#75. The Depravity of Moab: The Sacrifice
Then he took his eldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall; and there was great indignation against Israel. So they departed from him and returned to their own land.
II Kings 3:27 NKJV
When visiting the Answers in Genesis’s Ark Encounter last year, one area had a display of some of the many popular characterizations of Noah’s Ark available for the consumer. This included stuffed animals, coloring books, and every imaginable children’s book on the flood. Nearly all of the items in the display showed fun fairy-tale-like representations of what was the most violent, deadly event in human history. The exhibit was expressing how these types of children’s books and toys unintentionally undermine the seriousness of the flood by making it seem like something fun and childish in contrast to something deadly and fearful. The flood account should be told with less emphasis on cuddly giraffes and more on the judgment of God on the wicked and the mercy of God on His children.
The Scripture is ripe with violent accounts of man’s sin and God’s judgment to leave us without excuse or ignorance as to the wages and consequences of sin. These accounts turn many people away from God’s Word or cause what was violent to be ameliorated. If we abandon the Word or distort the Bible over these hard accounts we would be turning our backs on the truth. The way of man’s sin leads only to cruelty, misery, and death itself. This reality is on display throughout Scripture but rarely as shockingly as the last verse of II Kings 3.
The end of the allies’ campaign into Moab was as abrupt as it was violent. Something took place that I have never seen recorded in a children’s Bible story book or painted as a mural in a nursery. The king of Moab, having just failed to break out of Kir-Haraseth, decided that the desperate time called for terrible measures. He took his oldest son, the heir to the throne of Moab, the strength of his youth, a prince, and killed him publicly on the wall of the city for all the Israelites, Edomites, and Moabites to see. We don’t know the son’s age, but his blood was shed by his own father on the wall to somehow appease Chemosh, the demonic idol and abomination of Moab, and to startle the invaders into ending their conquest at that time.
Matthew Henry says in his commentary on this chapter, “The dearer anything was to them the more acceptable those idolaters thought it must needs be if offered in sacrifice to their gods, and therefore burnt their children in the fire to their honor.” The demonic idols of this world require blood, and so the world gives them blood.
When the Moabites saw the terrible end their king was driven to because of the siege, there was great anger against Israel, and Israel in turn lifted the siege and everyone returned to their own countries.
I remember reading that towards the end of the battle of Okinawa in 1945, Japanese mothers, having been told lies about the barbarity of the Americans to captured children, began throwing their children off of cliffs so that they would die in less cruel manners than they feared. Many of the mothers then threw themselves from the cliffs. The Americans pulled back their soldiers and sent in Japanese translators with megaphones to plead with the people not to kill themselves or their children. I have wondered if perhaps Israel withdrew for a similar reason, so that the Moabites would not offer more of their children as human sacrifices and that future generations might hear of the wickedness of Moab laid bare: The king killed his son for a burnt sacrifice on the wall.
Let us not shy away from the violent portions of Scripture or twist them into something fun, but let us understand them truthfully and soberly. The same evil of thousands of years ago is taking place now, and it is certain the judgment of God, like in the days of Noah, is coming again. Oh that men would turn to the Lord in repentance and faith in this great hour of need!
Copyright ©, LikeTheGreatMountains.com, 2020
2 Comments
Al · July 15, 2020 at 8:36 am
I have been curious how you would handle this verse. i have raised it in some discussions, at times with people who really should be familiar with it, and they do not even recall reading it. I suppose it is due to focusing so much on the great victory that this just gets lost at the end of the chapter.
My personal thoughts have been that God, knowing He would sacrifice His own Son, felt so emotional over what this king did, despite the sacrifice being to a false god, that He brought a halt to the battle. There was wrath against Israel, but not so much so that they were destroyed …they just returned home. To me it sheds light on just how hard it was for the Father to sacrifice His Son for my sake.
bastahl1 · July 16, 2020 at 12:45 am
Dear “Al”
Thank you for the note, it is always good to hear from you. I thought this topic might come up in discussion and I appreciate you raising the good question as I suspect you are not alone. There are many similar and tangential questions that I hope to bring up if the Lord allows in future devotionals.
What relationship is there between the King of Moab’s sacrifice and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross? To put it another way, if human sacrifice is sinful, why then the sacrifice of Christ? The fullest answer would take up many pages of writing as it would enter into the extent of the glorious sacrifice of Christ on the cross which has filled countless sermons and books. I will try to summarize the Bible’s teaching succinctly (though certainly not exhaustively) and give a brief reason why I didn’t mention a comparison in the devotional.
1) God determines acceptable sacrifices and unacceptable sacrifices. Able’s sacrifice was pleasing to God and Cain’s was not. (Genesis 4:3-5).
2) God expressly forbids human sacrifices (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10; 2 Kings 21:6; Psalm 106:37).
3) Idols are powerless and helpless (Psalm 115:4-8).
4) The Son was sent into the world because of the Father’s love for the world. “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son…” (John 3:16).
5) God the Father loved the Son because of what the Son would willingly do (John 10:17).
6) Jesus Christ (God the Son) laid down His life of His own will, no one took it from Him. He had power to lay it down and to raise it up. He voluntarily did just that. (John 10:18).
7) Jesus Christ was no mere human but while fully man, He was at the same time fully God. Jesus could then represent us in our nature as a man while also able to bear the fullness of the wrath of God due to me and all the sheep (John 1:1-14; John 8:58; John 10).
8) Jesus died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).
9) Jesus’ sacrifice was perfect, fully sufficient, once and for all (Hebrews 10:10).
10) By His self sacrifice on the cross, “He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). That is to say, His sacrifice made payment for all the sin of all his beloved children, made righteous the unrighteous, and fully fulfilled all that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit intended it to do. His work was finished. Jesus saves!
We could draw comparisons from the king of Moab to God the Father and God the Son but my personal concern for the devotional was not to elevate the brutal, barbaric, demonic murder by the king of his own son at the risk of dragging down the glorious, perfect, holy, all sufficient, sacrifice of the God Man Jesus Christ, our Savior.
The following quote from the CARM organization was very helpful for me: “The practice of mere, fallen humans selecting other mere, fallen humans and offering them to God in rebellion against and opposition to His plainly stated design and will is in every way unlike this one perfect, foreordained sacrifice of the incarnate Son of God, so much so that the two are simply unworthy of comparison.”
May the Lord be kind to use this good discussion for the edification of His people.
Ben