prove absence of the practice, since the Hebrew Scriptures are far from complete in their record of public and private worship. The more explicit are the statements of the Bible with regard to human victims slaughtered in honour of Moloch. This idol, probably worshipped by the Hebrews from early times and even in the desert under the eyes of Moses, and provided with a formal service by Solomon, received constant sacrifices by all sections of the nation, both in the empire of Israel and of Judah." Under one of Solomon's immediate successors a remarkable event took place well calculated to prove the pre-eminent efficacy attributed to human offerings. Mesha, the king of Moab, was besieged in Kirharaseth, and hopelessly pressed by the joint armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom, the two former being led by the kings Jehoram and Jehoshaphat: in this critical position "he took his eldest son that should have succeeded him on the throne, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall", that is, publicly in the sight of the besioging army; after which so continues the historian- "a great wrath came upon the Israelites, and they departed from him, and returned to their own land." It is uncertain whether the king of Moab slaughtered the sacrifice to his own national deity Chemosh, or, as is indeed less probable, to Jehovah, who had till then so effectually assisted the Hebrews, and whose favour ho might, therefore, have been anxious to secure for himself; it may also be admitted that Jehoshaphat, the pious king of Judah, had no decisive voice in the military councils, since he was only an ally of Jehoram, the idolatrous ruler of Israel and the chief originator of the war; and that he can, therefore, not be made responsible for the hasty and infatuated return of the army; and granted even that the Edomites, confederated with the Hebrows, were particularly affected by the apprehended consequences of the king of Moab's deed: yet it remains an undeniable fact that the Israelites were terrified by the power, supposed to be irresistible, of the human sacrifice to such a degree, that they abandoned the certain prospects of victory, and retreated ignominiously, enraged at the extreme device of the heathen. monarch, who had preferred to devote his heir to the deity, rather than lose his land or independence. The words which we have rendered, "a great wrath came upon the Israelites", neither mean, "and there was a great wrath (of God) against Israel", since they had occasioned the horror of the human sacrifice, that is, they were smitten by a plague 3 Comp. Am. V. 26; see p. 240. XXXII. 30, 32; Ilos. XIII. 2 see also 02 Ki. III. 27. or suffered a defeat, which, if brought into causal connection with Mosha's sacrifice, would aggravate the superstitious conception of the historian; nor can they signify "and there was a groat indignation (of the enemies) against Israel", which had existed long before the sacrifice in utmost intensity; they can, according to sound exegetical rules, only point to the consternation into which the sacrifice, designedly performed in public, threw the troubled Hebrews; and the efforts that have been lavishly made to avoid this conclusion are necessarily forced and futile. 3 And as if to remove every doubt on the awful subject, the Hebrew annals mention acts similar to that of the king of Moab as having beep performed by several subsequent kings of Judah themselves, perhaps even without that urgency of the occasion which stimulated the pagan monarch. For it is related that Ahaz, the king of Judah (B. C. 743-728), "caused his son to pass through the fire, in accordance with the abominations of the heathens";' and the same execrable deed is recorded of Manasseh, the son of the pious Hezokiah. Indeed Manasseh scoms to havo ostablished, as a now and special place for the regular and permanent service of Moloch, that Tophoth in the valley of Hinnom which, up to the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign (B. C. 642-611), remained untouched. And though the detestable worship was then temporarily interrupted, it was soon afterwards resumed in its accustomed form. For Jeremiah again had occasion to break forth in the complaint, "The disgrace (i. e. the disgraceful idols) devoured the labours of our fathers. from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters; we lie down in our shame, and our confusion covers us; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day." Nay even Ezekiel, writing during the Babylonian exile, inveighed against his obdurate co-religionists, "Thus says the Lord God, Do you pollute yourselves after the manner of your fathers? . . . for when you offer your gifts, when you make your children to pass through the fire, you pollute yourselves with all your idols even up to this day; and the same prophet reproached the people, that blood was in their hands, for they burnt the very children whom they had born to their abominable idols "for food"; and when they had committed such revolting impioty, they had the hardihood to enter the Temple of Jehovah, and to profane it by their presence. The hundred and sixth Psalm, composed in 1 2 Ki. XVI. 3; 2 Chr. XXVIII. 