alleged deity is never really mentioned outside of this context of the child's sacrifice or passing them through. And further, while the whoring language is associated with other deities, to Buber's credit, the grammar reads the molech. with a definite article in Hebrew, La-molech, that long sound indicates a little definite article has been swallowed up there. That's odd that given the numerous other deities in the Hebrew Bible, such as Baal, and Milchan, Chemosh, Asherah, they're never really denoted with a definite article precisely because they're personal names. I'm not the Justin Sledge, I'm just Justin, much like Ha-Satan, the Satan, in Job, isn't a name. It's a title in the Hebrew Bible. the accuser, the adversary, and only becomes a proper name centuries later. Even the Hebrew of Leviticus 25 isn't clear when compared to the Greek Septuagint which has whoring into their rulers, tus arcantas, reading the Hebrew not as a singular noun, molech, but as a plural of melech, perhaps, ruler or king. In effect, there's good reason to think that the Masoretic text is actually just corrupt here, and that the Septuagint actually preserves a better original sense of the phrase. It's a prohibition, perhaps, against following foreign rulers, rather than sacrificing to a deity known as molech or molach. In effect, the evidence for this neither-world deity named molech or molach, to whom children are sacrificed, especially by burning, It's pretty sparse when you look at the actual evidence. So, if Molech isn't a god or wasn't a god, what was it? It appears likely that the answer that the Mlamolech was the name of a specific kind of child sacrifice by burning which was incorporated into Judean Yahwism seemingly during the rule of Achaz. But to understand that, we need to travel pretty far west over to the Punic heartland in North Africa. Carthage and similar cities were part of the vast trade empire founded by the Phoenicians, for whom we can thank, you know, for the alphabet, all of them, except for the Korean alphabet. In their colonies in North Africa, significant evidence, lots of evidence has been found for the practice of child sacrifices, along with lambs and other goats that were sacrificed as well. typically associated with the completion of a vow or a neder, something already widely attested in ancient literature more generally. Urns containing the incinerated remains are often accompanied with a stele commemorating the sacrifice and giving something of a rationale for why it was done. Now, when taken together, these stele revealed something extraordinary in relationship to the sacrifice. In the inscriptions, the formulaic language revealed that it was addressed to a god or gods, typically Baal or Tanit in the case, again, that's the Punic gods, the completion of a vow or an oath, a neder, along with the phrase mulk lam, M L K in Phoenician, a term even referenced in the Latin literature, by the way, here cognate with the Phoenician Aramaic term mulkan, which literally means something like promised lamb or vow lamb. M-O-K, Molech, not as a name, but simply as the word for promise or vow, it seems. That is, a lamb given as a sacrifice as the result of a vow made by a person that if the god grants them such and such, well, they'll sacrifice what needed to be sacrificed. Well, the gods answered, the person kept the vow. and the promised lamb, our child, was sacrificed. But, along with the other mentioned promised lambs, other steles often refer to as a molk adam, a promised person or vow human. It's apparently a human sacrifice. Here molk, the same root word behind the alleged deity molekh or molakh, referred not to a deity at all, but to a specific type of sacrifice ritual that accompanied the completion of a vow or oath, where the where the gods had blessed them and they vowed to sacrifice something if the gods did that. In fact, when specifically child sacrifices are mentioned and the incineration of children are present, the Punic Steli are often referred to as L'molech, the exact term that we find in the Hebrew Bible. And if we're to believe the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, the child selected for this sacrifice was often denoted as a Yud. It's a strange Greek term, but we rewind it back to Semitic. Yachid, the unique one, or the only one. Now hold onto that term, Yachid, it's going to matter a lot toward the end of this video. Indeed, this all basically lines up with the two things the Hebrew Bible indicates about this kind of sacrifice. That they are the sacrifice of children by burning, and that they're ultimately foreign, non-Judean, non-Yahwistic in origins, and are therefore because of their foreignness detestable. Not because it's morally wrong to sacrifice children. But there's a problem. North African Punic religious rituals are really distant from the Tophet just south of Jerusalem. Where's the textual or archaeological connective tissue between the two? The short answer is that there isn't much. There might not be any. In fact, archaeological evidence for child sacrifice in the eastern Mediterranean is scarce, including in the Phoenician heartland, bordering on basically non-existent. There were some initial finds at Canaanite sites like Gezer and Tanakh and Megiddo, but while at first they were thought to reveal the existence of sacrifices like that, further studies show that they probably weren't. They were just buried there. Egyptian depictions of sieges of Canaanite cities might depict children being thrown from the city walls or burned in braziers and sacrificed. Such sieges, as we'll see, were often typically associated with child sacrifices, so maybe, maybe. But exactly how to understand those Egyptian depictions is pretty contested. Now, as I mentioned, while Punic colonies show extensive evidence of Mulk sacrifices, what about the Phoenician heartland? Interestingly, the evidence there is surprisingly spare. No Punic-like Tophets have yet been found. The inscription evidence at Nebunis might just be fake. The inscriptions at Enserli, Diralla, and an inscription found at Cyprus are all highly contested and frankly pretty fragmentary. Unlike the plethora of Punic inscriptions and human sacrifices we find in Carthage. the Genian sites. In fact, the earliest strata of the Punic Tophets have far more lambs to babies ratio, while by the end of the practice, when the Romans invaded and ravaged that territory, you know, Carthago de Lenda Est and all that, there were 20% more babies than lambs being sacrificed, being nearly totally replaced by lambs after the Roman conquest. But, while the connection between the language and the vowel-based incineration of the children of the Punic site seems conspicuously frankly very similar to the ceremonies described in the Hebrew Bible, we gotta be honest, the exact connection, if there is one, and I strongly think that there is one, the connection remains pretty unknown texturally and archaeologically. The evidence connecting the two is far more circumstantial than not. Now despite this, I and many other scholars do think the evidence is strong enough to conclude There was no deity Molech, or Molach, to whom babies were sacrificed. This is just a misreading of the text. Rather, I tend to agree with the position that the La Molech was, in fact, a kind of child sacrifice imported into Judean Yahwism from Phoenician ceremonial practice. Though, as we'll see, La Molech sacrifice, that specific child sacrifice, was just one of at least three other forms. of Judean Yahwistic child sacrifice. So just because the L'molech is probably not a god and probably is a sacrifice, and it's probably of foreign origin, it doesn't mean the Israelites weren't sacrificing their kids too. Zeroing in on the Hebrew Bible as a source for learning more about this L'molech sacrifice is just as elusive, honestly. It's mentioned in some form about a dozen times, mostly times forbidding it. The ritual seems to involve passing children, both male and female children, through a fire. or otherwise burning them at a place known as a tophet. An otherwise mysterious word, by the way. We don't really know what this word tophet means. It might come from the Aramaic word for hearth, but scholars still debate exactly what a tophet is. Though the vocalization of both molech and tophet may have actually been the result of taboo denigration, where the vowels for the Hebrew word shame, boshet, are actually introduced into the text. much like they are in association with worship of Baal. Now, the ritual was first associated in the text with the Judahite