1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not:
5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.
The chapter that we begin today covers sins that were punishable by death. A controversial category from the Old Testament to be sure, especially since Jesus himself would later defer the penalty of death to those who normally would be executed under these laws, specifically the woman taken in adultery. I think I will discuss the reasons for that in a separate between-chapters side post.
For those that criticize the Old Testament God for proscribing the death penalty at all, I would suggest that any genuine acknowledgement of God as the creator of us all, and of Him as a higher being than the rest of us, must also lead to an admission that He has that right to enact His will whatever it is upon us. One may not want Him to be a God that proscribes death for certain acts, but to suggest that He cannot or should not is to not actually believe that God’s morals are higher than our own.
But that argument is only for the sincere pacifists. We do also have hypocrites today that decry the death penalties in the Bible but then celebrate assassination attempts on their political rivals. For many it is not actually a question of whether some people deserve to be executed, it is merely a desire for their people not to be killed while other people are fair game. To these there is no further argument to be made than to point out their hypocrisy. They already worship an ideology that sanctions death, so let them deal with that before casting stones at any other.
Moving past all that, at least the first death penalty in this chapter is probably the least controversial: execution for one who sacrifices his own children to an idol. Most people even today can appreciate that the murder of innocent children is one of the absolute darkest acts that any person can do. But while I say “least controversial” and “most people,” I cannot say “entirely uncontroversial” and “all people,” for even in recent cases we do see those who would excuse the slaughter of one’s own children, such as with Lindsay Clancy. These are very troubling times indeed. This leads us directly to the further condemnation in verse 4-5, which is against those that would turn their eyes from this sin and spare the murder. God declares that they will be cut off, and so will we if we continue in this same path.
