religious faith, hope, and devotion can inspire human beings to do truly amazing but also shocking acts of piety. And perhaps there's nothing more awful, awful in both the sense of horrible but also somehow full of awe, outstandingly awful, act of religious ceremony than human sacrifice. And of human sacrifice, none more dreadful, none more singularly dreadful than child sacrifice. And in the imaginary of the western world, that most horrible act of devotion is associated with the demonic deity Molach or Molch, often depicted in art as a brazen beast with fiery outstretched arms set to receive a helpless infant. The image of Molach has inspired horror from the poetry of John Milton to contemporary game theory. But who was this demonic deity? Was there ever such a nightmarish god in the ancient world? And if not, what do we know about the sacrifice of children in ancient Israel? Did Yah, the ancient Israelite god, command the sacrifice of children? And how did this most extreme act of religious devotion come to an end?

eventually detested by the final editors of the Bible. Let's explore what is among the most alarming and grotesque religious practices: the act of child sacrifice devised in ancient Israel. Make sure to subscribe here to Esoterica for weekly explorations of topics in esoteric history. And if you'd like to support the work of providing evidence-backed, free, and accessible content like this, then I'd hope you check out my Patreon or consider picking up some of the merch of the channel. And if you're new to the study of Western esotericism and you really want to get into reliable sources, make sure to check out my study guide where you can see a whole list of various things you may be interested in, from Gnosticism to magic, and reliable books on those topics. Of course, if you're interested in historical books on topics in the occult and the mystical, make sure to check out esoteric or rare books where you can pick out historical tomes on those subjects. You can find all those links in

the description and in the pin comment below. But now to the less than cheery topic of the Demonic deity known as MCH or the active child sacrifice known as the L or the LOL in ancient Israel. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica, where we explore the Arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. [Music] [Music] When the poet John Milton arrayed the fallen angels to plan their outrages against God, Molok is among the most ferocious with a seemingly infinite appetite for violence and gore. This horrid King, besmeared with the blood of human sacrifices and human tears, argued for nothing less than a full frontal assault on Heaven, bringing the full fiery fury of Hell against the very Gates of Heaven. Fast forward to contemporary Game Theory, where Molach has become the name for a kind of monster which all of the players can see but are all doomed by it right before their very eyes. It drives them inexorably to group loss and failure. Molak or M the Matic and the Septu

gentle Vulgate traditions of the biblical text actually contain two distinct ways of pronouncing this name. It has become among the most horrifying of the Demonic deities, a fiery Beast into whose arms are placed the most precious and innocent of sacrifices, a living infant who is viciously incinerated alive, seemingly all to the Insidious den of drums and flutes and The Clash of symbols, perhaps to drown out the screams of the infant child. Sacrifice to an ancient deity named Moloch continues to fire the imagination of everyone from game theorists to conspiracy theorists alike. Like, unfortunately, but was there ever even a deity known as Moloch in the past to whom children were sacrificed? To get at this question, let's present what I call the traditional view. This position is that there was, in fact, an ancient Near East deity named Moloch from the root in Western Semitic, which actually means king, though in Eastern Semitic it actually denotes something like a royal adviser. This deity was conspicuous in that children were sacrificed to it, perhaps

by burning or as the Bible typically has it, by passing them through the flames. This could be both male and female children. Further, the site of that sacrifice was known as a toet, with the most infamous one being located in the valley of Hinnom, just south of Jerusalem. That site would also become associated with Gehenna, the precursor to what would become well hell. This deity was venerated by at least two Israelite kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, but was seemingly also worshipped in the wider Mediterranean world and attested most famously by the numerous toets found in Punic North Africa, many of which, tens of thousands of which, contain the incinerated remains of babies and young children. In the traditional view, this deity was indigenous to the Canaanites, the people that the Israelites allegedly displaced in the invasion, or the broader Near East more generally, but in the traditional view was actively opposed by the Israelites, whose literature flatly forbid passing one's children through the fires.

