hebrew writers on the origin of the religion of humanity—child sacrifice condemned in the story of isaac—circumcision substituted—reversion to barbaric habits in canaan—triumph of the prophets.
having reviewed the ethnological and arch?ological aspect of the attitude of the semitic people toward the sacrifice of the first-born, we turn to the written record of the small bands of semites who gave to the world the humane ideas that dominate it today. from that written record we will learn that nowhere among the civilization of the world was there the same spirit that there was in that outlandish corner of syria. israel was never content with the abuses of the world and in this her philosophy differed from greek, roman, egyptian, mesopotamian, chinese, and indian philosophies as we have been able to judge of them in the writing of the civilizations they produced. if, to make one more comparison, the greeks were wanting in humanity the israelites were passionately human. “the israelitish prophets were impetuous writers such as we of the present day should denounce as social158ists and anarchists. they were fanatics in the cause of social justice.”229
modern bible criticism has made the period of the writing of the elohistic part of the hexateuch about 770 b. c.230 whatever the sources that were drawn on and whatever actual historical value they have, we know that the ideas contained therein represent the ideas of the eighth century b. c.231
according to these writings, abraham, the eponymic father of the israelites, was tested in his loyalty to yahweh by being told to take his son isaac into the land of moriah, a district in palestine, and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering. in the land of canaan at the time the jahvist and the elohist wrote of this temptation, the ceremony of sacrificing the first-born of a living thing was still practised; among the neighbouring peoples—the ph?nicians on one side and the sabeans on the south-east—children were still sacrificed. the elohist therefore was anxious to show that a thousand or more years back, in the time of the founder of their race, it was not the custom of the tribe to sacrifice children and that it was only done when the lord gave the especial command.
abraham and isaac
(from a painting by j. s. copley, r. a.)
with abraham the command, while painful, was apparently not surprising. he went about the execution in a businesslike way, only to find when 159he was about to sacrifice the boy, that the lord was satisfied with his display of zeal and did not intend the command to be carried out. then “abraham lifted up his eyes, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns: and abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”232
here was the first case of substitution, in which the early writer testifies that not only was the substitution satisfactory to the deity, but the human sacrifice was forbidden and an animal providentially provided that the ceremony of sacrifice might be gone through without loss of human blood. however strong the popular inclination to accept the bloody rites of the religion of the surrounding tribes, from that time there was a fixed standard to which the prophets and true believers of israel held—human sacrifice had been stopped by the lord himself.
among the assyrians also, father orhan was represented as having substituted an animal for human beings, the assyrian patriarch being represented as a man of benevolent aspect, seated in an armchair without any sort of military pomp or circumstance.233
to make the substitution of an animal for a human being more effective, and more popular, abraham entered into a covenant with yahweh by which the deity was still given the blood of160 humans without a life being sacrificed. the rite of circumcision is the substitution commanded by yahweh himself:
“this is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and thee, and thy seed after thee; every man child among you shall be circumcised.”234
this rite, mixed as it is with phallic worship (see genesis), had its origin in the castration of prisoners of war,235 and, as far as the israelites were concerned, probably originated in egypt,236 although it has been found to be performed among the tribes of central australia with a stone knife just as is recorded of the israelites. with progress and the fact that use was found for prisoners, castration gave way to marking the prisoners, until the original significance passing, as among the egyptians according to herodotus, the practice became one of purely hygienic value.
that this covenant with yahweh was kept when all about them the first-born children of the egyptians were sacrificed, the feast of the passover (from ???, pesach, meaning “to pass by, to spare”) attests. yahweh told moses that he was to claim the lives of not only the first-born of the egyptians “from the first-born of pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon,” but also the 161first-born of all the animals in the land. that the chosen people might not suffer in this contemplated destruction they were instructed, through moses, to take the blood of a lamb, “a male of the first year,” and “strike it on the two side-posts and on the upper door-post of the houses,” that it might be known wherein the faithful dwelt.
a notable case of abandonment—the finding of moses
(after painting by schopin)
here we see the beginning of the threshold sacrifice or covenant, which became, in time, the foundation sacrifice.
so complete was this claiming of the first-born that “there was not a house where there was not one dead.”237
from their deliverance from this visitation, yahweh instructed moses to “sanctify unto me all the first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of israel; both of man and beast, it is mine.” already there was the example of the patriarch abraham that an animal might be substituted; now there was the statement from the one on high that the first-born of the chosen people might be redeemed. of the temper of the people at this time and their proneness to fall into the vices of their neighbours, and of idolatry, we need only the statement of joshua238 that while in egypt—renan says that they were not there more than three hundred years—they acquired the habit of worshipping false gods.
the speedy fall from grace, as shown by the worship of the golden calf while moses was away162 from them for a short time, is another evidence of their excitability, although modern scientists have declared that under adverse circumstances the entire civilized peoples would revert to barbarity in three generations.
the struggle upward out of barbarism could have been attended with nothing less than herculean belief on the part of the leaders of israel, when we see this lapse came after their miraculous escape from egypt and after the receipt of the ten commandments. illuminating too is the fact that the making of the golden calf was superintended by no less a person than aaron, the brother of moses, his confidant and first lieutenant.
when we come to the period of the judges, we find the israelites falling away from their humanitarianism. while joshua and his contemporaries were alive, they held to their religion, but the gods of canaan, together with the more easily understood and more deeply ingrained rites of idolatry, reappeared as soon as the patriarchs had passed away.
nothing indeed is more interesting in this study of the old testament than the record of the difficulty that the leaders and prophets had in keeping a semi-barbarous people up to their standard of civilization and humanization. ethnological and arch?ological data picture the struggle forward but feebly, when compared to the written records of the israelites, especially during the period of the judges.
