G-d Abhors Human Sacrifice

[Zahava]

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years, and his mother’s name was Hephzibah.

1. And he did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord; like the abominations of the nations that the Lord had driven out from before the children of Israel………
2. **And he passed his son through fire **……

“**When the king of Moab saw that the war was too difficult for him… **He then took his first-born son, who was to reign after him, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering upon the wall, and a great wrath took affect against Israel; so they turned away from Mesha and returned to the land.” (2 Kings 3:26-27)

The Midrash explains that Mesha, the Moabite king, had the idea of outdoing Abraham. Abraham only placed his son Isaac on the altar but never actually sacrificed him; yet that was a sufficient demonstration of devotion to merit miraculous treatment at God’s hands. How much more would God perform miracles for someone who actually went through with the sacrifice of his heir. (Tanchuma, Tisa, 5) His thinking seems to have been right on - his sacrifice actually worked! “A great wrath took affect against Israel” and they were forced to retreat.

The Talmud discusses Mesha’s sacrifice. Rav and Shmuel disputed the matter. One maintained that he sacrificed his son to God, while his colleague perceived Mesha’s act as idol worship. The Talmud comments: if we accept the position which maintains that Mesha sacrificed his son to God, we can understand how a “great wrath descended upon Israel,” but according to the opinion that the sacrifice was an act of idol worship, why should such an act provoke God’s anger against Israel? [The answer to the question does not concern us here] (Sanhedrin 39b) It would appear that the Talmud considers it perfectly reasonable for God to accept an act of sacrifice that He Himself describes as abomination. How can we understand this?

So why is the person who sacrifices his son and demonstrates his recognition with the greatest possible intensity committing an abomination? Isn’t this the very act that God asked Abraham to perform, an act whose merit lives on until the present day?

Murder is the ultimate act of separating the universe from God. Human beings are the only creatures who have the potential to reconnect the universe to its source through their acts of recognition. Every human being is the very expression of the connection. The life force and intelligence of a human being are sacred. It is the avenue through which Divine energy flows into the world. It provides us with the only glimpse of God.

When a parent sacrifices his child or a community one of its members, he asserts ownership of this Divine resource. You can only offer what is yours. It is absurd to destroy something that belongs entirely to God and then turn around and point to the very act of destruction as a demonstration of your overwhelming recognition and your utter devotion.

Abraham’s test was really a rejection of human sacrifice. The readiness to offer your child to God is the ultimate act of devotion, but the actual killing of that child as an act of worship an abomination. A child is your most precious treasure but he is not your possession. You can sacrifice animals and plants to God because God awarded everything in the universe to man to make use of as a means of reconnecting the universe to God, but to sacrifice your fellow human beings is a perversion of the very purpose of human life. The spirit of God is manifest in the world only in man’s intelligence. Sacrificing a human being is destroying Divinity itself as an act of worship to the very Divinity whose image you are destroying. There is no greater anathema.

And the rest of the story…

aish.com/torahportion/mayanot/Of_Human_Sacrifice_The_Suicide_Bomber_in_Torah_Perspective.asp

Bottom line… being that the Almighty abhors human sacrifice - would He indeed go against what He abhors and kill Himself? ** Don’t bother responding until you actually read this very short article. **

 

[Tantum_ergo]

But, you see, He did not ‘kill Himself’. Christ did not commit suicide; rather, He offered Himself as an atonement, not as a ‘human sacrifice’, and the manner in which He did this was 'going as a lamb to the slaughter, opening not His mouth", by ‘permitting’ Himself to be sentenced to death.

 

[Zahava]

But, you see, He did not ‘kill Himself’. Christ did not commit suicide; rather, He offered Himself as an atonement, not as a ‘human sacrifice’, and the manner in which He did this was 'going as a lamb to the slaughter, opening not His mouth", by ‘permitting’ Himself to be sentenced to death.

soft whack up again da head:blush: You didn’t have time to read the article before you posted! ~whack~

but he did speak…he did open his mouth to reply when he was questioned. Christians claim he was a the passover lamb / a sacrifice. But I will not answer you again until you say. "Okay, I read,… I agree with this point of the article…I disagree with this point, etc. Okay Tantum?

