Child Sacrifice

Child-sacrifice for aVampire God

Family Problems

A bolshy son, who won’t obey you? Just take him to the perimeter of the city and stone him to death, with help from the city elders.  (Deuteronomy 21: 18-21). A daughter who might be having an affair you don’t approve of? Just burn her (“And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father and shall be burnt with fire” (Deuteronomy, 21:9) The Book of judges has a whole chapter on the virtue of burning your own daughter alive, Ch. 11.

Troubled by the babies of foreigners? Just dash their brains out:

 “her little ones were dashed in pieces at the head of every street”; (Nahum, 3:10)

Those were from Ninevah, and ditto for Babylon:

"Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes" (Isaiah, 13:16).

The vampire-predator anti-god from Hell enjoyed these visions of little children being dashed to bits.

A certain king Manahem came across a city ‘which opened not to him’ and so therefore he ripped open all of the pregnant women: 2 Kings 15:16. Not surprisingly, he was promoted to king of Israel right after that valiant deed. Then there were the charming basketfuls of child heads, kept outside the city gates – children of Ahab murdered by order of Jehu, promoted by Elisha (2 Kings 10:7). These stories probably had a similar function to today’s horror movies though the latter do not claim divine sanction. 

An archfiend from Hell draws nourishment from human horror, is fed by that emotion. Christians do need to try and understand this.

Child Sacrifice

The Book of Proverbs, supposedly the oldest OT text, tells of the Hebrews in Canaan: “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood.” (Proverbs, 106, 36-7)

Uh-huh.

In Micah's time (supposedly 737–696 BC) the Levite priests were demanding sacrifice of the firstborn to Jehovah:

“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil. Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? It hath been told to thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.” (Micah 6:6-7)

- to which the prophet Micah objects.

In Ezekiel, (suposedly 622-570) the child-devouring anti-God actually reveals His dark intent:

“Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the LORD. (Ez. 20:25-6) 

Jerusalem was Yahweh’s bride – and bode his children! Phew, that’s a heavy number. But what happened to them? I expect you can guess: “And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured” (Ez. 16:12)

Redemption

The Book of Exodus has God claiming that

Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine… you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstlings of your cattle that are males shall be the LORD's. Every firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every first-born of man among your sons you shall redeem. (Exodus, 13:1,12-13)

Its text hovers ambiguously between saying, every firstborn is to be sacrificed, and saying that it can be ‘redeemed’ by paying the appropriate tax to the Levite priests. Whereas, in the book of Leviticus, God insists that no, there has to be real slaughter:

But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the LORD, of anything that he has, whether of man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the LORD. No one devoted, who is to be utterly destroyed from among men, shall be ransomed; he shall be put to death. (Lev 27:28-9)