to molach, and in a sense, this traditional view still has a great many scholars that defend it, both secular and religious, and they do so on three major evidential grounds to support that view. One, the plentiful amount of the North African Punic toits. This term, by the way, was never used by the Carthaginians themselves, which shows extensive evidence of child sacrifice among the Semitic Phoenicians. Secondly, the specific phrase of the prohibition in the Hebrew Bible as whing after molach, a phrase that's almost always used in the Bible to elicit worship of non-Yahweh deity by the Israelites. And three, the apparent existence of a pan-ancient Near E deity Malik or M, who's typically associated with the neither World deity nural. And to their credit, Scholars like bber and GC Haider have gone to Great Links, long monographs, to bring the traditional view into line with contemporary archaeological findings and biblical criticism, generally speaking, especially in trying to establish the

existence of a Malik deity or a mul deity associated with the cathic deity nural via ancient Near Eastern deity lists, theophoric name markers, and careful analysis and reading of the Hebrew Bible. But this is a big butt. Detractors of the traditional view have emerged, beginning in especially the early 20th century, really in 1935 with the work of Ido ield, where a mik deity is attested admittedly and sometimes associated with the underworld deity nural. There is no connection of that deity to human sacrifice, much less child sacrifice, in the ancient literature connected with those deities. Further, many of those ancient names with the malic theorm, a theor is just a Divine name attached to a personal name like Elijah, eliahu in Hebrew, which means my God is Yahweh, the Yahoo part being part of the Theon. I just wish he was named yahu, so much more fun yahu. Well, many of those names are found only in a very specific eite.

contexts they're not found overall in the ancient near East. Further, we expect the name Malik, if itself is a Divine name, it would be written in those languages with what is called a Divine determinative, the dingier sign. This is a star-shaped symbol that attaches to the names of gods and goddesses when you have them written out in these languages. But that's a contested issue. We don't really see that as mention this potential Malik nural deity is just not really associated with human, much less child sacrifice. But there's a kind of directional problem of the sacrifice as well. The CH sacrifices associated with molach and ancient nearer sacrifices more generally are typically burnt or Ola sacrifices, which, well, they rise into the air because they're being burned. They don't descend into the neither World, which would associate with a cathic neither World deity like nural. Further, the language most often used in the Hebrew Bible for this kind of sacrifice, LOL, is unusual. Firstly, this alleged deity is never really mentioned.

outside of this context of child sacrifice or passing them through and further while the whing language is associated with other deities to boer's credit the grammar reads the mo with a definite article in Hebrew L that long sound indicates a little definite article has been swallowed up there that's odd that given the numerous other deities in the Hebrew Bible such as Bal and Milos AER they're never really denoted with a definite article precisely because they're personal names I'm not the Justin Sledge I'm just Justin much like hassatan the Satan in job isn't a name it's a title in the Hebrew Bible the accuser the adversary and only becomes a proper name centuries later even the Hebrew of Leviticus 205 isn't clear when compared to the Greek septu which has whoring into their rulers tus Arantes reading the Hebrew not as a singular noun M but as a plural of Mel perhaps ruler or King in fact there's good reason to think that the

Matic text is actually just corrupt here, and that the suben actually preserves a better original sense of the phrase. It's a prohibition, perhaps against following foreign rulers, rather than sacrificing to a deity known as molak or molak. In effect, the evidence for this neither world deity named molak or molah, to whom children are sacrificed, especially by burning, is pretty sparse when you look at the actual evidence. So, if molach isn't a god or wasn't a god, what was it? It appears likely that the answer that the L was the name of a specific kind of child sacrifice by burning, which was incorporated into judian ysm, seemingly during the rule of aaz. But to understand that, we need to travel pretty far west, over to the Punic Heartland in North Africa. Carthage and similar cities were part of the vast trade empire founded by the Phoenicians, for whom we can think, you know, for the alphabet, all of them EX EX for the Korean alphabet in their colonies in North Africa.