 

[AgnosTheist]

So how come a greath wrath went against israel after the Moab king sacrificed his son?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Better take that ‘whack’ back, my friend. . .not only did I read the entire article, from which you excerpted salient points, I ‘digested it’ as well.

I happen to be an extremely rapid reader. It’s a gift which I normally do not even mention lest I sound like a boaster. . .and since I feel this is a true gift and not something I particularly ‘earned’ on my own, I really do shy away from bringing it up. Nevertheless, it is true.

And it is rather disconcerting, when one DOES take the time and trouble to READ what a poster requests, and to DO what the poster requests, to be ‘whacked’ as if one had NOT done so.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

In the gospels, we read that Jesus did answer Pilate (who, after all, washed his hands of the blood of Christ, therefore was not then the demander of the sacrifice and thus could be answered). Yet, other passages say that He did not answer Pilate (and this can of course be reconciled in that He appeared before Pilate not once, but twice), and also that, at first he did not answer the High Priest who questioned him (and who, as a spiritual leader, WAS indeed responsible), and that, even when He did speak, His ‘answer’ was not a yes, or a no, or an ‘explanation’, but rather a ‘reflection’ back to the speaker, “You have said so”, and not an explanation but a simple statement of fact, “and you will see the Son of Man coming on clouds of glory”.

 

[Zahava]

Better take that ‘whack’ back, my friend. . .not only did I read the entire article, from which you excerpted salient points, I ‘digested it’ as well.

I happen to be an extremely rapid reader. It’s a gift which I normally do not even mention lest I sound like a boaster. . .and since I feel this is a true gift and not something I particularly ‘earned’ on my own, I really do shy away from bringing it up. Nevertheless, it is true.

And it is rather disconcerting, when one DOES take the time and trouble to READ what a poster requests, and to DO what the poster requests, to be ‘whacked’ as if one had NOT done so.

Then I owe you an apologize. Please accept. And my whacks are never ugly.

What I want to stress is the link - to read the article on the link from where I cut and copied. Your answer will be there.

 

[AgnosTheist]

Bottom line… being that the Almighty abhors human sacrifice - would He indeed go against what He abhors and kill Himself? ** Don’t bother responding until you actually read this very short article. **

Im sorry Zahava but it seems like it was you who missed the point of the article. Let me quote the lines that you need to ponder upon:

You can only offer what is yours.

and…

to sacrifice your fellow human beings is a perversion of the very purpose of human life

Jesus offered his own life, he did not kill anyone. He did not even kill himself.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Further, I do disagree to a point with the assessment of the writer regarding what Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac really meant. It is a non sequiter of sorts to state that "children are a gift or possesion’ but that ‘they really belong to the Lord’. It was precisely because Isaac (and Abraham) DID belong to the Lord that Abraham (whose faith is credited to him as righteousness) was willing to offer up Isaac. . .and while we could speculate endlessly on what Abraham THOUGHT God might do about this (anything from ‘raising’ Isaac to making children for Abraham out of the stones, etc.), what Abraham may have THOUGHT would occur is really not important, but what rather Abraham was about to do. In a society and culture where sacrifice. . .of animals and yes, of humans as well. . .was, however imperfectly understood, approved and condoned as good, that Abraham was as ready to sacrifice His Son as his nephew Lot was ready to offer his virgin daughters to the crowd (remember, we don’t know if Lot THOUGHT that a crowd of homosexual men would simply let his daughters alone, or if they might have abused them, or even killed them). The trust that no matter what the appearance might be, the fact that God asks it makes Abraham willing to do it, even at a personal cost to himself, shows a degree of trust in God that we see today, when we state that “out of evil, God will bring good.”

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

Hi Z, all you proven is God hates any kind of sacrifice made to false gods. Nothing more. good try though.