3. 2 2 Ki. XXI. 6, comp. 2 Chr. XXXIII. 6. 3 Comp. 2 Ki. XXIII. 10; Jer. VII. 31; XIX. 6, 14; see p. 240. 5 the captivity during the dispersion of the people, and offering a brief survey of the people's destinies with reference to their religious career, confesses in general, that the Hebrews "sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons, and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, so that the land was polluted with blood."8 And even the second Isaiah, who wrote at Babylon in the latter part of the exile, exclaimed, "Are you not children of iniquity, a seed of falsehood, who are inflamed for the idols under every green tree, who slay the children in the valleys, under the clifts of the rocks ?"? It is, therefore, undoubted that human sacrifices were offered by the Hebrews from the earliest time up to the Babylonian period, both in honour of Jehovah and of heathen deities, not only by depraved idolators but sometimes even by pious servants of God; they probably ceased to be presented to Jehovah not much before they ceased to be presented at all; for being prized as deeds of singular piety, they were efficiently opposed and ultimately abolished only when the notions of piety itself were purified and refined. This was accomplished mainly by the diffusion and growing authority of the Pentateuch and the increased zeal of devoted reformors and leaders. Thon at last Jehovah was conceived and taught in a manner more compatible with the attributes of an omnipotent and eternal spirit, the Creator and Rulor of the Universe, and then that religious systom was finally developed, which bears the distinctivo name of Mosaic or Hobrow, and which is fundamontally different from that of the other ancient nations. This will be more obvious, if we briefly state XXIV. THE VIEWS OF THE PENTATEUCH AND THE HEBREW PROPHETS ON IDOLATRY AND HUMAN SACRIFICES. THE idols were designated by names which alone are almost sufficient to prove in what light they were regarded by the more discerning minds among the Israelites. They received appellations expressive either of scornful contempt or of vehement abhorrence; for they were called, on the one hand, NONENTITIES, 10 that is, gods that are no-gods, 11 powerless and mute, 12 empty and unreal shadows that cannot help nor save, 13 while Jehovah is the only One that is or exists for ever, 11 Jer. XVI. 20; V. 7; or no-deity, Deut. XXXII. 21, where it occurs as a synonym of vanity. 8 Vers. 37, 38. 7 Sec Ver. 47. • Isai. LVII. 5. 10 Lev. XIX. 4; XXVI. 1; Isai. II. 8, 18, 20; 1 Chr. XVI. 26; P's. XCVI. 5; XCVII. 7; comp. 1 Cor. VIII. 4; see also X. 19; Isai. XIX. 1; see XXI. 9. 12 Ilab. II. 18. 13 1 Sam. XII. 21. 14 8 3 2 7 or VANITIES,' lying and deceitful, because the work of human hands, made of metal or wood, or BLOCKS and TRUNKS,' whereas Jehovah is man's "strength and fortress and refuge"," or the "rock of help";" and on the other hand, they were termed ABOMINATIONS, or DETESTATIONS; and they were, together with those who manufactured them, derided by the prophets with the bitterest and most taunting sarcasm, in passages which belong to the most exquisite compositions of the whole canon. Therefore, terms like "Jehovah is the God of gods", or "awful above all gods", or "the highost God", or "none is like Theo among the gods", whorever they occur in later writings, do not involve a recognition of other doitios, but mean simply that Jehovah, the acknowledged God of the Hebrows, is mightier than the beings whom other nations consider as gods, and from whom they expect help and deliverance. It is indeed probable that those terms point to a time when the veneration of the Hebrews was divided between Jehovalı and other deities as between rival gods, and when the latter were not yet looked upon as "nonontitios"; thus Jephthah, in his message to the king of the Ammonites, 10 