significant evidence. Lots of evidence has been found for the practice of child sacrifices, along with lambs and other goats that were sacrificed as well, typically associated with the completion of a vow or a nedir, something already widely attested in ancient literature more generally. Ears containing the incinerated remains are often accompanied with a Stell commemorating the sacrifice and giving something of a rationale for why it was done. Now, when taken together, the Stelly revealed something extraordinary in relationship to the sacrifice. In the inscriptions, the formula language revealed that it was addressed to a god or Gods, typically Bal or Tanit in the case again that's the Punic Gods. The completion of a vow or an oath, a nedir, along with the phrase M lamb ml K in Phoenician, a term even referenced in the Latin literature by the way here cognate with the Phoenician Aramaic term Mulan, which literally means something like promise lamb or vow lamb m m, not as a name but simply as the word.

for promise or vow. It seems that is a lamb given as a sacrifice as the result of a vow made by a person that if the God grants them such and such well they'll sacrifice what needed to be sacrificed well the gods answered the person kept the vow and the promised lamb or child was sacrificed but along with the other mentioned promis Lambs other stellies often refer to as a MK Adam a promised person or voul human. It's apparently a human sacrifice here mul the same root word behind the alleged deity Mo or molach referred not to a deity at all but to a specific type of sacrifice ritual that accompanied the completion of a vow or an oath where the gods had blessed them and they vowed to sacrifice something if the gods did that in fact when specifically child sacrifice IES are mentioned in the incineration of children are present the Punic stelli are often referred to as LOL the exact term that we find in the

Hebrew Bible, and if we're to believe the Church of story nevus of kaisera, the child selected for the sacrifice was often denoted as a UD. It's a strange Greek term, but we rewind it back to Semitic, we get yid, the unique one or the only one. Now, hold on to that term yid, it's going to matter a lot toward the end of this video. Indeed, this all basically lines up with the two things the Hebrew Bible indicates about this kind of sacrifice: that they are the sacrifice of children by burning and that they're ultimately foreign, non-Judean, non-ystic in origins, and are therefore, because of their foreignness, detestable. Not because it's morally wrong to sacrifice children, but there's a problem. North African Punic religious rituals are really distant from the toet just south of Jerusalem. Where's the textual or archaeological connective tissue between the two? The short answer is that there isn't much. There might not be any in

fact archaeological evidence for child sacrifice in the Eastern Mediterranean is scarce, including in The Phoenician Heartland, bordering on basically non-existent. There were some initial finds at Canaanite sites like gazer and tanak and Mido, but while at first they were thought to reveal the existence of sacrifices like that, further studies showed that they probably weren't. They were just buried there. Egyptian depictions of sieges of Canaanite cities might depict children being thrown from the city walls or burned EMB brasures and sacrifice. Such sieges, as we'll see, were often typically associated with child sacrifices. So maybe, maybe, but exactly how to understand those Egyptian depictions is pretty contested. Now, as I mentioned, while Punic colonies show extensive evidence of MK sacrifices, what about the Phoenician Heartland? Interestingly, the evidence there is surprisingly spare. No Punic-like toits have yet been found. The inscription evidence at neb yunus might just, it might just be fake. The inscriptions at

iniri deala and an inscription found at Cyprus are all highly contested and frankly pretty fragmentary. Unlike the plethora of Punic inscriptions and human sacrifices we find in Carthaginian sites, in fact, the earliest strata of the Punic to fets have far more Lambs to babies ratio, while by the end of the practice when the Romans invaded and ravaged that territory, you know cago denda EST and all that, there were 20% more babies than Lambs being sacrificed, being nearly totally replaced by Lambs after the Roman Conquest. But while the connection between the language and The Vow based incineration of the children of the Punic site seems conspicuously frankly very similar to the ceremonies described in the Hebrew Bible, we got to be honest honest, the exact connection, if there is one, and I strongly think that there is one, the connection remains pretty unknown texturally in archaeologically. The evidence connecting the two is far more circumstantial than not. Now despite