king Achaz, known actually for his syncretizing tendency with folks up there in the north, especially modeling temple furniture, in fact, on models that he had seen in Damascus. It could have also been in this region that he witnessed and brought the Lamelech ceremony down to Judea. It was apparently continued by Manasseh before the Tophet was destroyed in the reforms of Josiah.. Interestingly enough, by the way, the otherwise righteous King Hezekiah and his prophet, the prophet everyone loves, were right in the historical center of this practice. It seemed to have been going on right there during while they were alive. And in fact, Isaiah 30 even imagines Assyria. Assyria itself as being sacrificed at the Jerusalem Tophet as a Lamelech sacrifice. So, did Isaiah condemn it? And this also invites the natural question. If the Lamelech sacrifice wasn't made to a deity known as Molech or Moloch, then to whom? The answer is probably Yahweh, as shocking as that might seem to some of y'all out there. Though as we'll see, the sacrifice of children to Yahweh was anything other than new at this point. Thus it appears that the ritual centered around sacrificing children upon the divine fulfillment of a vow or nedir or an oath by burning them. It was probably introduced into Judean Yahwism by Ahaz and persisted for a couple of centuries up until it was eliminated. by Josiah. However, as we'll see, once the specific L'molech rite was eliminated from Judean Yahwism, its memory would persist well into the future, especially those bent on religious polemics, specifically by the prophets. Ezekiel and Jeremiah. But the L'molech ritual isn't the only form of child sacrifice known from ancient Israel and its surrounding environs. At least two other forms of child sacrifice can be detected in the Hebrew Bible. In a very complex narrative at 2 Kings 3, we find the Moabite king, and the Moabites and Israelites are very similar, the Moabite king Misha in a route led by an alliance of Israelite, Judahite, and Edomite kings. He's ultimately besieged at his fortress at Kir Haraset, following a prophetically informed reversal. Well, Misha sacrificed his firstborn son as an olah, or burnt offering, on the walls of that citadel. Interestingly enough, this does successfully bring down divine wrath, presumably from the Moabite national god Chemosh, upon the triple alliance of the Israelites, Judahites, and Edomites, who promptly end the siege and... Retreat! They get right out of there because Chemosh is attacking them apparently. Now, there is a lot to unpack in this tale, but what we apparently have is a narrative where a Moabite king sacrifices his firstborn son, which invokes the wrath of a non-Yahweh god, Chemosh. Yahweh just wouldn't have much power in this kind of territory because remember, gods at this time were geographically bound in a pretty strong sense. Divine kings are of specific regions as it as it were, to bring down. The sacrifice brings down wrath upon the Edomites and their Yahwist allies. Now, we've already seen potential Egyptian depictions of child sacrifice upon the walls when Merneptah was laying siege to some Canaanite cities, and that imagery was associated again with pharaonic violence in the region, and so the idea of sacrificing children on the walls of besieged cities might have been a good idea. been a thing. And here we have a very similar narrative in the Hebrew Bible where child sacrifice is shockingly effective at conjuring divine action. And we should also point to other references in classical literature where we have similar accounts of child sacrifice occurring in the midst of a siege to break sieges. This is true at the Punic context as well. However, note that Misha's sacrifice is logically different than the L'molech sacrifice. In the L'molech sacrifice, one makes a vow and then the god satisfies that vow, and then the sacrifice is made. Here it seems that King Misha seemingly performs the child's sacrifice to induce divine action. Now, that's a risky bargain, but it seems to have worked out and it was clearly born out of an immediate crisis. In some ways, this is a kind of crisis-induced human sacrifice. Crisis-induced child sacrifice. In the same vein of the Lamelech sacrifice is the tale of Jephthah at Judges chapter 11. In that narrative, Jephthah wishes for military success and vows to Yahweh that, given such success, he'll sacrifice whatever comes out his door first. Well, Jephthah successfully defeats the Ammonites and, of course, his daughter. bursts out the door celebrating her father's victory in song. After a short period of reprieve, Jephthah, you know, deals a deal kind of dude, sacrifices his daughter to Yahweh. While this narrative does have some folkloric elements, especially the element of ironic reversal, It certainly contains the notion of a vow-based sacrifice, similar to those over there in the Punic Heartland and presumably the Lomolech sacrifices that are condemned. And such sacrifices, of course, we see in the book. here could be rendered to Yahweh. Indeed, Micah chapter 6 also at least entertains the idea that sacrificing one's firstborn for the remission of one's sins as the ultimate sacrifice more valuable than thousands of rams or ten thousands rivers of oil was at least imaginable in the minds of an Israelite prophet even if it were ultimately rejected by Yahweh via that prophet. That, in contradistinction to what we'll see in prophetic child condemnation sacrifice, sacrifices by later prophets. Come back to that. Also, keep the idea in mind that a sacrifice of a firstborn child might have the effect of allowing for forgiveness of sins. That idea might just matter in a minute. Might just. Finally, at the rather archaic legal sections at Exodus 22, this is around 28, the second part of 28 and 29, Yahweh demands that like various animals, firstborn male children, children are also to be given over to Yahweh. from their mother after eight days and given to Yahweh, thus apparently establishing a general requirement of child sacrifice of at least boys. Of course, such a generalized demand of child sacrifice seems utterly unimaginable to us given how we relate to children in a contemporary context. However, That's not their context. Given an Iron Age infant mortality rate of around 50% and that women had far more children then than now, assuming having those children didn't kill those women, the idea of sacrificing the first child you get to ensure for healthy children in the future? That's perfectly reasonable. Indeed, that's the very logic of all sacrifices in the Bible in some sense, that you give the first fruits of your stock and of your livestock and of your grain to Yahweh so that you get abundance in the future. That's exactly the logic here. Now, it's a gruesome logic. But it's logical. Further, this idea of having to give Yahweh the firstborn is also justifies because of the Passover event in which Yahweh had the angel of death go through and, you know, kill the firstborn of all the Egyptians. Thus, it's kind of an eternal trade of a sort. The Israelite liberation on the back of the killing of one generation of Egyptian children, itself by the way a kind of mass child sacrifice if we're being honest, such that Israelite firstborn boys, or at least their parents, would forever bear the cost. Now, that custom is still kept alive in Judaism with the fast of the firstborn boys on the eve of Passover. So you don't kill them, they just gotta be hungry before they eat the matzah. Was such a custom of child sacrifice widespread among the Yahwists? Frankly, that's impossible to know. There's very little archaeological evidence of it. But, but that it occurred seems underwritten on at least a few grounds. The first is that the Hebrew Bible itself, especially in later legal sections, is aware of this requirement for child sacrifice and institutes various kinds of escape clauses to get away from it. Those take the form of lamb sacrifices in lieu of children, something by the way that we also saw over at the Punic Tophet in North Africa. Specific groups having to serve as Levites in the temple, that is the assistants in the temple, so they have to go there. Sometimes just a cash payment is enough to get you out of being sacrificed, and perhaps eventually circumcision. Does some of this work. Remember that eighth day clause. And eventually fasting and other ritual substitutions as well. Some of those substitutions are still in effect in contemporary Jewish law or halakha. I mentioned boys fasting, firstborn boys fasting on the eve of Passover, but the