John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: November 30

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: November 30


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Practice of Human Sacrifice

2Ki_3:27

Having yesterday developed the principle of human sacrifice, we may today contemplate some ancient and modern instances in illustration of the practice.

Although, as we have seen, the practice was not unknown to the Greeks, and there are even examples of it among the Romans in the early period of their history, it was never so common among the classical ancients as among the Canaanites and other nations of Syria. On this point the testimony of ancient heathen and early Christian writers concurs with that of Scripture. It was indeed awfully common among the Carthaginians in North Africa, but they derived it from the same quarter, being a colony of the Phoenicians. Their customs in this matter are better known than those of the Phoenician and Syrian nations, and it is hence usual to carry back their usages, to supply the details which the Scripture does not furnish. But one who has expressly written on the subject, Note: Munter in his Religion der Karthager; also Movers, Die Phönizier. says they are not strictly applicable to the usages of the Molech of Scripture by human sacrifice, but are later developments of the primitive rites. Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers concur, however, in this reference; and although the mode of operation may have been different in some particulars, the essential facts and principles of action are identical. It is with Molech that human sacrifices are usually connected in Scripture. “Causing children to pass through the fire to Molech,” is frequently alluded to in Scripture; and some Jewish rabbis, tender of the reputation of their ancient kings to whom this practice is ascribed, started the ingenious notion that the ceremony was not one of sacrifice or death, but a sort of lustration or purification by fire, which, although idolatrous, and, indeed, an act of devotement to the idol, was not cruel, and inflicted no bodily harm. But this view of the matter is untenable in the face of the evidence we possess, and is not now usually entertained. When the Israelites fell into this practice, this passing “through the fire” took place in the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem; and Jeremiah, speaking of what there took place, expressly says that the subjects of this operation were “burned in the fire.” Note: Jer_7:31. See also Psa_106:38; Eze_16:20; Eze_23:37, to show that these were real sacrifices by fire.

“Molech, horrid king, besmeared with blood

Of human sacrifice and parents’ tears,”

was the same, doubtless, with the Kronos whom the Greeks identified with Saturn, and concerning whom we have the mythological fable of his devouring his own children. There is a difficulty in distinguishing him from Baal. Both names are appellative—Baal being lord, and Molech king. Recent investigation seems to point to the conclusion that Baal represented the life-giving and cherishing, and Molech the life destroying powers of the same god—the sun. In that point of view, the offering of human victims, to be consumed by fire, must have seemed highly appropriate.

Without further explanation or application, we proceed to sum up a few of a large body of facts and instances which we have been able to collect on this painful subject.

The Phoenicians and Carthaginians are reported to have had a yearly celebration, upon which human sacrifices were offered in large numbers to their idol; and it is worthy of note that the Jews appear to have traced some analogy between the ceremonies of this day and those of their own great and solemn day of atonement—with the difference of human for animal victims. Victims were also offered on particular emergencies, as in the instance by which these remarks have been suggested. Princes and great men under severe calamities used to offer their beloved children to the god. Private persons soon came to imitate the example of their princes; and thus in time the practice became general. Indeed, to such a height did this infatuation rise, that those who had no children of their own bought those of the poor, that they might not be deprived of the benefits they expected from such offerings. The original practice seems to have been to slay the victims, and then to place the body on the altar, to be consumed in the fire. Indeed, that they should be burned alive, as some suppose, would have been adverse to the analogy of sacrifice. Afterwards, a kind of burning fiery furnace was used; and eventually, among the Carthaginians, the victims were—at least sometimes—cast into a large brazen statue of the god, made red-hot. To drown the cries of the young victims, musicians were made to play on noisy instruments—particularly drums; Note: Hence the place in the valley of Hinnom was called Tophet, from Toph, a drum. and the mothers made it a sort of merit to divest themselves of natural affection—or rather to restrain its manifestation. A tear rendered the sacrifice of no effect, and the one who shed it was deemed an enemy to the public peace. Tertullian, who was himself a native of Carthage, says that this inhuman custom was maintained there long after the Carthaginians had been subdued by the Romans. He affirms that children were sacrificed to this Molech, Kronos, or Saturn, down to the consulship of Tiberius, who, to put a stop to it, hanged the sacrificing priests themselves on the tree that shaded their temple, as on so many crosses raised to expiate their crimes, of which the soldiers who assisted at the execution had been the witnesses.

There is a curious and painfully illustrative anecdote on this subject in Diodorus Siculus, who relates that, when Agathocles was going to besiege Carthage, the people, seeing the extremities to which they were reduced, ascribed their misfortunes to the anger of their god, in that they had latterly spared to offer to him in sacrifice children nobly born, and had fraudulently put him off with the children of slaves and foreigners. To make an atonement for this crime, two hundred children of the best families in Carthage were at once offered in sacrifice, and no less than three hundred of the citizens voluntarily sacrificed themselves—that is, they went into the fire without any compulsion.