this I and many other scholars do think that the evidence is strong enough to conclude there was no deity Mo or molach to whom babies were sacrificed. This is just a misreading of the text. Rather, I tend to agree with the position that the L was in fact a kind of child sacrifice imported into Judean ysm from Phoenician ceremonial practice. Though, as we'll see, lamac sacrifice, that specific child sacrifice, was just one of at least three other forms of Judean ystic child sacrifice. So, just because the lah is probably not a God and probably is a sacrifice and it's probably of foreign origin, it doesn't mean the Israelites weren't sacrificing their kids too. Zero in on the Hebrew Bible as a source for learning more about this lamac sacrifice is just as elusive, honestly. It's mentioned in some form about a dozen times, mostly times forbidding it. The ritual seems to involve passing children, both male and female children, through a fire or otherwise burning them at a

place known as a tophet, otherwise mysterious word. By the way, we don't really know what this word tophet means. It might come from the Aramaic word for Hearth, but scholars still debate exactly what a tophet is, though the vocalization of both Mo and tophet may have actually been the result of taboo denigration, with the vowels for the Hebrew word shame boset actually introduced into the text, much like they are in association with worship of Baal. Now, the ritual was first associated in the text with the Judahite King Ahaz, known actually for his syncretizing tendency with folks up there in the north, especially modeling temple furniture in fact on models that he had seen in Damascus. It could have also been in this region that he witnessed and brought the lamb ceremony down to Judea. It was apparently continued by Manasseh before the tophet was destroyed in the reforms of Josiah. Interestingly enough, by the way, the otherwise righteous King Hezekiah and his prophet, the prophet

everyone loves were right in the Historical Center of this practice. It seemed to have been going on right there during while they were alive, and in fact, Isaiah 30 even imagines Assyria itself as being sacrificed at the Jerusalem toet as a lolc sacrifice. So did Isaiah condemn it, and this also invites the natural question: if the lch sacrifice wasn't made to a deity known as Mo or molach, then to whom? The answer is probably Yahweh, as shocking as that might seem to some of y'all out there. Though, as we'll see, the sacrifice of children to Yahweh was anything other than new at this point. Point thus, it appears that the ritual was centered around sacrificing children upon the Divine fulfillment of a vow or nedir or an oath by well burning them. Now, we don't know if they were alive while they were being burned or they were killed prior to that and then burned. It's not clear. Most sacrifices were actually killed first, then burned.

but it's not any better either way and was probably introduced into Judean Yahwism by Aaz and persisted for a couple of centuries up until it was seemingly eliminated by Josiah. However, as we'll see once the specific LC right was eliminated from Judean YSM, its memory would persist well into the future, especially those bent on religious PMICS, specifically by the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah. But the L ritual isn't the only form of child sacrifice known from ancient Israel and its surrounding environs. At least two other forms of child sacrifice can be detected in the Hebrew Bible in a very complex narrative at 2 Kings 3. We find the Moabit king and the Moabites and Israelites are very similar. The Moabite king Misha in a route led by an alliance of Israelite, Judahite, and Edomite kings. He's ultimately besieged at his fortress at Kir Haret following a prophetically informed reversal. Well, Misha sacrificed his firstborn son as an Ola or burnt.