pledge of the firstborns to Yahweh and the temple service is also substituted by the ritual of Pidyon HaBen. Now, I'll be honest, this is personally my favorite of all Jewish rituals, Pidyon HaBen, but here the infant boy is presented. presented to a member of the Israelite priesthood who returns the boy to the parents for a ritual payment of 5 shekel, or between 96 and 102 grams of pure silver, which is just under $100 these days in 2024. Not a bad exchange rate of infant per silver. Not that there should be such an exchange rate, all things told, but not bad. Of course, some of the best evidence that child sacrifice to Yahweh did occur in ancient Israel is that the Hebrew Bible is at length to forbid it. Prohibition very usually implies performance, folks. But on what grounds was child sacrifice forbidden? Well, not so much because sacrificing children is immoral simpliciter, but because the practice is foreign. It's a non-Israelite way of worshipping Yahweh, and in those passages it anachronistically assigns that kind of horrible child sacrifice business to the Canaanites. However, there is probably some truth, as we've mentioned, to the non-Israelite origins of at least the Lamelech sacrifice, and these passages might be at some level speaking to those concerns. As we've seen, the ancient Israelites knew and practiced at least some forms of child sacrifice. The general sacrifice of firstborn boys, the vow or neder sacrifice of both boys and girls, and the Lamolach ritual, and the crisis sacrifice represented by people like King Mesha. Along with those, I should also mention that Francesca Stavro Capullo has also argued for sacrifices associated with the Shadim, or demonic entities, or perhaps Shaddai gods, and this is actually witnessed in texts like Psalm 106 and her reading of the Deir ala inscription. So, Those might have existed as well, and her book I'll mention at the end is well worth checking out. It's a fantastic scholarship. However, it appears that following the reforms of Josiah and the eventual destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, Israelite child sacrifice seems to have come to an end. So much so that by the time of the prophets of that period, the period of the destruction of the Temple, and following in the exile, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it had become a bit of a garbled memory. Ezekiel seems to think that children were sacrificed as food for Gililim, his favorite term for idols, which is actually etymologically related to the word for feces. So that's colorful. We can expect that kind of stuff out of Ezekiel. Take that, poop gods. Yep, it's a pun on poop. It's a poop pun. Ezekiel 20 even goes so far as to assert that Yahweh had actually commanded the impious and rebellious Israelites to sacrifice their children, but not to serve Yahweh, but as punishment. Yeah, Ezekiel suggests that Yahweh Yahweh gave the Israelites statutes that weren't good, purposely to desolate them, such that Yahweh commanded child sacrifice simply to torture the rebellious Israelites. You can always rely on Ezekiel to turn the theological volume all the way up. Does anyone else need a drink yet? What time is it? Jeremiah takes a similar track but argues that the Israelites committed child sacrifices to Baal rather than Yahweh. Again, the problem here is the improper theological target rather than, you know... killing children for gods. In fact, Jeremiah goes so far as to claim that Yahweh claims that he didn't even command such a thing in the first place. In fact, he never thought of it. The idea never arose in my heart or never arose in my mind, so says Yahweh. So by Jeremiah, and probably quite some time after, Israelite child sacrifice had long since come to an end. Yahweh is fully exculpated from the hole. horrible business by both prophetic declarations and all these legal substitution escape clauses in the final redactions of the legal codes that we find in the Torah. All in all, it's a pretty careful cleanup operation. Kinda. The most biblically enduring account of child sacrifice is that of the binding of Isaac. There, the language of Isaac being Yechid, or unique, or only, despite the fact that he has a brother, Ishmael, is used there, and we've already seen similar language employed in the wider Semitic context of child sacrifice. This, by the way, is perhaps being informed, the tales being informed by the technical language of child sacrifice. child's sacrifice, which tells us that they knew something about the doing of it. Now I imagine we all know the tale of the Akita, the binding of Isaac. Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him, because Yahweh says to do so. Raises the knife, an angel intervenes, an animal substitution is made that ram there in the thicket, and the logic of child sacrifice is carried to its logical conclusions, despite no sacrifice having had happen. Abraham will be given more descendants than the stars in the sky and the same sand on the seashores and all the nations are going to be blessing him forever and ever. Amen. Then something strange happens in the text. Abraham alone is noted as descending down the mountain and there ain't no mention. of Isaac, many scholars, both secular and religious, have noticed this very odd element of the tale and have made the obvious conclusion. We're probably looking at what is the earlier ending of the story. in which Isaac, in that earlier version, was actually sacrificed, with the whole angelic intervention and animal substitution, a later theological sanitized version, interpolated into the story. Even many Jewish religious... religious commentators conclude that something similar had to have occurred, with the story ultimately taking on radical, mystical, and esoteric elements when it eventually becomes the subject of Kabbalistic speculation. Now, if you want to get more into the idea that Isaac really was sacrificed in the early version of that, you gotta check out Levinson's classic book, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. Now, I said that Israelite child sacrifice came to an end following the reforms of Josiah and the Babylonian exile, and that seems... true, it seems, aside from the most important act of child sacrifice. in all of Israelite history. Recall that from the prophet Micah, there at Micah chapter 6, that the suggestion was made and rejected that the firstborn child sacrifice could act for the remission of sins. Yes, the child sacrifice for the remission of sins was rejected, such that one should simply and famously, it's a beautiful quote of course, only do justice and to love goodness. and to walk modestly with your God. It's good advice. Simple enough, Micah has Yahweh to teach us that we don't need elaborate sacrifices, much less child sacrifices, to get for forgiveness of our sins. Simply be sorry, repent, and be a pious good person. That's enough for the prophet Micah. Until it wasn't. The theology of Jesus'atonement for the pervasive sins brought upon human beings by Adam revived Israelite child sacrifice over and against this very pronouncement of Yahweh via the prophet Micah. Here, the suffering and execution of Jesus via crucifixion, let's be honest, an act of divine child sacrifice of the firstborn son acts as a final conclusive atonement to redeem human beings from their eternal damnation for the sin they've inherited from Adam. Jesus is both the high priest holding the knife, and the lamb to be slaughtered. Thus, Israelite child sacrifice emerged from centuries of obscurity and theological horror to become the central theological mechanism of salvation. of salvation for the world's largest religion proudly on vivid display churches the world over israelite child sacrifice from ancient yahwistic practice to roundly condemned as horrid by later prophets and legalists, would ultimately emerge and prove theologically triumphant as Christianity. The best volume on the topic is Heath Durell's Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel, Apollos' named, and I think he makes great, great points. It's a fantastic volume, but I'd also recommend reading it along with Francesca Stavrakopoulos, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice, Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities, for her incredibly fascinating arguments about the potential child sacrifices to what she deems the Shaddai gods, or perhaps the Shedim, the demons that we see there in the Psalms. But, uh... Until next time, and hopefully something a bit more cheery, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.

