V
Valke2
Guest
I’ll have to get back to you on that. But I never heard of anything dicussing the fact that post Solomon Israel engaged in child sacrifice.Just to be clear, archaeological findings regarding the abominable practices of those who worshipped Molech are quite numerous and verifiable in history.
And, as is well known now, they included within the Canaanite practices the abomination of child sacrifice, described in the Scriptures as having children to “pass through the fire to Molech” as recorded in Jeremiah 32:35.
The Ras Shamra tablets desribes the god Molech. And, indeed, some unrighteous kings in Israel instituted the practice of sacrificing infants to Molech too.
God, through the prophet Jeremiah, denounced this ghastly ritual:
In the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage—part of the Canaanite culture—some 20,000 urns containing the remains of sacrificed children were found. The archaeologists at the site apprise us that…
Kleitarchos, a Greek from the third century B.C., actually described this sacrifice as the heating up of a bronze statue with outstretched arms. There is no doubt that infants placed into these red-hot arms quickly perished.
Similarly, the 12th century rabbi Rashi, commenting on Jeremiah 7.31 stated:
A different rabbinical tradition says that the idol was hollow and was divided into seven compartments, in one of which they put flour, in the second turtle-doves, in the third a ewe, in the fourth a ram, in the fifth a calf, in the sixth an ox, and in the seventh a child, which were all burnt together by heating the statue inside.
Even still, later commentators have compared these accounts with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the Punic city of Carthage, which was a Phoenician colony. Kleitarchos (noted above), Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch all mention the burning of children as an offering to the chief god of Carthage.
Nonetheless, as the article notes, some might think the prophets were overly harsh in condemning the Canaanite religion. Some even try to downplay what was done to the innocent children by saying they were merely scorched yet allowed to live. Yet now, with detailed evidence of Canaanite practices found by archaeologists in this century, it is clear why the prophets were uncompromising.
In Judah such offerings were made in the Hinnom valley outside Jerusalem, and the location was known as “tophet”. This unholu aberration is particularly associated with the reigns of Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3) and Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6)-- but it all began with King Solomon building these temples and allowing his pagan wives to engage in these rituals long ago.
The time from King Solomon to King Josiah was around 400 years by the way-- and I’m sure that, on and off over this time-frame, perhaps millions of infants perished during this time.
I dunno.
When one looks at the potential deadly long range effects of King Solomon’s permissiveness and actions in the Israelites society, I fail to see how anyone could consider this man great by any definition of the word.