 

[LilyM]

Hi Z, all you proven is God hates any kind of sacrifice made to false gods. Nothing more. good try though.

Jesus in the Gospels points out that he freely gave his own life and just as freely took it up again when He rose from the dead.

Surely G-d is entitled to sacrifice whatever He so wishes - up to and including His own body. It’s all His after all!

It is certainly odd to think He is bound by any rule that He gives to us. He makes the rules - and the playing field and the players!

Put it this way - if G-d’s destruction of all the Earth’s population in Noah’s time wasn’t murder (and it wasn’t, though He was sufficiently grieved by it to determine never to do it again) then His offering of His own life is likewise neither suicide nor forbidden human sacrifice.

 

[Zahava]

So how come a greath wrath went against israel after the Moab king sacrificed his son?

You did not read the whole article Agnos. Click the link.

I have cut and pasted the author’s answer though

So how did Mesha’s sacrifice work to save him? Radak (Ibid.) says the following: The extreme abhorrence of human sacrifice derives from the very greatness of recognition and devotion that it represents. The greater the spiritual power of an act, the greater the spiritual harm caused by its perversion. But the devotion involved in Mesha’s act cannot be denied.

God was in the process of miraculously delivering the Moabites into the hands of the Israelites. Miraculous aid is evidence of the powerful connection between God and the beneficiary of the miracle. Mesha’s act was an act that embodied the most intense devotion to God. While the sacrifice itself was anathema and it failed in its purpose of connecting Mesha to God, His devotion cast a very unfavorable light on the people of Israel who were not even close to this degree of devotion in their own Divine service.

The attribute of Justice argued before the Heavenly throne: “How can You provide miraculous aid to Israel in their attempt to defeat a person who is so devoted to You? It’s true that his act of devotion is an abomination. But shouldn’t You require a greater demonstration of effort from the Jewish people who voluntarily took on the task of reconnecting the world to you before you pour out all this Divine energy on their assistance? How does it make sense to supply the Divine energy to miraculously defeat the person who is so devoted to You that he is willing and ready to sacrifice the thing he holds most precious in your honor to an Israel that tolerates the practice of idolatry in its midst, and is lukewarm at best in serving You?”

 

[Zahava]

Im sorry Zahava but it seems like it was you who missed the point of the article. Let me quote the lines that you need to ponder upon:

You can only offer what is yours.

and…

to sacrifice your fellow human beings is a perversion of the very purpose of human life

Jesus offered his own life, he did not kill anyone. He did not even kill himself.

I understand the article quite well, Agnos. Did I say j*sus killed anyone? You as a Christian, believe that J is G-d. Christians say that G-d sacrificed His own Son J.

With the above said… I repeat. Being that G-d abhors human sacrfices why oh why would G-d kill His son when He abhors this very act?

 

[Zahava]

Hi Z, all you proven is God hates any kind of sacrifice made to false gods. Nothing more. good try though.

Hi D, I am glad you have stated I have proven that G-d hates any kind of sacrifices made to false gods.

You, have just proven why Torah Observant Jews don’t believe what Christians believe. We are commanded not to follow after the gods our fathers never knew.

 

[Peregrino]

I have always wondered why it is that Jesus’ death is not considered a suicide.

Given that most Christians believe Jesus is the equivalent of the Father, how is it then that his failure to prevent his own death is not a suicide? Even self-sacrifice is still suicide, albeit for some higher purpose.

Substitutionary atonement theory has always struck me as perverse, too perverse in fact to be attributed to the Father that Jesus described, preached and recognized. Zahava’s OP seems to underscore this fact–human sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of a son of God to satisfy some debt to God, is not what God wants or wanted.

Perhaps we need to find another explanation for Jesus’ death on the cross. God’s need to satisfy some perverse sense of debt or justice to himself by the death of his own son (for the sins of man) has always seemed too twisted to me to be the requirement of the Father in heaven who is all good. As others have pointed out, God makes the rules and can change them.

Why would the all good Father require something that is evil?