And in the imaginary of the Western world, that most horrible act of devotion is associated with the demonic deity Moloch, or Molech. Often depicted in art as a brazen beast with fiery, outstretched arms set to receive a helpless infant, the image of Moloch has inspired horror from the poetry of John Milton to contemporary game theory. But who was this demonic deity? Was there ever such a nightmarish God in the ancient world? And if not, what do we know about the sacrifice of children in ancient Israel?

Did Yahweh, the ancient Israelite God, command the sacrifice of children? And how did this most extreme act of religious devotion come to an end eventually detested by the final editors of the bible let's explore what is among the most alarming and grotesque religious practices the act of child sacrifice in ancient israel of the merch of the channel and if you're new to the study of western esotericism and you really want to get into reliable sources make sure to check out my study guide where you can see a whole list of various things you may be interested in from gnosticism to magic and reliable books on those topics of course if you're interested in historical books on topics in the occult and the mystical make sure to check out esoterica rare books where you can pick out historical tomes on those subjects You can find all those links in the description and in the pinned comment below. But now to the less-than-cheery topic of the demonic deity known as Molech, or the act of child sacrifice known as the L'molech in ancient Israel.

I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. When the poet John Milton arrayed the fallen angels to plan their outrages against God, Moloch is among the most ferocious with a seemingly infinite appetite for violence and gore. This horrid king, besmeared with blood of human sacrifice and human tears, argued for nothing less than a full frontal assault on heaven, bringing the full fiery fury of hell against the very gates of heaven. Fast forward. to contemporary game theory where Moloch has become the name for a kind of monster which all of the players can see but are all doomed by it right before their very eyes.

It drives them inexorably to group loss and failure. Moloch or Molech, the Masoretic and the Septuagintal slash Vulgate traditions of the biblical text actually contain two distinct ways of pronouncing this name, and this name has become among the most horrifying. of the demonic deities. A fiery beast in whose arms are placed the most precious and innocent of sacrifices.

A living infant who is viciously incinerated alive, seemingly, all to the insidious din of drums and flutes and the clash of cymbals, perhaps to drown out the screams of the infant. Child sacrifice to an ancient deity named Moloch continues to fire the imagination of everyone from game theorists to conspiracy theorists alike, unfortunately. But was there ever even a deity known as Molech in the past to whom children were sacrificed?

To get at this question, let's present what I call the traditional view. This position is that there was, in fact, an ancient Near East deity named Molech or Molach from the root in Western Semitic, which actually means king, though in Eastern Semitic it actually denotes something like a royal advisor. This deity was conspicuous in that Children were sacrificed to it.

by burning or as the Bible typically has it by passing them through the flames This could be both male and female children. Further, the site of that sacrifice was known as a Tophet, with the most infamous one being located in the Valley of Hinnom, just south of Jerusalem. That site would also become associated with Gehinnom, the precursor to what would become, well, hell.