attributed to thoir god Chemosh power to procure for them victory and conquest, in the same manner as Jehovah assists the Hebrews; for the absolute sovereignty of Jehovah was a notion gradually arrived at by severe intellectual struggles. But when the victory was gained at last, Jehovah was so exclusively worshipped as the Lord of all nature and all mankind, that He was described not only as the source of light but also of darkness, nor only as the author of "poaco" but also of "evil", 12 lest a temptation be left of adopting a good and an evil principle in the world, after the manner of the Porsian, Egyptian, and other heathen creeds. Then it was that all divinities besides Him wore designated as strange or simply as other gods, though the Hebrew pantheon was constantly enlarged by new deities that had not been revered in preceding generations. To express the 1 Deut. XXXII. 21; 1 Ki. XVI. 13, 26; 2 Ki. XVII. 15; Jer. II. 5; LI, 18. 2 Jon. II. 8. 3 Jer. X. 2, 8, 15; II. 18. 4 Lev. XXVI. 30; Deut. XXIX. 16; 2 Ki. XVII. 12; XXI. 21; Ezek. Vl. 4, 6; XIV. 6; XVI. 36; XX. 7, 8, 39; XXIII. 39; XXX. 13; etc. Jer. XVI. 19; comp. X. 6, 7. * Deut. XXXII. 15; comp. Acts XIV. 15. 7 Deut. XXXII. 16; 2 Ki. XXIII. 13; Ezek. XI. 21; etc. 8 Ilos. IX. 10; Deut. XXIX. 16; Jer. IV. 1; Ezek. V. 11; XX. 7, 8; 1 Ki. XI. 5, 7; 2 Ki. XXIII, 24. 9 Isai. XLIV. 9-19; XL. 19, 20; XLI. 6, 7; XLV. 16, 20; XLVI. 6; 7; Jer. X. 3-5; etc. 10 Judg. XI. 15 sqq. 11 Ver. 24, "Dost thou not take possession of that which Chemosh thy god gives thee to possess? so whomsoever Jehovah our God drives out before us, them will we possess"; comp. also 2 Ki. V. 19. 12 Isai. XLV. 7; comp. ver. 5. intimacy and holiness of the relation that was to exist between Jehovah and the Hebrews, it was often represented by the figure of a matrimonial alliance God as the husband or father, Israel as the wife or the children, as the son or firstborn son; every deviation from His precepts was conjugal faithlessness or "fornication"; 13 God was supposed to send to His undutiful people "a letter of divorce"; 14 and in many other points that simile was carried out with elaborate minutoness; 15 or Israel was described as God's people or inheritance, His peculiar nation or treasure, His chosen ones or His flock. 16 Meanwhile the notions of theocracy were developed and practically applied in the organisation of the state. Then Jehovah was conceived not merely as the God, but as the king of the people, and then a leaning towards other deities was not only treachery but treason. A public curse was to be pronounced against those who revered idols in secret. 17 The mere attempt at seducing others to unlawful worship, though the attempt was made with a brother, a son or a daughter, a beloved wife or a friend, was to be visited with lapidation, 18 even if it were supported by dreams and prophecies, by real and undeniable miracles. 19 A town that had been induced to adopt idolatrous rites, was to be destroyed, both men and beasts together with all property; it was to remain "an eternal heap of ruins, never to be rebuilt." 20 Prostration before idols or swearing by their divinity was a heinous crime; their vory names should not be familiarly uttered. Idolatry itself became synonymous with "iniquity.""" As, therefore, idolworship in whatever form implied revolt against Jehovah's absoluto supremacy, it was interdicted on penalty of death for individuals, 24 and of excision and dispersion for the nation. 25 It was menaced with the most fearful woes and troubles, especially in the Books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, which were completed at a time whon public calamities and national disasters could fitly be represented as the Divine retaliation for hardened disobedienco: not only were those general terms which had almost become conventional in pourtraying 13 Exod. XXXIV. 15; Lev. XVII. 7; Num. XIV. 33; Judg. VIII. 27; Hos. I. 2; II. 4, 7, 21, 22; IV. 12; V. 7; Isai. I. 21; Jer. II. 2, 25; LI. 5; clc. 14 Jer. III. 8. 15 Comp. Ezek. XVI. XXIII. 16 On these and other metaphors see Comm. on Exod. pp. 247, 248. 17 Deut. XXVII. 15. 18 Deut. XIII. 7—12; XVII. 2–7. 19 Vers. 2-6. 20 Deut. XIII. 13—18. 22 21 Exod. XX. 5; XXIII. 24; Deul. V. 9; Josh. XXIII. 7; etc. 22 Exod. XXIII. 13. 23 1 Sam. XV. 23; Isai. LXVI. 3; comp. also Hos. IV. 15. 24 Exod. XXII. 19; Deut. XVII. 2—7; XIII. 2---6; XII. 29–31; see Comm, on Exod. p. 327. 25 Deul. VI. 11, 15; VUI. 1, 30; XXX. 17, 18; XXXI. 16-18; comp. Josh. XXIII. 7, 16; XXIV. 14, 15; 1 Ki. IX. 6-9. |