Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Child Sacrifice
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Exodus 20:13
The sixth commandment, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13), covers the grievous sins of abortion and after-birth abortion (infanticide) quite adequately once we accept that the newborn child is certainly a living human being—and has been for many months. While the Bible contains no direct statement that life begins at conception, many passages show that God is involved in people's lives before they are born (see Psalm 139:13-16; 51:5; Isaiah 49:5; Jeremiah 1:4-5) and that the fetus is aware and responsive to God (Luke 1:41, 44). God even commands life for life if a fetus is miscarried after a fight (Exodus 21:22-24). The weight of biblical evidence falls on the side of life and full humanity for fetuses and newborns. Actually, this brave new world of abortion and infanticide on demand is simply the modern equivalent of ancient pagan practices like the abhorrent idolatry of the Canaanites in Old Testament times. Pagans would sacrifice their children to their gods to "ensure" the living would have better lives. They would make a child "pass through the fire to Molech" (an act obviously forbidden by God; Leviticus 18:21) to supplicate the god to give them fertile fields, victory in battle, or some other blessing. Ironically, these ancient people held the life of a child as dearer than today's uber-selfish individuals do, as the latter most often abort babies merely for their own convenience. Concerning this horrible sin, God says of the people of Judah in Jeremiah 32:35: And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. As punishment, Jerusalem was "delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence" (Jeremiah 32:36). When such practices become commonplace, the society is ripe for destruction, as God intimates in Genesis 15:16 and Leviticus 18:24-29; 20:22-23. There is nothing ethical about "potential persons" and "after-birth abortion." They are the products of the twisted thinking of human beings tuned in to the broadcasts of a hateful Satan the Devil (Ephesians 2:2-3). He wants to destroy human life. Hundreds of millions of abortions are not enough to sate his appetite, so he has deceived people into taking the next step toward annihilation, infanticide. Could there be any better reason to increase our prayers to God to send His Son soon?
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
'Potential Persons' and 'After-birth Abortion'
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2 Kings 15:34-35
Jotham was the fourth successive king of Judah who "did what was right in the sight of the LORD," but during whose reign "the high places were not removed." He had the shortest reign of the four—16 years—and died at a mere 41 years of age. Though he, too, failed to remove the high places, unlike his fathers, he remained true to God during his short reign and life. II Chronicles 27:2 adds, "And he did what was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father Uzziah had done (although he did not enter the temple of the LORD). But still the people acted corruptly." II Chronicles 27:6 provides another significant description: "So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared [or established] his ways before the LORD his God" (emphasis ours throughout; cf. Proverbs 4:26; 16:3; 24:3). Jotham was well aware of the presumptuous mistake of his father Uzziah, and it must have weighed on him as he contemplated the direction of his own life. God prospered him because he considered his ways to ensure they conformed to God's standard. God was no stranger in his thoughts. Notice also the phrase "the LORD his God." The relationship was a personal one; God was not simply a Being about whom Jotham had heard stories. No, he was dedicated to God and remained committed throughout his life. However, like his fathers, though he did not personally worship on the pagan high places, he tolerated them—and that tolerance had some unintended consequences for his progeny. Jotham's son, Ahaz, was truly a bad king. He did not do what was right in the sight of the LORD his God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel; indeed he made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree. (II Kings 16:2-4) Apparently, Jotham's good example was not enough, as Ahaz latched onto what had been left undone and ran with it. The high places had been a feature in Judah for about 150 years when Ahaz assumed the throne and so were a part of his environment, even though his father did not worship at them. But Jotham's tolerance of them was probably a contributing factor to his son's path into idolatry and beyond to the abhorrent practice of child sacrifice. In looking at the record of Jotham's life, we can see that while he was fastidious in his own relationship with God, he apparently put little effort into improving matters spiritually for the people. While he did not personally regress as his fathers had, he did not get the nation back on track regarding the true worship of God. He held steady in his own life but did not dirty his hands attempting to clean up the spiritual morass he had inherited. The histories of Israel's kings and judges show that successful spiritual revivals typically begin with tearing down the idols first, which sets the stage for the people to turn back to God. The same dual action appears throughout Scripture: Getting rid of something bad is combined with replacing it with something good. When we are converted, we have to remove the false and take in the truth. In addition, one of the prophecies about Jesus Christ says that He would "know to refuse the evil and choose the good" (Isaiah 7:15-16). Because our Creator is a God of purity, the best results always come from paying attention to both aspects—otherwise, the result is a mixture of good and evil, which always falls short of the mark. Even if one holds onto the good, ignoring the evil (as opposed to excising it) allows it to grow and fester like cancer, ready to break out and cause harm. Jotham stands as the best of the four successive kings who failed to remove the high places, and considering the overall state of the nation, perhaps he did the best he could. Unlike Hezekiah, he did not lead a spiritual revival, but neither did he personally let down. Nevertheless, the net effect of these four kings' reluctance to rid Judah of the high places was to allow an evil to endure that later resulted in the kingdom's destruction and captivity.