This deity was venerated by at least two Israelite kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, but was seemingly also worshipped in the wider Mediterranean world, and is attested most famously by the numerous Tophets, found in Punic, North Africa, many of which, tens of thousands of which, contained the incinerated remains of babies and young children. In the traditional view, this deity was indigenous to the Canaanites, the people that the Israelites allegedly displaced in the invasion, or the broader Near East more generally, but... And the traditional view was actively opposed by the Yahwists, whose literature flatly forbid passing one's children through the fires to Moloch.

And in a sense, this traditional view still has a great many scholars that defend it, both secular and religious, and they do so on three major evidential grounds to support that view. One, the plentiful amount of the North African Punic Tophets, this term by the way was never used by the Carthaginians themselves, which shows extensive evidence of child sacrifice among the Semitic Phoenicians. Secondly, the specific phrasing of the prohibition in the Hebrew Bible as whoring after Molech, a phrase that's almost always used in the Bible to elicit worship of non-Yahweh deity by the Israelites. And three, the apparent existence of a pan-ancient Near East deity, Malik or Mulk, who's typically associated with the Neitherworld deity Nergal. And to their credit, scholars like Buber and G.C.

Heider have gone to great lengths, long monographs, to bring the traditional view into line with contemporary archaeological findings and biblical criticism, generally speaking, especially in trying to establish the existence of a Malik deity or a Mulk deity associated with the Chthonic deity Nergal via ancient Near Eastern deity lists. theophoric name markers, and careful analysis and reading of the Hebrew Bible. But, this is a big but, detractors of the traditional view have emerged beginning in especially the early 20th century, really in 1935 with the work of Ido Eisfeld. Where a Malik deity is attested, admittedly, and sometimes associated with the underworld deity Nergal, there is no connection of that deity to human sacrifice, much less child sacrifice, in the ancient literature connected with those deities. Further, many of those ancient names with the Malik theiform, a theiform is just a divine name attached to a personal name, like Elijah, Eliyahu in Hebrew, which means my God is Yahweh, the Yahhu part being part.

of the Theonym. I just wish she was named Yahu. So much more fun, Yahu.

Well, many of those names are found only in a very specific Eblei context. They're not found overall in the Ancient Near East. Further, we expect the name Malik, if itself is a divine name, it will be written in those languages with what is called a divine determinative, the dingyir sign.

This is a star-shaped symbol attached to the names of gods and goddesses when you have them written out in these languages. But that's a contested issue. We don't really see that. As mentioned, this potential Malik-Nirgal deity is just not really associated with human, much less child sacrifice. But there's a kind of directional problem of the sacrifice as well.

The child sacrifices associated with Moloch and ancient Near East sacrifices more generally are typically burnt, or Ola sacrifices, which rise into the air because they're being burned. They don't descend into the netherworld which we would associate with a chthonic netherworld deity like Nergal. Further, the language most often used in the Hebrew Bible for this kind of sacrifice, l'molech, is unusual. Firstly, this alleged deity is never really mentioned outside of this context of the child's sacrifice or passing them through. And further, while the whoring language is associated with other deities, to Buber's credit, the grammar reads the molech.

with a definite article in Hebrew, La-molech, that long sound indicates a little definite article has been swallowed up there. That's odd that given the numerous other deities in the Hebrew Bible, such as Baal, and Milchan, Chemosh, Asherah, they're never really denoted with a definite article precisely because they're personal names. I'm not the Justin Sledge, I'm just Justin, much like Ha-Satan, the Satan, in Job, isn't a name. It's a title in the Hebrew Bible. the accuser, the adversary, and only becomes a proper name centuries later.

Even the Hebrew of Leviticus 25 isn't clear when compared to the Greek Septuagint which has whoring into their rulers, tus arcantas, reading the Hebrew not as a singular noun, molech, but as a plural of melech, perhaps, ruler or king. In effect, there's good reason to think that the Masoretic text is actually just corrupt here, and that the Septuagint actually preserves a better original sense of the phrase. It's a prohibition, perhaps, against following foreign rulers, rather than sacrificing to a deity known as molech or molach.

In effect, the evidence for this neither-world deity named molech or molach, to whom children are sacrificed, especially by burning, It's pretty sparse when you look at the actual evidence. So, if Molech isn't a god or wasn't a god, what was it? It appears likely that the answer that the Mlamolech was the name of a specific kind of child sacrifice by burning which was incorporated into Judean Yahwism seemingly during the rule of Achaz. But to understand that, we need to travel pretty far west over to the Punic heartland in North Africa. Carthage and similar cities were part of the vast trade empire founded by the Phoenicians, for whom we can thank, you know, for the alphabet, all of them, except for the Korean alphabet.

In their colonies in North Africa, significant evidence, lots of evidence has been found for the practice of child sacrifices, along with lambs and other goats that were sacrificed as well. typically associated with the completion of a vow or a neder, something already widely attested in ancient literature more generally. Urns containing the incinerated remains are often accompanied with a stele commemorating the sacrifice and giving something of a rationale for why it was done.

Now, when taken together, these stele revealed something extraordinary in relationship to the sacrifice. In the inscriptions, the formulaic language revealed that it was addressed to a god or gods, typically Baal or Tanit in the case, again, that's the Punic gods, the completion of a vow or an oath, a neder, along with the phrase mulk lam, M L K in Phoenician, a term even referenced in the Latin literature, by the way, here cognate with the Phoenician Aramaic term mulkan, which literally means something like promised lamb or vow lamb. M-O-K, Molech, not as a name, but simply as the word for promise or vow, it seems.

That is, a lamb given as a sacrifice as the result of a vow made by a person that if the god grants them such and such, well, they'll sacrifice what needed to be sacrificed. Well, the gods answered, the person kept the vow. and the promised lamb, our child, was sacrificed.

But, along with the other mentioned promised lambs, other steles often refer to as a molk adam, a promised person or vow human. It's apparently a human sacrifice. Here molk, the same root word behind the alleged deity molekh or molakh, referred not to a deity at all, but to a specific type of sacrifice ritual that accompanied the completion of a vow or oath, where the where the gods had blessed them and they vowed to sacrifice something if the gods did that. In fact, when specifically child sacrifices are mentioned and the incineration of children are present, the Punic Steli are often referred to as L'molech, the exact term that we find in the Hebrew Bible. And if we're to believe the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, the child selected for this sacrifice was often denoted as a Yud.