 

[Zahava]

As others have pointed out, God makes the rules and can change them.

Why would the all good Father require something that is evil?

Peregrino, please keep in mind the following:

1 Samuel 15:29 (New International Version)
29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind."

Malachi 3:6 (New International Version)
6 "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

I have always wondered why it is that Jesus’ death is not considered a suicide.

Given that most Christians believe Jesus is the equivalent of the Father, how is it then that his failure to prevent his own death is not a suicide? Even self-sacrifice is still suicide, albeit for some higher purpose.

Substitutionary atonement theory has always struck me as perverse, too perverse in fact to be attributed to the Father that Jesus described, preached and recognized. Zahava’s OP seems to underscore this fact–human sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of a son of God to satisfy some debt to God, is not what God wants or wanted.

Perhaps we need to find another explanation for Jesus’ death on the cross. God’s need to satisfy some perverse sense of debt or justice to himself by the death of his own son (for the sins of man) has always seemed too twisted to me to be the requirement of the Father in heaven who is all good. As others have pointed out, God makes the rules and can change them.

Why would the all good Father require something that is evil?

I have read the article, forgive me, but I can not entertain you on a subject suggesting Jesus sacrafice for all humanity was some sort of Idolatry or sin. I would offer another explanation to Jesus sacrafice other than what others here have mentioned.

God made a Covenant with Moses. The Covenant could not be kept. This covenant required (blood sacrafice) a death when broken. The prophets can attest to this. Jesus, The word made flesh, became the testator to the covenant for all Jews who will believe in the Messiah like Moses, fulfilling the law and the prophets by his death and resurrection.

This Jesus ushered in a new and everlasting covenant.
Galatians 4:23… Before faith came, we were held in custody under law, confined for the faith that was to be revealed. Consequently, the law was our disciplinarian for Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a disciplinarian. For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Chirst. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there in not male and female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus, And if you belong to Christ, then you are ABRAHAMS’S DESCENDANT, heirs according to the promise.

Through Jesus eternal sacrafice fulfills the prophet Malachi 1:11, which is still being offered daily according to the order of Melchizedek, in the species of bread and wine, Other wise known as the Blessed Sacrament ( THE EUCHARIST).

That is why the good Father would require this good act of sacraficing his only Begotten Son because (evil) fallen man could not save himself from the covenant that leads to death. Only God could save us. And God cannot deceive or be decieved, that is why the Good Father is true to the covenant, and to usher a new and better covenant required a death of the covenant keeper or death to the covenant breaker.

So Jesus rested his humanity in death once and for all on the Sabbath, and Resurrected to life ushering in a new creation covenant on the first day Sunday.

Jesus told the Pharisee Nicodemus, “and just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up ( Jesus Crucifixion) so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14).

1Corinthians 1:22, For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, But to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

I do not disagree with the commentary, but I do disagree with the implication of Jesus death to be compared to those mentioned in the reading material suggested.
The most beautiful things in the universe are not those things we can see and touch, its those things one feels with the heart.

 

[vacath]

Zahav and others:

G_d’s original covenant was with Adam and Eve. Their creation was a “Yes” from G_d to the creature he had created out of clay in his own image.

That creature turned around and became a “No” to G_d by eating the fruit G_d had expressly forbidden.

So you have a “Yes”–creation–from G_d to man and a “No”–rebellion"–from man to G_d.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Mary accepts her motherhood of G_d by answering the angel Gabriel, “I am the handmaiden of the Lord; be it done unto me according to they word.” The angel’s word in this case is the word of G_d, since the angel is G_d’s messenger. Mary thus gives a fully human–not at all Divine–"Yes to G_d, which foreshadows the fully divine and fully human “Yes” that her son Jesus will be.

The G_d-man Jesus lived an entire life of “Yes” to G_d, culminating in a “Yes” that penetrated mankind’s most vehment “No” to G_d, the deicide/murder of the crucifixion.

