It cannot be determined whether, in addition to what were afterwards the usual victims, other animals were used for sacrifice by the tribes of Israel in pre-Mosaic times. On the other hand, it may be asserted with confidence that in special cases human sacrifice was practised in order to propitiate the Deity or gain His favour.* This 1s witnessed to by the persistency with which, down to the 7th cent. B.c., the sacrifice of the first- born is regarded as the highest act of service, in spite of the clear protest uttered against this notion in Gn 22 (E). The teaching of the latter narrative plainly is that Jahweh is satisfied with the disposition which is prepared to offer to Him one’s dearest, and that He has appointed the sub- stitutionary offering of an animal in place of the
* Cf. on this point the exhaustive discussion of A. Kamp- hausen, Das Verhiiltniss des Menschenopfers zur israelit. Re-
| digion, Bonn, 1896.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL RELIGION OF ISRAEL 619
a ee EEE ae
actual sacrifice of a child. Nevertheless, Ahaz | well as in the incident of Jg 19%, which must be (2 K 16%, very probably during the straits to which | interpreted in the same way), only that the curse he was reduced by the attack of the allied Ara- invoked must have originally concerned not the means and Ephraimites) and Manasseh (215) both | cattle, but the person of the man who was false to caused a son to pass through the fire ; and in Mic 67> | his obligation. the question is evidently submitted to very serious The ban (Heb. qn) * was, without doubt, origin- consideration whether the sacrifice of the firstborn | ally a war custom, and consists in the devoting + is not to be offered as the surest expiation of guilt. | (even before the actual battle, Nu 21’, Jos 6”, 18 From passages like Dt 12%, 2 K 177 23, Ezk | 15°") of the enemy and all their belongings to 16% 203 23°7% (on Jer 19° see below) it would | destruction—in Israel, in the post-Mosaic period, appear as if these burnt-offerings of human victims | naturally in honour of J ahweh as the God of war. were presented not to Jahweh, but to Melekh | Schwally rightly denies that the hérem has the (LXX Moloch), é.e. ‘ king [of heaven]’ as a heathen | character of an offering or present. To ‘ban’ god. Apart, however, from Gn 22, this is expressly | means to give over to destruction; the religious opposed by Jg 115% 88, according to which Jep thah, | element is found in the complete renunciation of in terms of his vow, sacrificed his daughter to | any profit from the victory, and this renunciation Jahweh. In 2 K 3” we read of how Mesha, king | is an expression of gratitude for the fact that the of Moab, offered his firstborn, naturally to Che- | war-God has delivered the enemy, who is His mosh, the god of the land; but the now mutilated | enemy also, and all his substance into the hands close of the narrative plainly shows that the writer | of the conqueror. The earliest practice appears was firmly convinced of the efficacy of such an | to have required the massacre of everything bees offering, and would no doubt have expected that | whether man or beast, and the burning or destroy- a similar sacrifice to Jahweh on Israelitish soil
ing in some other way of houses and property ; cf. would be equally efficacious. Jer 7%! 19° [delete in the latter the gloss ‘as burnt-offerings to Baal,’
Jos 62+ 4 (after the capture of Jericho) 8%" * 1078, which is wanting in the LXX] 32° plainly show
18 15% (where the sparing of the best of the
t cattle for a future offering, and the failure to put
that the sacrifice of children was popularly sup- | to death the Amalekite king Agag, are held up by pored to be well-pleasing to Jahweh. And even zekiel, to whom such offerings, like every other
Samuel as a transgression on the part of Saul) Qois (although in this instance the expression herem is form of cultus in pre-exilic times, appear as simple idolatry, reckons the sacrifice of all the firstborn
not employed); so in Mic 4% in an eschatological among the statutes ‘that were not good’ (20%),
prophecy the ‘devoting’ of all the substance of the peoples that besiege J erusalem is announced.
which Jahweh Himself gave to the people as a The original rigour of the hérem appears in a
punishment for their backsliding. This strange
assertion is in all probability to be understood as
somewhat milder form in Dt 234f 3°, Jos 87" 114, where human beings, indeed, are all to be put meaning that the command to offer the firstlings of cattle gave rise to the erroneous notion that
to death, but the cattle and other possessions of human sacrifice was well-pleasing to God.
the enemy are to fall as spoil to the Israelites.
According to Dt 20 the ban is to be enforced
If human sacrifices were, in the nature of things, | with uns aring severity in the case of Canaanite
burnt-offerings or whole-offerings, thus constitut- cities, whereas, according to v.%", in far distant
ing pre-eminently valuable gifts, yet in the earliest | non-Canaanite cities only the males are to be