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the period of the judges was the period of the formation of the nation, and had there not been all around them reminders of their own previous nomadic habits, and had they been a less excitable people, there would not have been the recurrence to barbaric traits that we find. even then, the progress of the israelites in humanitarianism is unique in the world. from the settlement in canaan, which was about 1200 b. c., until the birth of christ, they suffered conquest, disintegration, and many afflictions, but progressed steadily in humanitarianism. in that time the greeks rose and fell, achieving great intellectual and ?sthetic perfection, but failing to even approach the israelites in humanity. a few hundred years after the settlement in canaan, the romans appear as a civilized people and, aided by a transplanted stoicism, developed a great humanitarianism under the emperors trajan and hadrian; the last named, however, despite his greatness, indissolubly linked with the degeneracy that was the mark of greek self-centredness, or lack of humanity, as mahaffy calls it.
the transition from idealism to nationalism is never affected with impunity, says renan, and so the growing nation suffered in its material growth and through the insistence that yahweh “loved israel and hated all the rest of the world.”239 baal and yahweh were not far apart and at sechem there was a baal-berith, or baal covenant, which164 the idolators worshipped as baal, and the israelites as yahweh.240 “if the religion of israel had not gone beyond this phase, it is certainly the last religion to which the world would have rallied.”241
it is in this period that we have the story of jephthah, an outcast, the head of banditti and an illegitimate son, who was asked by the israelites of gilead to help them against the ammonites. jephthah vowed that if he should be successful he would sacrifice to yahweh the first thing that met him on his return from the campaign, and the first thing to meet him was his daughter. “and he sent her away for two months and she went with her companions and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. and it came to pass that at the end of two months that she returned unto her father who did with her according to the vow which he had vowed.”242
it is suggested by renan that what probably happened was that jephthah, before undertaking a difficult war, sacrificed one of his daughters according to the barbarous custom put into practice on solemn occasions when the country was in danger. “patriarchal deism,” he says, “had condemned these immolations; yahwehism with its exclusively national principle was rather favourable to them. not many human sacrifices were offered to god nor to the elohim. the gods165 whom they thought to propitiate by means of human sacrifices were the patriot gods, camos of the moabites, moloch of the canaanites, melqarth of carthage.”243
the coming of david was the triumph of yahweh over the contending religions, though, as modern critics have pointed out, there was little humanitarianism in the semi-barbarous poet. when there was a three years’ famine in the land it was ascribed to the wrong done the gibeonites by saul and the gibeonites were allowed to say what should be the sacrifice to atone for the wrong. the ancient historian records the fact that they asked that they might be allowed to hang the seven sons of saul, and this was done. the sacrifice was asked for by the gibeonites and it was for the purpose of ending the famine, but, incidentally, it enabled david to get rid of those who stood in his way.244
a few hundred years later, in the ninth century, we find the effect of the sacrifice of the first-born telling on the israelites even though at that time it is evident that they themselves have given up human sacrifice. jehoram, king of israel, and jehosophat, king of judah, united to defeat the remarkable king of moab, mesha. the combined forces drove him within his strong fortifications of kir-haraseth and when he found that there was no way of escape, as a last resort:
“he took his eldest son, that should have reigned166 in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. and they [the israelites] departed from him and returned to their own land.”
the efficacy of the sacrifice is hereby admitted although it was offered to camos and not to yahweh. the ancient historian says nothing in extenuation of the effect. ewald suggests that yahweh, full of bitterness245 against israel for having driven the king of moab to such a deed of fearful bravery, filled the army full of terror. renan, however, suggests that though they did not then offer human sacrifices themselves, the israelites still had the fullest faith in their efficacy and retired lest they be defeated.
coming nearer, to a period that is contemporaneous with that which is revealed in the excavations at gezer and tell ta’annek, we have the direct statement in kings and chronicles246 that ahaz, the eleventh king of judah (about 741 to 725 b. c.), “made his son pass through the fire.” to gain the aid of tiglath-pileser against the edomites and the philistines he became a vassal of the assyrian monarch and his name appears among the names of those who acknowledged his sovereignty and paid tribute.
manasseh was another king of judah (697 to 642 b. c.) who sacrificed his son,247 emulating ahaz in this as in other heathenish customs, increasing167 the popularity of the foreign gods and causing the streets of jerusalem to run with the blood of the prophets whom he put to death. in every way he tried to make the heathen religions more acceptable and accessible to the whole nation by providing them with temples and altars. in addition to sacrificing one of his own sons to moloch, he revived that religion on a large scale, building for it a magnificent burning place (tophet) in the valley of hinnom on the southern wall of jerusalem. the tortures to which the children were subjected soon associated themselves in the minds of the pious with what punishment beyond the grave must be like, so that the name of hell itself was taken from this valley, ge-hinnom.248
with the reforms of josiah we hear no more of such treatment of children but we must not suppose that while barbarous practices were going on the prophets had remained silent. the latter day writers revolted against the entire idea of sacrifice, hosea declaring: “i desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of yahweh more than burnt offerings.”249 jeremiah even declared that the lord had not commanded the people to sacrifice when they came forth from egypt:
“for i spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that i brought them out of the land of egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.”250
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to micah, however, it was reserved to express in those early days the vigorous protest that was to become the ethical keynote of the future religion:
“wherewith shall i come before the lord, and bow myself before the high god? shall i come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?
“will the lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? shall i give my first son for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
“he hath shewed thee, o man, what is good; and what doth the lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy god?”
