Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

As noted in the passage cited in the question, child sacrifice is (from God's perspective) an abomination. However, such rituals were a part of the worship of the heathen gods of the nations that had inhabited Palestine prior to the arrival of the Israelites following their exodus from Egypt. Those rituals were meant as a supreme display of the willingness of worshipers to sacrifice even what they held most dear to their gods in an attempt to placate those gods and gain their favor. It was to bring such practices to an end that God had commanded and brought about the destruction of those nations by the people of Israel.

Unfortunately, in the later stages of Israel's occupancy of Palestine in the Old Testament, both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah were ruled by evil kings who turned away from God and re-introduced such abhorrent actions.

(In doing this, they were imitating the practices of the other kingdoms in the region in the belief that those practices were the reasons that the other kingdoms had been militarily successful against them, rather than viewing their defeats as a punishment from God.)

It was for such reasons that God further punished both kingdoms by allowing them to be conquered by a succession of other nations, and ultimately taken into exile -- the ten northern tribes (all except Judah and Benjamin) by Assyria (where they became "lost tribes"), and the two southern tribes (Judah and Benjamin, including Jerusalem) by the Babylonians.

June 16 2019 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report