by Hannah Meyers, delivered at Minyan M'at

Good Shabbes.

In today’s haftarah, nestled between parshiot limning the laws for proper sacrifice, is an example of improper sacrifice: sacrifice so improper, in fact, that it is an abomination, and is counter to God’s very nature and the intent of the Covenant.

In pesukim 30 and 31 of the haftarah, Jeremiah reports:

For the people have done what displeases Me – declares the Lord. They have set up their abominations in the House which is called by My name, and they have defiled it. And they have built the shrines of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom to burn their sons and daughter is fire – which I never commanded, which never even crossed my mind.

Here is a striking example of sacrifice that is entirely unacceptable to God. Such a sacrifice is a perversion, and represents degeneracy. Child sacrifice was practiced in the area called Tophet, outside Jerusalem, in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, in worship of the Ammonite god of fire, Molech. In two places in Vayikra, such worship of Molech is explicitly forbidden: and in both places (parshiot Ahrey Mot and Kidooshim), the injunction is wedged, not between laws against idolatry, as might be expected, but amongst those concerning sexual deviance, such as bestiality and adultery.

Perhaps this is appropriate; after all, child sacrifice is not merely the sin of improper sacrifice or even of idol worship. It entails murder; and not only murder, but the killing of an family member, and not only of an innocent family member, but of one’s own seed. To Hashem, who commands his people to be fruitful and multiply, this indeed is a perversion. It is not an atonable sin, but represents barbarism and a rejection of the covenant. In fact, the cult of death and destruction that surrounds the god Molech appears precisely counter to Hashem’s own plan.

Molech is described as having the head of a bull, with two projecting horns. He has a scythe or sharp tool. At Tophet, there is a statue of Molech wrought of metal, with its stomach hollow, to be used as a furnace. A fire is kindled in its abdomen, such that the entire statue smolders. Then, into its arms, which are outstretched as if to accept a gift, the child victim is placed. And there, in the searing arms of Molech, the infant is consumed (alternate descriptions have the statue’s arms mechanically rise and drop the child into the blazing bowels of the statue).

Molech then, sounds like an image of the devil as developed in Christian theology in the Middle Ages. John Milton described him in Paradise Lost as: "Moloch, horrid King, besmeared with blood/ Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears”(Paradise Lost, i. 391-405); and the Valley of Ben-Hinnom later became referred to as Gehenna – which sometimes was used to mean hell. Though not a strictly Judaic interpretation, I mention this so as to illustrate to what extent Molech may been seen as the very opposite in all will and intention of the biblical God.

The haftarah does a fine job setting in opposition the worship of Molech at Tophet, and the will of Hashem. For both in this passage and later, in perek 19 of Jeremiah, Hashem says that child sacrifice “lo alta ul libi,” which can be translated as “did not even cross my mind.” I find this to be a very striking, if understated, comment on God’s part. It is intimate: it reveals more than God’s will, it reveals his intent, perhaps his very nature.

It is useful to have the example of Molech for that reason, for it paints an image of Hashem’s nature, sharply contrasted to that of Molech. Amidst the positive commandments to sacrifice, Hashem’s nature has never been toward death and destruction. Many interpretations claim that Hashem only allowed sacrifice as a way to fulfill a desire of Benai Yisrael, lest they be drawn back to pagan worship.

But when the kings of Judah – Solomon, Manesheh, Ahaz – take on child sacrifice, Hashem must distinguish the nature of his sacrificial rites from those of Molech. Child sacrifice is a sin of the flesh, as is bestiality. To end a child’s life is akin to preventing its creation via sexual perversion. To burn one’s own child is to burn one’s own flesh, and is to pervert the concept of procreation that God intends.

God’s wrath upon these sinners is administered with vehemence: for those who chose to follow a cult of death, death is brought horrifically. “Assuredly, a time is coming – declares the Lord – when men shall no longer speak of Tophet of the Valley of Ben- Hinnom, but of the Valley of Slaughter; and they shall bury in Tophet until no room is left” (Jeremiah 7:32).

This grim prophecy is echoed later in Jeremiah, where he proclaims: “behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when this place will no longer be called Tophet or Ben-Hinnom Valley, but the Valley of Slaughter. (19:6)”

The image of this slaughter is punctuated in both passages by the vicious hovering of carrion creatures. “The carcasses of this people shall be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, with none to frighten them off” (7:33). Similarly: “and I will give their carcasses for food to the fowl of the heavens and to the beasts of the earth” (19:7). These people are “the brood” as it states in pesuk 29, that Hashem has “cast off.” No longer are they privileged to live according to the nature of the covenant.

The most alarming illustration of this is in Jeremiah, perek 19, pesuk 9. Hashem threatens: “and I will feed them the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each one will eat the flesh of his friend.” Abarbanel takes this to mean that starvation will lead the sinners to consume the burnt bodies of their kin, whom they sacrificed. Such a barbaric plan is shocking from God’s lips – the God for whom child sacrifice never even crossed his mind. However, those who worshiped Molech became barbaric and abandoned their right to the covenant.

We see that child sacrifice leads the people of Benai Yisrael to be as animals who do not distinguish between the consumption of their own kin from that of other flesh. It is truly bestial; and it is the actions of a people who no longer consider that only humans, uniquely in all creation, were composed in Hashem’s very image. It represents an abandonment of some of the distinctions that the Covenant holds its adherents to: the differentiations that make the People holy. Israelites who could not value the distinction between the sacrifice of an animal and that of a human – of their very children – are incapable and undeserving of the breet with God.

This eating of the child sacrifices leads back to a central controversy concerning this week’s haftarah. At its outset, Jeremiah reports: “thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat! For when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifice” (7:21).

However, God explicitly commanded Israel to make the sacrifices of burnt offerings in the first few verses of parshai Vayikra. And in pesukim 37 and 38 of parshat Tsav itself, the text states: “this is the law of the burnt offering, of the meal-offering, and of the consecration offerings, which the Lord commanded Moses in Mount Sinai, in the day that he commanded the children of Israel to present their offerings unto the Lord, in the wilderness of Sinai.” Radak interprets this to mean that the commands concerning sacrifice were not made at Sinai, rather it was only the Ten Commandments that were decreed. Thus, Radak and others stress the importance of Hashem’s moral code, over and above the sacrificial rite. This, they claim is the intention of the text.

However, what if the “burnt offerings” of Benai Yisrael (“olotachem”) that Hashem claims not to have sanctioned, are in fact the flesh of their children, given at Tophet? Then the injunction to “add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat!” takes on all the gory significance of God’s forewarning of punishment to the idolaters twelve chapters later.

This lends additional weight to the following verses in the haftarah, in which Hashem laments: “but this is what I commanded them: Do My bidding, that I may be your God and you may be My people; walk only in the way that I enjoin upon you, that it may go well with you,”.

Common interpretation takes the verses to mean, as I just mentioned, that obedience to the Decalogue and Hashem’s other laws are more important than sacrifice. However, Hashem may be lamenting that the type of sacrifice that the people made, specifically child sacrifice and the worship of death, were exactly contrary to his intention, and to his very nature. Thus those who participated in it must be struck from the covenant.

The haftarah ends with two verses from chapter nine. In the second, God reasserts: “I the Lord act with kindness, justice and equity in the world; for in these I delight.” Amidst the parshiot full of laws for sacrifice, we hear Hashem remind us of his nature: one of kindness, and not of death.

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