offering on the walls of that Citadel. Interestingly enough, this does successfully bring down Divine wrath, presumably from the Moabit national God Kos, upon the Triple Alliance of the Israelites, Judahites, and who promptly end The Siege and retreat. They get right out of there because Kos is attacking them apparently now. There is a lot to unpack in this tale, but what we apparently have is a narrative where a Moabit king sacrifices his firstborn son, which invokes the wrath of a Yahweh God Kos. Yahweh just wouldn't have much power in this kind of territory because remember, gods of this time were geographically bound in a pretty strong sense. Divine kings are specific regions as it were to bring down the sacrifice, brings down wrath upon the and their yst allies. Now, we've already seen potential Egyptian depictions of child sacrifice upon the walls when mpto is Ling laying Siege to some Canaanite cities, and that imagery was associated again with fonic violence in the region, and so the idea of

sacrificing children on the walls of besieged cities might have been a thing, and here we have a very similar narrative in the Hebrew Bible where child sacrifice is shockingly effective at conjuring divine action. We should also point to other references in classical literature where we have similar accounts of child sacrifice occurring in the midst of a siege to break sieges. This is true in the Punic context as well. However, note that Misha's sacrifice is logically different than the lolak sacrifice. In the lolc sacrifice, one makes a vow, and then the god satisfies that vow, and then the sacrifice is made. Here, it seems that King Misha seemingly performs the child's sacrifice to induce divine action. Now, that's a risky bargain, but it seems to have worked out, and it was clearly borne out in an immediate crisis. In some ways, this is a kind of crisis-induced human sacrifice, crisis-induced child sacrifice in the same vein as the lolc sacrifice is the tale of Jefta at

Judges chapter 11 in that narrative Jeff the wishes for military success and vows to Yahweh that given such success he'll sacrifice whatever comes out his door first. Well, Jeff the successfully defeats the ammonites, and of course his daughter bursts out the door celebrating her father's victory in song. After a short period of reprieve, Jeff a you know Deal's a deal kind of dude sacrifices his daughter to Yahweh. While this narrative does have some folkloric elements, especially the element of ironic reversal, it certainly contains the notion of a vow-based sacrifice similar to those over there in the Punic Heartland and presumably the lamc sacrifices that are condemned. And such sacrifices, of course, we see here, they could be rendered to Yahweh. Indeed, Micah chap 6 also at least entertains the idea that sacrificing one's firstborn for the remission of one's sins as the kind of ultimate sacrifice. It's more valuable, we learn, than thousands of rams or 10,000.

rivers of oil. It was at least imaginable in the minds of an Israelite Prophet, even if it were ultimately rejected by Yahweh via that Prophet, that in contradistinction to what we'll see in prophetic child condemnation sacrifices by later prophets. So, come back to that. Also, keep the idea in mind that a sacrifice of a firstborn child might have the effect of allowing for forgiveness of sins. That idea, it might just matter in a minute. Might just finally at the rather archaic legal sections at Exodus 22. This is around 28, the second part of 28 and 29. Yahweh demands that, like various animals, firstborn male children are also to be given over to Yahweh, taken from their mother after 8 days, and given to Yahweh. Thus, apparently establishing a general requirement of child sacrifice, of at least boys. Of course, such a generalized demand of child sacrifice seems utterly unimaginable to us, given how we relate to children in a contemporary context. However, that's not their context, given

an Iron Age infant mortality rate of around 50%, and that women had far, far more children then than now, assuming those having those children didn't kill those women. The idea of sacrificing the first child you get to ensure for healthy children in the future, that's perfectly reasonable. Indeed, that's the very logic of all sacrifices in the Bible, in some sense, that you give the first fruits of your stock and of your livestock and of your grain to Yahweh so that you get abundance in the future. That's exactly the logic here. Now, it's a gruesome logic, but it's logical. Further, this idea of having to give Yahweh the firstborn is also justified because of the Passover event, in which Yahweh had the angel of death go through and, you know, kill the firstborn of all the Egyptian children. Thus, it's kind of an eternal trade of a sort, the Israelite Liberation on the back of the killing of

one generation of Egyptian children. Itself, by the way, a kind of mass child sacrifice advice if we're being honest, such that Israelite firstborn boys, or at least their parents, would forever bear the cost. Now, that custom is still kept alive in Judaism with the fast of the firstborn boys on the eve of Passover. So, you don't kill them, they just got to be hungry before, uh, before they eat the matzah. Was such a custom of child sacrifice widespread among the Ysts? Frankly, that's impossible to know. There's very little archaeological evidence of it, but that it occurred seems underwritten on at least a few grounds. The first is that the Hebrew Bible itself, especially in later legal sections, is aware of this requirement for child sacrifice and institutes various kinds of escape clauses to get away from it. Those take the form of lamb sacrifices and li of children, something, by the way, that we also saw over at the Punic tophit in

