Ponder this next reference to human sacrifice in the bible, which we previously mentioned in passing: “Suppose you hear in one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, together with all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the Lord will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. The Lord your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him.” - Deuteronomy 13:12-18.
Second Samuel 21:6-10 provides us with still another good example of human sacrifice to appease Yahweh: “Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gib’e-ah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose. And he delivered them into the hands of the Gib’e-on-ites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest. And Riz’pah the daughter of A-i’ah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.” This human sacrifice to Yahweh was performed in the hope that he would end a famine. Is this not as “pagan,” or “heathen,” as one can get? And notice how Yahweh approved of this human sacrifice by making it rain.
Yahweh was presumably particularly fond of virgin sacrifices, as we see in this next scripture: “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, ‘Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation: And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation: And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep: Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the Lord. And of the children of Israel’s half, thou shalt take one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses, and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them unto the Levites, which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the Lord.’ And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses. And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep, And threescore and twelve thousand beeves, And threescore and one thousand asses, And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with him. And the half, which was the portion of them that went out to war, was in number three hundred thousand and seven and thirty thousand and five hundred sheep: And the Lord’s tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen. And the beeves were thirty and six thousand; of which the Lord’s tribute was threescore and twelve. And the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred; of which the Lord’s tribute was threescore and one. And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the Lord’s tribute was thirty and two persons.” - Numbers 31:25-40. There can be no denying that Yahweh required and demanded human sacrifice.
We will here take a second look at a passage cited earlier, where Yahweh’s wrath was appeased by Moses offering to him the Moabites as human sacrifices: “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Take all the heads of the [Moabite] people and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.’” - Numbers 25:4. A passage similar to this is 2 Samuel 21:8, 9, 14: “But the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, whom she had borne to Saul, together with the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab, whom she had borne to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite. He handed them over to the Gibeonites, who killed them and exposed their bodies on a hill before the Lord.…They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish, at Zela in Benjamin, and did everything the king commanded. After that, God answered prayer in behalf of the land.”
All down through the centuries, from one culture to the next, human sacrifice had always been associated with the eating of the flesh and / or drinking of the blood of the human sacrificial victim. Although the bible itself does not mention the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of human sacrifice victims (well, it sort of does, as we shall shortly see), it nevertheless does talk about the eating and drinking of human flesh and blood quite frequently, outside of the context of human sacrifice. In fact, it is usually Yahweh himself, in a very psychopathic manner, that mentions these practices in several biblical passages (some of which we have already glanced at):
- “Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.” - Deuteronomy 28:53.
- “Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers.” - Ezekiel 5:10.
- “And I [Yahweh] will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.” - Jeremiah 19:9.
- “You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” - Leviticus 26:29.
- “By the wrath of the Lord Almighty the land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire; they will not spare one another. On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied. Each will feed on the flesh of their own offspring.” - Isaiah 9:19, 20.
- “I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” - Isaiah 49:26.
- “The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat [food].” - Lamentations 4:10.
