I am always delighted when I learn something new.
I am even more delighted when I learn something old — that is, something I should have learned a long time ago.
I mean, I certainly can see why my church just thumbed right past the sacrificial-baby-burning idol Molech in Leviticus and Kings.
But, here’s the thing, baby-sacrifice just doesn’t seem effective to me. I mean, in The Road, the people are hungry enough that they roast a baby, but that makes sense. Just doing the math here: eight pounds of baby would serve 11 people, Alexa says, so I guess if a hungry man had 10 hungry wives and got one of them pregnant every 28 days, then he could pretty much guarantee enough roast baby to have at least one satisfying baby meal a month for the whole harem.
But evidently the ancients wasted babies to Molech so often that they put one of those “do not drink floor cleaner” types of warnings in Leviticus.
I just had no idea there was baby-roasting in the Bible. I did read the whole thing in junior high school (even the begats): you would think I would have noticed.
So if evangelicals are paying attention to Leviticus and Kings, it does kind of explain how 23% of the GOP supposedly believes that the current government eats babies.
Raw babies, though? Because that would be gross.
7 responses to “Moloch”
Children are, in theory, entirely burned up when sacrificed to Moloch, not just roasted.
In other words, no, the GOP still doesn’t make any sense. and still need a ton of Biblical education so they can quit with the lies (the Bible keeps saying that God hates lies *and* liars; this is significantly less obscure than Moloch) and the idolatry and injustice and cheating and whatnot.
KC – well but the Wikipedia page says “The activity of causing children ‘to pass over the fire’ is mentioned, without reference to Moloch, in numerous other verses of the bible, such as in Deuteronomy” (etc.) so someone was roasting or toasting children.
My version tends to have a note “this verb refers to destroying something entirely, usually by fire” but I do not know how reliable that is. I’ve got a nerd who would know, though, and I can inquire.
The references often have a “following the practices of the nations you were allowed to drive out *because* they were doing bad things, you idiots” sort of thing affixed to them, a la:
He burned sacrifices in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and sacrificed his children in the fire, engaging in the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. (2 Chronicles 28:3)
There’s also plain cook-and-eat cannibalism in there, during extreme lack-of-food times:
24 Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 25 There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels[a] of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.
26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”
27 The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” 28 Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”
She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”
(The king was very upset about them eating their children, and bizarrely concluded that the best response, in addition to mourning, would be to kill the prophet who had told him this would happen if he did not repent, because *of course* doubling-down is always the right thing to do when you have screwed up, uh-huh. Human nature is… really something.)
But in the US? Now? When they could just have a burger? There are just a lot of things attached to conspiracy theories that I go… “why?”… at. Eating children, Bill Gates somehow benefiting from putative vaccine microchips [that incidentally wouldn’t fit through that needle]; there are just a lot of things that make me go “okay, yes, I grasp that this would be evil to do, but *why* on earth would they do it? What possible motivation is there?”
KC – of COURSE she hid her baby so he didn’t get eaten. That’s why you demand, like, an arm or something up front.
I hesitate to provide tips on how to most effectively accomplish that bargain, but probably trading possession of the children in question first, before either was killed, would be the “effective” way to go. (don’t do it. Don’t do any of it. NOBODY DO THIS PLEASE.)(also, do not launder money even though you know how, now. But *REALLY* don’t do the kill-and-eat thing.)
Also, I have consulted with the Local Nerd, and he says that the verb is “passing through the fire” or something to that effect, so we do not actually know much about what that meant practically aside from 1. bad and 2. fire and 3. children. *Unless* there are religious Moloch sources in some other language that he is not aware of, which could be the case because that is outside his fields of inquiry (and might be hard to ID because of probable naming differences). But additional data in other non-Biblical sources could be out there, in theory.
KC – all I can say is this made me laugh aloud at money laundering, kill-and-eat, and bad/fire/children.
I am glad you got a laugh; it’s good medicine. 🙂
Unlike eating babies. Just to be clear.