It's a strange Greek term, but we rewind it back to Semitic. Yachid, the unique one, or the only one. Now hold onto that term, Yachid, it's going to matter a lot toward the end of this video. Indeed, this all basically lines up with the two things the Hebrew Bible indicates about this kind of sacrifice. That they are the sacrifice of children by burning, and that they're ultimately foreign, non-Judean, non-Yahwistic in origins, and are therefore because of their foreignness detestable.

Not because it's morally wrong to sacrifice children. But there's a problem. North African Punic religious rituals are really distant from the Tophet just south of Jerusalem.

Where's the textual or archaeological connective tissue between the two? The short answer is that there isn't much. There might not be any. In fact, archaeological evidence for child sacrifice in the eastern Mediterranean is scarce, including in the Phoenician heartland, bordering on basically non-existent.

There were some initial finds at Canaanite sites like Gezer and Tanakh and Megiddo, but while at first they were thought to reveal the existence of sacrifices like that, further studies show that they probably weren't. They were just buried there. Egyptian depictions of sieges of Canaanite cities might depict children being thrown from the city walls or burned in braziers and sacrificed.

Such sieges, as we'll see, were often typically associated with child sacrifices, so maybe, maybe. But exactly how to understand those Egyptian depictions is pretty contested. Now, as I mentioned, while Punic colonies show extensive evidence of Mulk sacrifices, what about the Phoenician heartland? Interestingly, the evidence there is surprisingly spare. No Punic-like Tophets have yet been found.

The inscription evidence at Nebunis might just be fake. The inscriptions at Enserli, Diralla, and an inscription found at Cyprus are all highly contested and frankly pretty fragmentary. Unlike the plethora of Punic inscriptions and human sacrifices we find in Carthage.

the Genian sites. In fact, the earliest strata of the Punic Tophets have far more lambs to babies ratio, while by the end of the practice, when the Romans invaded and ravaged that territory, you know, Carthago de Lenda Est and all that, there were 20% more babies than lambs being sacrificed, being nearly totally replaced by lambs after the Roman conquest. But, while the connection between the language and the vowel-based incineration of the children of the Punic site seems conspicuously frankly very similar to the ceremonies described in the Hebrew Bible, we gotta be honest, the exact connection, if there is one, and I strongly think that there is one, the connection remains pretty unknown texturally and archaeologically.

The evidence connecting the two is far more circumstantial than not. Now despite this, I and many other scholars do think the evidence is strong enough to conclude There was no deity Molech, or Molach, to whom babies were sacrificed. This is just a misreading of the text. Rather, I tend to agree with the position that the La Molech was, in fact, a kind of child sacrifice imported into Judean Yahwism from Phoenician ceremonial practice.

Though, as we'll see, La Molech sacrifice, that specific child sacrifice, was just one of at least three other forms. of Judean Yahwistic child sacrifice. So just because the L'molech is probably not a god and probably is a sacrifice, and it's probably of foreign origin, it doesn't mean the Israelites weren't sacrificing their kids too.

Zeroing in on the Hebrew Bible as a source for learning more about this L'molech sacrifice is just as elusive, honestly. It's mentioned in some form about a dozen times, mostly times forbidding it. The ritual seems to involve passing children, both male and female children, through a fire. or otherwise burning them at a place known as a tophet. An otherwise mysterious word, by the way.

We don't really know what this word tophet means. It might come from the Aramaic word for hearth, but scholars still debate exactly what a tophet is. Though the vocalization of both molech and tophet may have actually been the result of taboo denigration, where the vowels for the Hebrew word shame, boshet, are actually introduced into the text. much like they are in association with worship of Baal.

Now, the ritual was first associated in the text with the Judahite king Achaz, known actually for his syncretizing tendency with folks up there in the north, especially modeling temple furniture, in fact, on models that he had seen in Damascus. It could have also been in this region that he witnessed and brought the Lamelech ceremony down to Judea. It was apparently continued by Manasseh before the Tophet was destroyed in the reforms of Josiah..

Interestingly enough, by the way, the otherwise righteous King Hezekiah and his prophet, the prophet everyone loves, were right in the historical center of this practice. It seemed to have been going on right there during while they were alive. And in fact, Isaiah 30 even imagines Assyria. Assyria itself as being sacrificed at the Jerusalem Tophet as a Lamelech sacrifice. So, did Isaiah condemn it?

And this also invites the natural question. If the Lamelech sacrifice wasn't made to a deity known as Molech or Moloch, then to whom? The answer is probably Yahweh, as shocking as that might seem to some of y'all out there. Though as we'll see, the sacrifice of children to Yahweh was anything other than new at this point.

Thus it appears that the ritual centered around sacrificing children upon the divine fulfillment of a vow or nedir or an oath by burning them. It was probably introduced into Judean Yahwism by Ahaz and persisted for a couple of centuries up until it was eliminated. by Josiah. However, as we'll see, once the specific L'molech rite was eliminated from Judean Yahwism, its memory would persist well into the future, especially those bent on religious polemics, specifically by the prophets. Ezekiel and Jeremiah.

But the L'molech ritual isn't the only form of child sacrifice known from ancient Israel and its surrounding environs. At least two other forms of child sacrifice can be detected in the Hebrew Bible. In a very complex narrative at 2 Kings 3, we find the Moabite king, and the Moabites and Israelites are very similar, the Moabite king Misha in a route led by an alliance of Israelite, Judahite, and Edomite kings. He's ultimately besieged at his fortress at Kir Haraset, following a prophetically informed reversal.

Well, Misha sacrificed his firstborn son as an olah, or burnt offering, on the walls of that citadel. Interestingly enough, this does successfully bring down divine wrath, presumably from the Moabite national god Chemosh, upon the triple alliance of the Israelites, Judahites, and Edomites, who promptly end the siege and... Retreat! They get right out of there because Chemosh is attacking them apparently. Now, there is a lot to unpack in this tale, but what we apparently have is a narrative where a Moabite king sacrifices his firstborn son, which invokes the wrath of a non-Yahweh god, Chemosh.

