What does the Bible say about child sacrifice?

This is the Fire-god, 'the abomination of Ammon.' In the latter days of Solomon, when the heathen women whom he had married had turned away his heart after other gods, he built a high place in the hill before (that is, 'east of') Jerusalem for Molech. The Israelites sacrificed their children to this idol. Passing their children through the fire might seem to imply that they were dedicated to the idol by being rapidly passed through a fire without being burnt, and this may have been done, but some passages do not admit of this interpretation. Of the Canaanites it is said, "their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods," Deut. 12:31; and of Israel it is recorded, they have "caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them, . . . . for when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it." Ezek. 23:37, 39; Lev. 18:21; Lev. 20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Jer. 32:35.

Adultery is just as evil as is incest (v. 20), and similarly forbidden. Verse 21 adds that Israelites were forbidden to offer their children to Molech. Though people spoke of this as a sacrifice, the practice did not spring from unselfish love for Molech, but from the selfish evil of wanting to get rid of a child. How evil it is today that many want to get rid of a child before it is born! Molech was an image with its arms outstretched, and people would place their children in its arms, while a fire was lit beneath. Then with drums and noisy music the cries of the child were drowned out as it was burned to death. Thus this religious wickedness sanctified the torture and murder of an unwanted child!

Adultery is just as evil as is incest (v. 20), and similarly forbidden. Verse 21 adds that Israelites were forbidden to offer their children to Molech. Though people spoke of this as a sacrifice, the practice did not spring from unselfish love for Molech, but from the selfish evil of wanting to get rid of a child. How evil it is today that many want to get rid of a child before it is born! Molech was an image with its arms outstretched, and people would place their children in its arms, while a fire was lit beneath. Then with drums and noisy music the cries of the child were drowned out as it was burned to death. Thus this religious wickedness sanctified the torture and murder of an unwanted child!

Then we have a transition from wives to children, and that most inhuman rite in which parents were so blinded of Satan as to devote their offspring sacrificially to Molech or Moloch, and probably Malcham or Milcom. It was the tutelary God of the Ammonites; and Chemosh, the deity of the Moabites, differed little from it, Fürst making the name signify "fire," as Molech, etc., mean "King." From Jer. 19:5 it appears that Baal was worshipped thus. It was widespread under various idols over the earth; and how awful the fact that Solomon yielded to his heathen wives, and went after Ashtoreth, the licentious goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom or Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, and built a high place for Chemosh, that of Moab! The greatest science and learning, the highest civilization and luxury, can in no way hinder this, if they do not help it on; and the day hastens, when the Jews, now so staunch apparently against every idol, will fall under strange gods, and set up a man as God in His temple, drawing apostate Christendom into this fatal revolt, all the more guilty on the part of those called to worship the Father and the Son in Spirit.

This verse 21 is but one of many solemn prohibitions of a horror, which prevailed down to Josiah's days, as Ahaz was a notable patron of it long before. Some have reasoned on "passing through the fire," as here and elsewhere, to deny the burning of their seed: but this seems a kindly effort to soften the reality of the wickedness. It was the fullest, though not the only, profanation of the name of Israel's God. Jehovah accepted a sheep or an ox, or even a much smaller sacrifice; Satan under these names demanded their sons.

The act is not given as a rule of morality nor of conduct in any way, but as a special case in which Abraham's faith was put to the test. "It came to pass that God did tempt Abraham." Gen. 22:1. Hence there is no kind of analogy with "those who sacrificed their children to Moloch." Jer. 32:35. Men, through a perverse, unnatural, and cruel custom, gratifying the suggestion of their depraved nature, without any command whatever, accomplished of their own will this horrid barbarity, which was done as due to, and as liked and approved by, the god which their nature had pictured to them, as a practice pleasing to him. They got over conscience and affection through the hope of having their lusts and vengeance gratified, so as habitually to treat their children thus. It was their own practice to execute this cruelty — their state of mind. In Abraham's case it was not, nor ordered of God to be so. God had placed the promises in Isaac in a positive manner; and God puts Abraham to the test, to shew whether he had such entire confidence in Him, that he would give up all the promises as possessed (trusting that God would somehow and at all events accomplish them, and raise up Isaac again, for in him God had said that the promises of a seed should be accomplished), and obey God in an express command, let it cost him what it would. When this was proved, God suffered not the child to be touched.

