Passing children through the fire?

Question

in that bit of the bible about god hating witches, fortune tellers, etc it mentions passing children through fire, what was that all about??

Deuteronomy 18:10-12a states:



There shall not be found among you any one that maketh

his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or

that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an

enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter

with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

For all that do these things are an abomination unto

the Lord.

Answer 1

I suspect that if this were referring to actual child sacrifice, it would have said so. Certainly the writers of the OT were not squeamish about describing bashing the heads of children against rocks, or killing unborn babies along with their mothers.

Isn't it fascinating that the bible literalists take so much leeway with their scripture? Why is THIS passage not taken word for word?


Many older cultures and religions thought of fire as purifying, and at specific times of the year, people either leapt through the flames of a bonfire or walked between two fires to symbolically burn away disease or other impurities. Domesticated animals were also led or driven between bonfires to purify them, and children were carried through the flames, too, for the same reason- to keep them healthy.

This was not child sacrifice.

~sigh~

Is there anyone here who actually doesn't understand that it is typical of a culture or religion that is trying hard to establish it's own identity as separate from others to slander those who are different? This is particularly true when a culture is trying to justify killing other people; they must first be demonized.

It happens now. It IS happening now. All you have to do is look around, carefully examine how the press covers stories.

Didn't the American press demonize the Vietnamese? Didn't the American press demonize the Japanese and the Germans?


You ought to have noticed that all those horrible things that the American press salivated over in those times suddenly disappeared when we began to have good relations with those people? So were they TRUE, all those horror stories, or propaganda?

Y'all make me worry about the ability to apply knowledge. Most of you probably have a basic understanding of human motivations; you certainly are quick to assign bad ones to people other than yourselves. And you are also quick to deride the accuracy of people who say uncharitable things about yourselves. But there is this naive acceptance that the people who wrote THAT book about themselves told the exact truth about other people.

Answer 2

It WAS NOT child sacrifice. There are a lot of ancient cultures that passed livestock, people, etc. through flames as a symbolic way of purifying them, the answer ,plain and simple, is that you'll find a lot of slander against the religious customs of peoples the ancient hebrews did not like in the bible. It was a way of making the common folk feel better about killing these people in battle. It's been done throughout time, like with the Holocaust. Do you think a "Jews are People, Too" approach would have had so many Germans supporting the "Final Solution"? No, they called them baby-eaters, sub-humans and devil-worshippers.

Answer 3

2 Kings 16:3; Jeremiah 32:35; and Ezekiel 16:21 all mention this, which refers to the sacrifice of children to idols and the gods of the nations God cast out of Israel.

This is an admonition that the one true God does not require such sacrifice -- and it is the worship of Baal,. Molech, and other graven images which require such slaughter of children.

The the eyes of YHVH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and David this is detestable behavior under the guise of worship.

Answer 4

The Canaanite worship of their god Moloch involved the sacrifice of children - they were thrown into a furnace built in the base or stomach of a gigantic statue of Moloch.

Answer 5

One of the pagan "gods" was called Molech or Baal. Part of the worship ceremony of that "god" was to heat up a metal statue of it and to put your child into it's blazing hot arms as a sacrifice to the "god".

Jews who had fallen into idolatry and started worshiping the pagan gods would sacrifice their children to Molech thus infuriating the living God of Heaven.

Jeremiah 19:4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.

Answer 6

Lol Jelly Filled

Answer 7

Ugh, not literally put them in a fire

Answer 8

Heh.

You missed the part about throwing babies against rocks.

Answer 9

Child sacrifice. Some burned children as a sacrifice to pagan gods. I believe today an example is abortion. This is a sacrifice to self.

Answer 10

teach or keep them safe from Sin...not burn them