Nor was the practice of human sacrifice confined to the East. It was found among the British Druids, as well as with the Gauls and Germans. Prisoners taken in battle were thus disposed of as offerings to the god who had given the victory. The victim was chained with his back to an oak, and while music was played, and the people danced to the music, the officiating Druid smote the victim on the bowels, and professed to draw auguries of the future from the manner in which the blood flowed. On other occasions prisoners were consumed by hundreds in a wicker machine or cage, to which the sacrificial priest set fire. With such offerings the infernal powers were supposed to be well pleased; and it is likely that they were.

Among many of the nations of Africa the custom has subsisted to our own time—with this difference, that, instead of sacrifice by fire, the blood of the victims (unless, as in Dahomey, kept to be made into black puddings) is alone poured out as an offering to the gods, the bodies being eaten by the people—partly as a religious act. The travellers of the sixteenth century relate that the sovereign of Guagua never entered upon a military expedition without a solemn sacrifice, in which he immolated a youth with his own hatchet; and afterwards four slaves, two by his hand, and two by the aid of others.

Snelgrave, in his “New Account of Some Parts of Guinea,” published in 1734, speaks of two cases of human sacrifice that came under his own notice in Old Calabar. On the occasion of the illness of king Jabru, the priests prescribed, as an effectual means of cure, the sacrifice of a child six months old. Snelgrave saw the dead body of the child suspended from the branches of a tree with a living cock which had been tied to him for the completion of this horrid ceremony. This was in 1704. Nine years after, in his last voyage to this coast, this captain, visiting one of the chiefs, saw a negro child fastened by the arms to a post driven into the ground; and observing the poor creature to be covered with flies and vermin, he inquired concerning him, and was told that he was a victim intended to be sacrificed the night following to the god Egbo for the prosperity of the realm. The rough seaman could not endure this, and, his men being with him, rescued the victim by little less than force of arms.

The same captain witnessed in Dahomey the very same practices of human immolation, but on a more extensive scale, which Commander Forbes Note: Dahomey and the Dahomans. By F.E. Forbes, Com. R.N. 1850. in the present day has horrified us by describing. This fact, not known to the late traveller, shows the inveteracy of such customs, especially such as comprise bloody rites. Commander Forbes declined to witness the actual immolation of the victims, and he and a companion were allowed to buy off three of the fourteen for a hundred dollars each; but both he and Snelgrave bear witness to the amazing coolness of the victims. “These sturdy men met the gaze of their persecutors with a firmness perfectly astonishing. Not a sigh was breathed. In all my life I never saw such coolness. It did not seem real; but soon proved frightfully so. One hellish monster placed his finger to the eyes of a victim who held down his head, but finding no moisture, drew upon himself the ridicule of his fiendish coadjutors.”

In Snelgrave’s time the immolation of no less than four hundred victims took place upon four small stages, about five feet above the ground. One stroke of a saber separated the head from the body, amid the shouts of the assembly. The heads were placed on the scaffolds, and each body, after having lain on the ground until drained of blood, was carried forth by slaves to a place beyond the camp. He was told by the interpreter that the heads were for the king, the bodies for the people (to eat), and the blood for the fetishes or gods.

If we go to America, we still find the same customs among the ancient inhabitants. The human sacrifices of the Mexicans were performed with peculiar atrocity, and on a dreadfully extensive scale. They never sacrificed less than forty or fifty at one time, and often a much larger number. The poor wretches were placed upon a terrace, and the immolation of each victim was performed by six of the priests’ servants. Two held the victim’s arms, two his legs, one his head, while the sixth ripped open his stomach, whence he tore the heart, and after holding it up to the sun, turned round and flung it in the face of the idol. The body was then cast into the area of the building, Note: There is a fearfully suggestive picture of this place and of the sacrifices in the Histoire Générale des Voyages, tom. xii. 4 to edition. which was a cemetery or charnel-house for such sacrifices, whose remains, thousands in number, might there be seen. On solemn occasions it was the duty of the high priest to operate upon the victim; and the dexterity with which he discharged his butcherly office was a matter of high admiration to the people.

Many more instances of these abominations might be given; and we purposely abstain from noticing immolations in which the idea of an offering to the gods is not so obviously involved—such as those who are slain in order to be deposited in the tombs of kings and great men; as well as of prisoners of war, slain by savages as an act of vengeful triumph, consummated by the bodies of the victims being devoured.

For all this there. needs but one remark: “The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.”