It is not that G_d committed suicide or beat the hell out of his kin to satisfy a bloody temper. Instead, G_d came to deliver us from the vicious cycle of sin leading to death leading to more sin leading to more death in secula saeculorum.

Being Almighty, G_d could have programmed his creature, but then we would be something other than what he created–creatures made after his own image with reason, intelligence, and free will. To leave us free, he had to become like us and break the power of our “No.”

Your misreading of the New Testament, by the way, can’t help but strike me as odd. It’s like protesting the Book of Exodus because it models arbitrary cruelty to animals who had nothing to do with a religious/political dispute between Pharaoh and Moses.

For further reading on Jesus’s messianic reversal of the fall, I highly recommend Saint Augustine’s City of God against the Pagans or Dante Alghieri’s Divine Comedy.

P.S. Please excuse me if I spelled out the English title of Elohim. I’m not used to the convention of substituting an underline for the o.

Thanks and best,

vacath

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

With the above said… I repeat. Being that G-d abhors human sacrfices why oh why would G-d kill His son when He abhors this very act?

God gives us rules but he is not the player himself. God adhores murder, yet God kills humans. Of course we would not call it murder, but that it preciselly the point. He is God, he is not bound by his rules. We humans are his, we must follow them.

Now, there are many reasons why God would forbit human sacrifice. Some of them are very similar with the reason why we are forbitten to murder for example. But I think one of them **might **be directly connected to Christ. That fact that such practice is forbitten and noone does it means that what when Father sacrifices his own son it smaks us right over the face. Imagine that something like this was a common practice. People would just get used to it so much that when they would learn about the truth of Jesus’ sacrifice they might just go: “Whatever, old story. My grandpa did it last month!” I know this is a bit absurd, but I hope you catch the meaning behind it.

But the key is that God is not bound my his rules. He makes these rules for us and not for himself.

 

[Zahava]

God made a Covenant with Moses. The Covenant could not be kept. This covenant required (blood sacrafice) a death when broken. The prophets can attest to this…

Gabriel, please give your source from TaNaCH for your last 3 statements above.

Through Jesus eternal sacrafice fulfills the prophet Malachi 1:11, which is still being offered daily according to the order of Melchizedek, in the species of bread and wine, Other wise known as the Blessed Sacrament ( THE EUCHARIST)…

Gabriel, how does j*sus supposed sacrifice fulfill Maclachi 1:11.
This verse speaks of the Almighty.

1. For, from the rising of the sun until its setting, My Name is great among the nations, and everywhere offerings are burnt and offered up to My Name; yea, a pure oblation, for My Name is great among the nations, says the Lord of Hosts.

RASHI explains:
**My Name is great among the nations **Our Sages stated (Men. 110a): For they call Him the God of the gods. Even one who has an idol knows that He is the God Who is over all of them - and everywhere they donate in My Name. Our Sages, however, explained: These are the Torah scholars who are engaged in the laws of the Temple service everywhere, and likewise, every prayer of Israel that they pray anywhere is to Me as a pure oblation. And so did Jonathan paraphrase: And every time that you do My will, I accept your prayer, and My great Name is sanctified through you, and your prayer is like a pure offering before Me. This is the explanation of the verse: Now why do you profane My Name? Is it not great among the nations? As for Me, My love and My affection are upon you wherever you pray before Me, and even in exile, [offerings are] burnt and offered up to My Name.
yea, a pure oblation it is to Me, for through you My Name is feared among the nations. Yet you profane Me and My Name.

That is why the good Father would require this good act of sacraficing his only Begotten Son because (evil) fallen man could not save himself from the covenant that leads to death. Only God could save us. And God cannot deceive or be decieved, that is why the Good Father is true to the covenant, and to usher a new and better covenant required a death of the covenant keeper or death to the covenant breaker.

Again, please give your source from TaNaCH…

For Jews demand signs

**and rightly so as G-d gave His chosen signs to make all clear **…

Genesis 9:12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:

Genesis 17:11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

Exodus 31:17 It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.’ "

Exodus 3:12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

Exodus 12:13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt

etc, etc. etc…