North Africa specific groups having to serve as Levites in the temple, that is, assistance in the temple, so they have to go there sometimes. Just a cash payment is enough to get you out of being sacrificed, and perhaps eventually circumcision does some of this work. Remember that Eighth Day clause and eventually fasting and other ritual substitutions as well. Some of those substitutions are still in effect in contemporary Jewish law. Orak, I mentioned boys fasting, firstborn boys fasting on the eve of Passover, but the pledge of the firstborns to Yahweh and the temple service is also substituted by the ritual of pidyon haben. Now, I'll be honest, this is personally my favorite of all Jewish rituals, Pon haben. But here, the infant boy is presented to a member of the Israelite priesthood, who returns the boy, thank God, to the parents for a ritual payment of five shekel or between 96 and 102 gam of pure silver, which is just under $100 these days in 2024. Not

a bad exchange rate of infant per silver. Not that there should be such an exchange rate, all things told, but not bad, of course. Some of the best evidence that child sacrifice to Yahweh did occur in ancient Israel is that the Hebrew Bible is at length to forbid it. Prohibition very usually implies performance, folks, but on what grounds was child sacrifice forbidden? Well, not so much because sacrificing children is immoral simpliciter, but because the practice is foreign. It's a non-Israelite way of worshiping Yahweh, and in those passages, it anachronistically assigns that kind of horrible child sacrifice business to the Canaanites. However, there is probably some truth, as we've mentioned, to the non-Israelite origins of at least the mo-lolc sacrifice, and these passages might be at some level speaking to those concerns. As we've seen, the ancient Israelites knew and practiced at least some forms of child sacrifice: the general sacrifice of firstborn boys, the vow or nedar sacrifice of both boys and girls, and the

lamola ritual and the crisis sacrifice represented by people like meing mesha. Along with those, I should also mention that Franchesca stavra Kulu has also argued for sacrifices associated with the shim or demonic entities, or perhaps shadai gods. And this is actually witnessed in texts like Psalm 106 and her reading of the Dare allaha inscription. So, those might have existed as well in her book. I'll mention at the end as well checking out its fantastic scholarship. However, it appears that following the reforms of Josiah and the eventual destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, Israelite child sacrifice seems to have come to an end. So much so that by the time of the prophets of that period, the period of the destruction of the temple and following in the Exile, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it had become a bit of a garbled memory. Ezekiel seems to think that children were sacrificed as food fil gilim, his favorite term for Idols, which is actually logically related to the word for feces. So, that's

colorful. We can expect that kind of stuff out of Ezekiel. Take that poop, Gods. Yep, it's a pun on poop. It's a poop pun. Poop Gods. Ezekiel 20 even goes so far as to assert that Yahweh had actually commanded the impious and rebellious Israelites to sacrifice their children, but not to serve Yahweh, but as punishment. Yeah, Ezekiel suggests that Yahweh gave the Israelites statutes that weren't good purposely to desolate them, such that Yahweh commanded child sacrifice simply to torture the rebellious Israelites. So, you can always rely on Ezekiel to turn the theological volume all the way up. Anyone else need a drink yet? What time is it? Jeremiah takes a similar track but argues that the Israelites committed child sacrifices to Baal rather than Yahweh. Again, the problem here is the improper theological target rather than, you know, killing children for gods. In fact, Jeremiah goes so far as to claim that Yahweh claims that he didn't even

