[This is an exerpt from a book I'm writing on social justice in the Old Testament.]
A study of child sacrifice in the Old Testament yields some basic lessons that Christians can apply to the modern debate surrounding abortion. The Old Testament repeatedly conveys God’s abhorrence of child sacrifice. God commanded the Israelites through Moses, “Do not give up any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech [a Canaanite god], for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.”[1] God says that child sacrifice is antithetical to true worship, and that the Israelites profane His name if they practice it while claiming to be His specially chosen people. Despite this clear command, the Israelites did eventually sacrifice their children to Molech. The author of Chronicles condemns various Israelite kings for sacrificing their own children and for allowing their subjects to do so. Later, prophets warn the Israelites against child sacrifice, reminding them of God’s command given in Leviticus. The command is clear, yet the Israelites repeatedly fall into this sin.
The Book of Jeremiah provides a glimpse into the possible motive for the Israelites murdering their own children—something contrary to nature. Influenced by their Canaanite neighbors, the Israelites had begun sacrificing their children to idols in the hope that they would receive good harvests or other favors.[2] [3] “They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind,” God says through the prophet.[4] To the Israelites in Jeremiah’s time, sacrificing their children was a way to make their lives better: relief from famine, victory over an adversary, or success in a business venture. It is too easy for modern-day readers to condemn the Israelites as bloodthirsty idol-worshippers. When they sacrificed their child to the gods, Israelite parents made a pragmatic decision that weighed the lives of that child against their own welfare or the welfare of their family. In the midst of a drought and looking at the child they intended to kill, many Israelite parents must have thought, “What good would it be for this child to grow up in our house if we have nothing to feed them?” Unless there is evidence to the contrary, the reader must assume these parents shed profuse tears of grief as their child burned.
By observing the issue of child sacrifice in the Old Testament and interpreting the relevant passages in context, Christian readers today come away with a message that is tremendously applicable to the modern issue of abortion. Although people today do not abort their children in sacrifice to a physical idol, they largely share the same motivations as the Israelites did in 600 B.C. To be generous, most women who abort their children, or fathers that urge an abortion, believe it will be the best solution to what is often an admittedly difficult problem. An unplanned pregnancy in today’s society can upset plans for college, family finances, or career aspirations. Weighed against these consequences, parents today may decide to abort their child—contrary to their natural instinct to protect and love a unique life bequeathed to them by God.
Christians who regard the Bible as the word of God cannot question the immorality of abortion: it is directly analogous to the child sacrifice in the Old Testament that God unambiguously condemns. Every human life is a sacrosanct gift entrusted to a natural family, whether planned or not, or convenient or not. But, Christians diverge when it comes to applying the teaching of Scripture in a representative democracy. Based on their understanding of God’s righteousness standard, Christians that adopt the “pro-life” position believe that they must do everything they can democratically, including peaceful protest, to minimize the number of elective abortions where the life of the mother is not in danger. Christians adopting the “pro-choice” position agree with biblical teaching that abortion is immoral, but they maintain that the government cannot legislate morality and that abortion is a personal matter for the mother to decide. Dictates of conscience, however, require Bible-believing Christians advocate the former position, as is argued in the previous chapter.
[This post is an excerpt of my work-in-progress book on social justice in the Old Testament. Feedback is welcome! More on Learning to Do Right.]
[1] Leviticus 18:21
[2] We see an example of this motive in 2 Kings 3:26-27. With his army defeated and his capital besieged by the Israelites, the king of Moab offered his firstborn son on the city walls as a propitiation to the gods.
[3] These Israelites still worshipped the God of their ancestors, Yahweh, but saw nothing wrong with worshiping the gods of the nations that surrounded them as well. King Solomon set the precedent for this syncretistic worship several hundred years earlier. 2 Kings 11:4-5, “As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites.”
[4] On three separate occasions in Jeremiah, God emphatically denies that He ever wanted the Israelites to sacrifice their children. God told them that, if they sought His favor, then sacrificing their children would by no means induce Him to bless them. Jeremiah 7:31, above, and also repeated in 19:5 and 32:35.
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