Yahweh just wouldn't have much power in this kind of territory because remember, gods at this time were geographically bound in a pretty strong sense. Divine kings are of specific regions as it as it were, to bring down. The sacrifice brings down wrath upon the Edomites and their Yahwist allies. Now, we've already seen potential Egyptian depictions of child sacrifice upon the walls when Merneptah was laying siege to some Canaanite cities, and that imagery was associated again with pharaonic violence in the region, and so the idea of sacrificing children on the walls of besieged cities might have been a good idea.

been a thing. And here we have a very similar narrative in the Hebrew Bible where child sacrifice is shockingly effective at conjuring divine action. And we should also point to other references in classical literature where we have similar accounts of child sacrifice occurring in the midst of a siege to break sieges. This is true at the Punic context as well. However, note that Misha's sacrifice is logically different than the L'molech sacrifice.

In the L'molech sacrifice, one makes a vow and then the god satisfies that vow, and then the sacrifice is made. Here it seems that King Misha seemingly performs the child's sacrifice to induce divine action. Now, that's a risky bargain, but it seems to have worked out and it was clearly born out of an immediate crisis. In some ways, this is a kind of crisis-induced human sacrifice.

Crisis-induced child sacrifice. In the same vein of the Lamelech sacrifice is the tale of Jephthah at Judges chapter 11. In that narrative, Jephthah wishes for military success and vows to Yahweh that, given such success, he'll sacrifice whatever comes out his door first. Well, Jephthah successfully defeats the Ammonites and, of course, his daughter. bursts out the door celebrating her father's victory in song. After a short period of reprieve, Jephthah, you know, deals a deal kind of dude, sacrifices his daughter to Yahweh.

While this narrative does have some folkloric elements, especially the element of ironic reversal, It certainly contains the notion of a vow-based sacrifice, similar to those over there in the Punic Heartland and presumably the Lomolech sacrifices that are condemned. And such sacrifices, of course, we see in the book. here could be rendered to Yahweh.

Indeed, Micah chapter 6 also at least entertains the idea that sacrificing one's firstborn for the remission of one's sins as the ultimate sacrifice more valuable than thousands of rams or ten thousands rivers of oil was at least imaginable in the minds of an Israelite prophet even if it were ultimately rejected by Yahweh via that prophet. That, in contradistinction to what we'll see in prophetic child condemnation sacrifice, sacrifices by later prophets. Come back to that. Also, keep the idea in mind that a sacrifice of a firstborn child might have the effect of allowing for forgiveness of sins. That idea might just matter in a minute.

Might just. Finally, at the rather archaic legal sections at Exodus 22, this is around 28, the second part of 28 and 29, Yahweh demands that like various animals, firstborn male children, children are also to be given over to Yahweh. from their mother after eight days and given to Yahweh, thus apparently establishing a general requirement of child sacrifice of at least boys.

Of course, such a generalized demand of child sacrifice seems utterly unimaginable to us given how we relate to children in a contemporary context. However, That's not their context. Given an Iron Age infant mortality rate of around 50% and that women had far more children then than now, assuming having those children didn't kill those women, the idea of sacrificing the first child you get to ensure for healthy children in the future?

That's perfectly reasonable. Indeed, that's the very logic of all sacrifices in the Bible in some sense, that you give the first fruits of your stock and of your livestock and of your grain to Yahweh so that you get abundance in the future. That's exactly the logic here.

Now, it's a gruesome logic. But it's logical. Further, this idea of having to give Yahweh the firstborn is also justifies because of the Passover event in which Yahweh had the angel of death go through and, you know, kill the firstborn of all the Egyptians.

Thus, it's kind of an eternal trade of a sort. The Israelite liberation on the back of the killing of one generation of Egyptian children, itself by the way a kind of mass child sacrifice if we're being honest, such that Israelite firstborn boys, or at least their parents, would forever bear the cost. Now, that custom is still kept alive in Judaism with the fast of the firstborn boys on the eve of Passover. So you don't kill them, they just gotta be hungry before they eat the matzah.

Was such a custom of child sacrifice widespread among the Yahwists? Frankly, that's impossible to know. There's very little archaeological evidence of it.

But, but that it occurred seems underwritten on at least a few grounds. The first is that the Hebrew Bible itself, especially in later legal sections, is aware of this requirement for child sacrifice and institutes various kinds of escape clauses to get away from it. Those take the form of lamb sacrifices in lieu of children, something by the way that we also saw over at the Punic Tophet in North Africa.

Specific groups having to serve as Levites in the temple, that is the assistants in the temple, so they have to go there. Sometimes just a cash payment is enough to get you out of being sacrificed, and perhaps eventually circumcision. Does some of this work.

Remember that eighth day clause. And eventually fasting and other ritual substitutions as well. Some of those substitutions are still in effect in contemporary Jewish law or halakha. I mentioned boys fasting, firstborn boys fasting on the eve of Passover, but the pledge of the firstborns to Yahweh and the temple service is also substituted by the ritual of Pidyon HaBen. Now, I'll be honest, this is personally my favorite of all Jewish rituals, Pidyon HaBen, but here the infant boy is presented.

presented to a member of the Israelite priesthood who returns the boy to the parents for a ritual payment of 5 shekel, or between 96 and 102 grams of pure silver, which is just under $100 these days in 2024. Not a bad exchange rate of infant per silver. Not that there should be such an exchange rate, all things told, but not bad. Of course, some of the best evidence that child sacrifice to Yahweh did occur in ancient Israel is that the Hebrew Bible is at length to forbid it. Prohibition very usually implies performance, folks. But on what grounds was child sacrifice forbidden?

Well, not so much because sacrificing children is immoral simpliciter, but because the practice is foreign. It's a non-Israelite way of worshipping Yahweh, and in those passages it anachronistically assigns that kind of horrible child sacrifice business to the Canaanites. However, there is probably some truth, as we've mentioned, to the non-Israelite origins of at least the Lamelech sacrifice, and these passages might be at some level speaking to those concerns. As we've seen, the ancient Israelites knew and practiced at least some forms of child sacrifice.