command such a thing in the first place. In fact, he never thought of it. The idea never arose in my heart or never arose in my mind, so says Yahweh, so by Jeremiah, and probably quite some time after Israelite child sacrifice had long since come to an end. Yahweh is fully exculpated from the whole horrible business by both prophetic declarations and all these legal substitution escape clauses and the final redactions of the legal codes that we find in the Torah. All in all, it's a pretty careful cleanup operation. Kind of the most biblically enduring account of child sacrifice is that of The Binding of Isaac. There, the language of Isaac being yid or unique or only, despite the fact that he has a brother Ishmael, is used there. And we've already seen similar language employed in the wider Semitic context of child sacrifice. This, by the way, is perhaps being informed, the tales being informed by the technical language of child's sacrifice, which tells us that they knew

something about the doing of it now. I imagine we all know the tale of the Akida, The Binding of Isaac. Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him because Yahweh says to do so, raises the knife, an angel intervenes, an animal substitution is made, that Ram there in the thicket, and the logic of child sacrifice is carried to its logical conclusions. Despite No sacrifice having had happen, Abraham will be given more descendants than the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashores, and all the nations are going to be blessing him forever and ever, amen. Then something strange happens in the text. Abraham alone is noted as descending down the mountain, and there ain't no mention of ISAC. Many scholars, both secular and religious, have noticed this very odd element of the tale and have made the obvious conclusion. We're probably looking at what is the earlier ending of the story in which Isaac, in that earlier version, was actually sacrificed, with the whole Angelic intervention and animal substitution.

later theological sanitized version interpolated into the story. Even many Jewish religious commentaries conclude that something similar had to have occurred with the story, ultimately taking on radical mystical and esoteric elements when it eventually becomes the subject of cabalistic speculation. Now, if you want to get more into the idea that Isaac really was sacrificed in the early version of that, you got to check out Levenson's classic book The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. Now, I said that Israelite child sacrifice came to an end following the reforms of Josiah and the Babylonian exile, and that seems true. It seems aside from the most important act of child sacrifice in all of Israelite history. Recall that from the prophet Micah, there at Micah chapter 6, that the suggestion was made and rejected that the firstborn child sacrifice could act for the remission of sins. Yes, the child sacrifice for the remission of sins was rejected, such that one should simply and famously, it's a beautiful quote of course, only do justice and to love goodness and to walk

modestly with your God. It's good advice, simple enough. Micah has Yahweh to teach us that we don't need elaborate sacrifices, much less child sacrifices, to get for forgiveness of our sins. Simply be sorry, repent, and be a pious good person. That's enough for the prophet Micah until it wasn't. The theology of Jesus's atonement for the pervasive sins brought upon human beings by Adam revived Israelite child sacrifice over and against this very pronouncement of Yahweh via the prophet Micah. Here, the suffering and execution of Jesus via crucifixion, let's be honest, an act of divine child sacrifice of the firstborn son, acts as a final conclusive atonement to redeem human beings from their eternal damnation for the sin they've inherited from Adam. Jesus is both the high priest holding the knife and the lamb to be slaughtered. Thus, Israelite child sacrifice emerged from centuries of obscurity and theological horror to become the central theological

mechanism of salvation of salvation for the world's largest religion proudly on vivid display churches the world over. Israelite child sacrifice from ancient mystic practice to roundly condemn as horrid by later prophets and legalists would ultimately emerge and prove theologically triumphant as Christianity. The best volume on the topic is Heath Dell's child sacrifice in ancient Israel, aptly named, and I think he makes great points. It's a fantastic volume, but I'd also recommend reading it along with Franchesca Straa Pulu King Bassa and child sacrifice, biblical distortions of historical realities, for her incredibly fascinating arguments about the potential child sacrifices to what she deems the shadai gods or perhaps the shedim, the demons that we see there in the Psalms. But until next time, and hopefully something a bit more cheery, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. [Music] [Music]

What was Moloch? Ancient Demonic God or Ritual Fire Sacrifice?

What was Moloch? Ancient Demonic God or Ritual Fire Sacrifice?