Mesha's Sacrifice: Child Sacrifice in the Ancient World

The Mesha Stele is an important artifact found in what is now Jordan that offers important insights into the rise of the kingdom of Moab and the Moabites in the ninth century. The Bible records the same time period and much of the same material - Mesha's rebellion against Israel (the House of Omri). In 2 Kings 3 we can read the Israelite response where Judah and Edom join Israel's king Joram in responding to Mesha's rebellion. Things go well until Mesha sacrifices his son and a great wrath is against Israel and the return home. The passage is incredibly confusing and has caused interpretive problems for generations. We won't resolve it here today but there is some important and interesting context for this passage in regards to child sacrifice in the ancient world. Let's dig in.
#archaeology #bible #digitalarchaeology #biblicalarchaeology #moab #moabites #ancienthistory #mesha #meshastele #childsacrifice #moloch #molech
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If you'd like to read more here are just a few of the sources we used in this video:
Heath Dewrell, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2019.
Drew Holland, "An Alternative Approach to the Dilemma of 2 Kgs 3:27," The Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies 7/2:7-31 (Summer 2020)
Nicolas Wyatt, "A Ritual Response to Natural Disaster: KTU 1.119.31 = RS 24.266.31 Revisited," 2019, Ugarit-Verlag - Buch- und Medienhandel GmbH, Münster, 453-470.
Stephen A. Kaufman, "THE PHOENICIAN INSCRIPTION OF THE INCIRLI TRILINGUAL: A TENTATIVE RECONSTRUCTION AND TRANSLATION," MAARAV 14.2 (2007): 7-26.
Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo, "The Epigraphy of the Tophet," Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici 29-30, 2012-2013: 159-192.
Paul Mosca, 2013. The Tofet: a Place of Infant Sacrifice? 119-36 in XELLA (ed.) 2013.
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[@WhatYourPastorDidntTellYou]

In the book of Genesis, Abraham is terrible with trusting God all the way up until God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Do you think the background context of child sacrifice plays a helpful role in understanding why Abraham had no issue with sacrificing Isaac? It seems possible that Abraham had heard of other cultures practicing child sacrifice and therefore might have concluded that sacrificing Isaac wouldn’t have been preferred but not a surprise for a god to ask a father to sacrifice their child.

[@BeneaththeBible]

Child sacrifice would certainly have been practiced to some degree in Abraham’s time, so its presence in that story isn’t out of place. But one function of the Sacrifice of Isaac narrative is as a polemic against the practice of child sacrifice by the Israelites.

[@WhatYourPastorDidntTellYou]

@@BeneaththeBible I think that makes sense. Why are you so confident that child sacrifice would’ve been practiced at that time?

[@BeneaththeBible]

Abraham is pre-Israelite, but the explicit ban on child sacrifice in the Torah and the provision to make a substitute sacrifice for firstborn sons seem to indicate that it was practiced to some degree by other people groups. I’ll leave Philip to make the specific citations.

[@williambeckett6336]

Notice the cultural conditioning at about 10:35. How the gingerly the narrator admits that Yahweh worshippers performed child sacrifice. How eager he is to diminish it as isolated events and "only a few groups" doing it. There is absolutely no reason to afford the Israelites any special accomodation but he's been culturally trained to do just that. The Israelites like the Hebrews" before them (who incidentally were Canaanites themselves) performed child sacrifice far longer than any apologist, scholar or bible is willing to acknowledge. But more scholars are admitting this fact.

[@BeneaththeBible]

We did our research and did include the possibility of some Yahwistic communities practicing child sacrifice. Can you cite these “more scholars” who conclude it was more widespread?

[@susanm7925]

I know, right? He is a confused, fat white boy

[@Dybbouk]

@@BeneaththeBible Usually one cites the story of Jephtha's daughter in Judges. Presumably you must know this, so you must have had reasons not to discuss it. The Swiss theologian Thomas Römer has argued that Molech and Yahvé were one and the same. The priests post Exile separated them, embarassed by the practice.

[@Highspergamy]

Mesha is the King who's sacrifice worked referenced by the Phoenicians... Most of the Bible is inversion.. Most of the time the Bible references Israel they are talking about Egypt.. Moab was not being routed... The lured the Egyptian army in near the city, then unleashed the levees upstream on the Jordan... Which bogged down the Egyptians chariots... They then pursued the retreating Egyptians all the way back to Egypt where they slaughtered everyone they came across except the virgins.

[@recklesslyarrogant7242]

This doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m so confused. The children of Israel literally wasted entire cities for just being non Israeli.

[@BeneaththeBible]

Warfare in the OT is a difficult subject. We’re going to get into it more in a future video. In this case Joram attacked Moab because they stopped making their tribute payments, so that’s a more political rationale than a religious one. That doesn’t necessarily justify it but it does show that not all warfare was for religious reasons.

[@reallyangrysnowman]

Great video. Very thoughtful and insightful. I like the application at the end.

[@BeneaththeBible]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@ie1961]

Oh, please. It's simple - the sacrifice motivated the defenders, signalling that Mesha will fight to the death.

[@akubalor]

This is what I speculate: As Mesha offered his son to Chemosh, Moab's false god, the idolatrous Israelites understood culturally that this would be the most powerful ritual to do. And so Israelites significantly feared the wrath of Chemosh, though a false god. Either the indignation happened to them was psychological (fear of Chemosh) or actual (Satan might have to do with the great indignation against Israelites as allowed by God, due to Joram's unfaithfulness). What do you think of this?

[@adedaporh]

Dan Holland's theory doesn't work at all. Did you guys even read the paper?!

[@tylerx099]

What makes his theory faulty?