The general sacrifice of firstborn boys, the vow or neder sacrifice of both boys and girls, and the Lamolach ritual, and the crisis sacrifice represented by people like King Mesha. Along with those, I should also mention that Francesca Stavro Capullo has also argued for sacrifices associated with the Shadim, or demonic entities, or perhaps Shaddai gods, and this is actually witnessed in texts like Psalm 106 and her reading of the Deir ala inscription. So, Those might have existed as well, and her book I'll mention at the end is well worth checking out.

It's a fantastic scholarship. However, it appears that following the reforms of Josiah and the eventual destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, Israelite child sacrifice seems to have come to an end. So much so that by the time of the prophets of that period, the period of the destruction of the Temple, and following in the exile, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it had become a bit of a garbled memory. Ezekiel seems to think that children were sacrificed as food for Gililim, his favorite term for idols, which is actually etymologically related to the word for feces. So that's colorful.

We can expect that kind of stuff out of Ezekiel. Take that, poop gods. Yep, it's a pun on poop. It's a poop pun.

Ezekiel 20 even goes so far as to assert that Yahweh had actually commanded the impious and rebellious Israelites to sacrifice their children, but not to serve Yahweh, but as punishment. Yeah, Ezekiel suggests that Yahweh Yahweh gave the Israelites statutes that weren't good, purposely to desolate them, such that Yahweh commanded child sacrifice simply to torture the rebellious Israelites. You can always rely on Ezekiel to turn the theological volume all the way up.

Does anyone else need a drink yet? What time is it? Jeremiah takes a similar track but argues that the Israelites committed child sacrifices to Baal rather than Yahweh. Again, the problem here is the improper theological target rather than, you know...

killing children for gods. In fact, Jeremiah goes so far as to claim that Yahweh claims that he didn't even command such a thing in the first place. In fact, he never thought of it. The idea never arose in my heart or never arose in my mind, so says Yahweh. So by Jeremiah, and probably quite some time after, Israelite child sacrifice had long since come to an end.

Yahweh is fully exculpated from the hole. horrible business by both prophetic declarations and all these legal substitution escape clauses in the final redactions of the legal codes that we find in the Torah. All in all, it's a pretty careful cleanup operation.

Kinda. The most biblically enduring account of child sacrifice is that of the binding of Isaac. There, the language of Isaac being Yechid, or unique, or only, despite the fact that he has a brother, Ishmael, is used there, and we've already seen similar language employed in the wider Semitic context of child sacrifice. This, by the way, is perhaps being informed, the tales being informed by the technical language of child sacrifice.

child's sacrifice, which tells us that they knew something about the doing of it. Now I imagine we all know the tale of the Akita, the binding of Isaac. Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him, because Yahweh says to do so. Raises the knife, an angel intervenes, an animal substitution is made that ram there in the thicket, and the logic of child sacrifice is carried to its logical conclusions, despite no sacrifice having had happen.

Abraham will be given more descendants than the stars in the sky and the same sand on the seashores and all the nations are going to be blessing him forever and ever. Amen. Then something strange happens in the text.

Abraham alone is noted as descending down the mountain and there ain't no mention. of Isaac, many scholars, both secular and religious, have noticed this very odd element of the tale and have made the obvious conclusion. We're probably looking at what is the earlier ending of the story.

in which Isaac, in that earlier version, was actually sacrificed, with the whole angelic intervention and animal substitution, a later theological sanitized version, interpolated into the story. Even many Jewish religious... religious commentators conclude that something similar had to have occurred, with the story ultimately taking on radical, mystical, and esoteric elements when it eventually becomes the subject of Kabbalistic speculation.

Now, if you want to get more into the idea that Isaac really was sacrificed in the early version of that, you gotta check out Levinson's classic book, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. Now, I said that Israelite child sacrifice came to an end following the reforms of Josiah and the Babylonian exile, and that seems... true, it seems, aside from the most important act of child sacrifice. in all of Israelite history. Recall that from the prophet Micah, there at Micah chapter 6, that the suggestion was made and rejected that the firstborn child sacrifice could act for the remission of sins.

Yes, the child sacrifice for the remission of sins was rejected, such that one should simply and famously, it's a beautiful quote of course, only do justice and to love goodness. and to walk modestly with your God. It's good advice. Simple enough, Micah has Yahweh to teach us that we don't need elaborate sacrifices, much less child sacrifices, to get for forgiveness of our sins.

Simply be sorry, repent, and be a pious good person. That's enough for the prophet Micah. Until it wasn't.

The theology of Jesus'atonement for the pervasive sins brought upon human beings by Adam revived Israelite child sacrifice over and against this very pronouncement of Yahweh via the prophet Micah. Here, the suffering and execution of Jesus via crucifixion, let's be honest, an act of divine child sacrifice of the firstborn son acts as a final conclusive atonement to redeem human beings from their eternal damnation for the sin they've inherited from Adam. Jesus is both the high priest holding the knife, and the lamb to be slaughtered.

Thus, Israelite child sacrifice emerged from centuries of obscurity and theological horror to become the central theological mechanism of salvation. of salvation for the world's largest religion proudly on vivid display churches the world over israelite child sacrifice from ancient yahwistic practice to roundly condemned as horrid by later prophets and legalists, would ultimately emerge and prove theologically triumphant as Christianity. The best volume on the topic is Heath Durell's Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel, Apollos' named, and I think he makes great, great points. It's a fantastic volume, but I'd also recommend reading it along with Francesca Stavrakopoulos, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice, Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities, for her incredibly fascinating arguments about the potential child sacrifices to what she deems the Shaddai gods, or perhaps the Shedim, the demons that we see there in the Psalms. But, uh...

Until next time, and hopefully something a bit more cheery, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.

Transcript for:Child Sacrifice and Molech in Ancient Israel

Transcript for:
Child Sacrifice and Molech in Ancient Israel