God now appeals to man himself in the person of the prophet against both these debauched and uncensured women: "And Jehovah said unto me, Son of man, wilt thou judge Oholah and Oholibah? Yea, declare unto them their abominations." And the story is repeated briefly with all the circumstances of its aggravation and the persistency of wickedness, which seems as if it would go on to the end — the scum of a pot, as in the next chapter, which will never be cleansed. Adultery and blood are both in the count against them here. Their idolatries contained both features: unfaithfulness to God, and causing their sons to pass through the fire to their idols to be devoured; and all the while shamelessly entering Jehovah's sanctuary, which could but be defiled by their presence; and His sabbaths, the sign of His covenant with them, profaned by all their actions. They had not been the victims of others, simply; they had not merely been solicited by others; they themselves had been the solicitresses, laboring to bring from afar those who could only pollute them with their abominations; they had decked themselves with the ornaments that God had given, for the reception of their corrupters!

And what was the return? "But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown." It is a sorrowful picture, and not more sad than true. The beauty of Jerusalem was for every passer by. (Ver. 15, 16) "And of thy garments thou didst take and make for thyself high places with divers colours" [or patches, as the expression of the prophet may mean, in contempt of the hangings the Jewish ladies wove for heathen gods and goddesses, Astarte in particular]. The idolatrous uncleanness of Jerusalem was beyond anything that had been or was to be. And it was marked by this, that all the countless favours of her divine husband (for such her Maker was to her) she squandered on the filthy idols of the heathen.

"Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them, and tookest thy broidered garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them. My meat also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set it before them for a sweet savour: and thus it was, says the Lord Jehovah. Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne to me, and these hast thou sacrificed to them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?" (Ver. 17-21) There was this added to His aggrieved heart, that with all her abominations and her lewdness Jerusalem remembered not the days of her youth when she was naked and bare, polluted with her blood. (Ver. 22)

Such was the faith and the patience of this holy prophet. To bear at all cost a true testimony of Jehovah's mind to His people was far dearer to him than earthly goods, or honour, or life. When outward peace reigned, he saw the coming ruin; when the ruin was approaching its climax, he took measures, according to his discernment of the word of Jehovah, of a restoration that could not fail. Accordingly the word of Jehovah comes to the pleading prophet. "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me? Therefore thus says the Lord; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it: and the Chaldeans, that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense to Baal, and poured out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, says the Lord. For this city has been to me as a provocation of mine anger and of my fury from the day that they built it even to this day; that I should remove it from before my face, because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they have turned to me the back, and not the face: though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house, which is called by my name, to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." (Ver. 27-35.)

In Jeremiah 19 Jehovah summons the prophet to take a potter's earthen bottle before the ancients of the people and of the priests and in the valley of Hinnom to proclaim His new message. "Hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever hears, his ears shall tingle. Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; they have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: therefore, behold, the days come, says the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passes thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them." (Ver. 3-9.)

As to cruelty,we read that Ahaz, king of Judah, "made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen" (2 Kings 16:3). Manasseh, the grandson of Ahaz, in spite of a godly father, King Hezekiah, "reared up altars for Baal [the deity of the Phoenician and Canaanitish nations], and he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards" (2 Kings 21:3 and 6). The customs attending the worship of these divinities were of the most licentious and abominable kind. That familiar spirits and wizards were invoked shows that the powers of hell were behind idolatrous worship. All this was most sternly forbidden to the Jews.