David C. Grabbe
The High Places (Part Five)
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Jeremiah 19:5
This was something so abominable, so vile, so awful, so evil, that God Himself never imagined that those who had made the covenant with Him and had His law would ever turn to such a thing—to throw their own living children into a raging fire as an offering, supposedly, to Him.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Image and Likeness of God (Part Five)
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Jeremiah 19:12
In this passage, God tells the prophet Jeremiah what to proclaim to the Jews after he performs the sign of the broken flask, which is the subject of the chapter. Jeremiah is to take a clay flask to the Potsherd Gate, or the east gate, which opened out into the Valley of Hinnom, the very place that Jesus later used as an illustration of the judgment of the Lake of Fire, Gehenna. He is also to gather some of the elders and priests of Judah and proclaim God's message of judgment upon them and the city of Jerusalem. Then, he is to break the flask before them, saying, "Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'Even so I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet till there is no place to bury'" (Jeremiah 19:11). Clearly, this is a sign of utter destruction of a sinful people and nation, and the details of what God promises to bring upon them are gruesome and horrifying to an extreme. What was Tophet? According to the McClintock and Strong Encyclopedia, the word itself means "spittle," of all things, or "filth," signifying something abominable, but it could also mean "place of burning," hinting at the abomination that occurred there. Tophet itself was a small hill within the Valley of Hinnom that had once been part of a grove that Solomon had had planted, where his singers had given concerts to the people of Jerusalem. Perhaps Solomon had chosen that spot, not just for its fertility and closeness to Siloam, but also to help Israel forget that the Canaanites before them had made their children pass through the fire to Molech—in other words, it was a place of vile child sacrifice (see Psalm 106:38; Jeremiah 7:31). However, it was not long before the Israelites and Jews again "filled this place with the blood of the innocents" (Jeremiah 19:4). During his reign not long before Jeremiah's prophecy, King Josiah had defiled Tophet as part of his purge of idolatry (II Kings 23:10). He did so by overthrowing the altars and then using the place as the city dump, and the filthier the trash the better. But just as soon as Josiah died, the Jews returned to Tophet. In Jesus' day, it was once again the city's garbage dump, where a fire was always burning to consume anything thrown on the pile (Mark 9:43-48). And of course, the worm did not die there, meaning that there were always new maggots going through their life-cycles, feeding on the trash. It was also a place where, down through the centuries, many have been buried. Thus, the Valley of Hinnom is a fitting picture of the resurrection of condemnation (John 5:29). So what did God do to Judah because of their heinous sin? I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives; their corpses I will give as meat for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. . . . And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair. (Jeremiah 19:7, 9) Sounds like justice.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
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Ezekiel 23:36-39
What vile things these people were committing on God's holy Sabbath days! They worshipped idols, sacrificed their children, even burning them in the fire, and afterward, they presented themselves at the Temple services. That is horrifying! God specifically mentions that they did these things on the Sabbath—on His day. It shows how far idolatry will take a person, imposing its will on the actions of an individual. We need to be very careful about this. These people were guilty of the common Israelitish sin of idolatry—syncretism, the blending of the world's way with God's way. God, of course, does not accept it as true worship. How could He? The Israelites would attend services, supposedly in honor and out of respect for the Creator God after killing their children in the fires of Molech! In Ezekiel 20-23, where a brief overview of the relationship between God and Israel is presented, idolatry and profaning the Sabbath are specifically named nine times as the major reasons God drove Israel into captivity.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sabbathkeeping (Part 1)
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