God commands child sacrifice (not Isaac story)

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

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Since I am not smart enough to make a case from that text alone I am wondering if you would allow me to draw upon other texts?

There is a method of interpreting scripture in which you use the clear passages to interpret the unclear passages. Consider the following verses:

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I'm not here to establish new theology. I'm not trying "systematically" interpret the entire Bible to make a new doctrine about the character of God.

"God" to me in these OT passages is just the fictional desert god "Yahweh" little different from other gods of the time. I don't expect all of the stories told about him from different writers in different eras to show the same consistent character.

This whole method of using "clear to interpret the unclear" is fallacious since it has the predetermined goal of harmonizing all the scripture on a subject into one consistent message. When you say for instance "9 passages on a subject say this but this 1 passage over here appears to say another thing" and then conclude "therefore, this 1 passage must be really saying what the other 9 are saying and we should translate it in a way that better agrees with the majority of other verses" this is an example of what you, Godschild, and Undecieved are essentially doing.

This is not what I'm doing when I quote the Ezekiel passage to interpret the Exodus passage. First of all, I'm not dogmatic about the meaning of the Exodus verse. It is unclear. What the scholars I've referenced are doing is seeing the Ezekiel passage and its mentioning of "past statutes" and its description of God as once commanding child sacrifice is going "hmm, I wonder if maybe it's talking about Exodus 22"? And it is interesting to note that Exodus 22 happens to be one from one of the older sources of the book whereas Exodus 13 is from a newer source. Exodus 13 seems to be an elaboration upon Exodus 22, and chapter 13 now excludes the possibility of child sacrifice. This makes sense if as indicated by Ezekiel 20, early Israel once practiced child sacrifice (as did other cultures) and then abandoned it as it became more civilized. Exodus 22 then would make sense as being from the earlier part of Israel when it did do child sacrifice and Exodus 13 would be the later time when it abandoned the practice.

Notice what I'm NOT doing. I'm not operating under the assumption of consistency. I didn't try to tackle all those other verses that you and Undecieved brought up and try to make them read as if God was commanding child sacrifice. I'm perfectly fine with contradictions. The Bible was written by human authors. Contradictions are what I expect.

For the Eze text, I thought this was very interesting.


Ezekiel 20:25–26 (ESV) — 25 Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, 26 and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the LORD.

Frankly, I don't see what the problem is.

Well, of course you don't. You're using what seems to be crappy translation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Standard_Version


If you agree with that translation of that verse, you need to present arguments in favor of that translation. Since I myself (as well as you) can't read ancient Hebrew, I can only rely on scholars. None of the scholarly sources I've read (which includes peer reviewed sources) have acted like the traditional translation of the Ezekiel verse is questionable. In the absence of arguments to the contrary, I have to rely on authority (and what appears to be consensus). If you have arguments in favor of that translation in Ezekiel, I'm willing to hear them and will try to deal with them without appealing to consensus or authority.

The first part of the text "I gave them statues that were not good and rules by which they could not have life" is foreshadowing the coming of the New Covenant.

Um, notice the past tense verb "gave."

The second part is saying that they are defiled in God's eyes because they are doing what is detestable in his sight. So God allows them to do it so that in the aftermath they will know he is God.

Again, this seems be a reading that comes only from your translation which I don't trust.

I think by your own statements (before someone had tried to appeal to another chapter of Ex but you said it was written later after God had changed his mind) these two verses shouldn't be linked. Eze was written WAY after Ex, so by your own criteria (doesn't count because it came after) these verses are not a problem.

You must be going by fundamentalist datings.

Wikipedia on the date of the composition of Exodus:

According to current thinking, a first draft (the Yahwist) was probably written in the 6th century BCE during the Babylonian exile; this was supplemented and completed as a post-Exilic final edition (the Priestly source) at the very end of the 6th century or during the 5th century,[9] and further adjustments and minor revisions continued down to the end of the 4th century.

Wikipedia on the date of composition of Ezekiel:

The Book of Ezekiel describes itself as the words of the Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon between 593 and 571. Most scholars today accept the basic authenticity of the book, but see in it significant additions by a "school" of later followers of the original prophet.[4] Thus, while the book exhibits considerable unity and probably reflects much of the historic Ezekiel, it is the product of a long and complex history and does not necessarily preserve the very words of the prophet.[5]
According to the information given in the book, Ezekiel ben-Buzi was born into a priestly family of Jerusalem c.623 BCE, during the reign of the reforming king Josiah. Prior to this time, Judah had been a vassal of the Assyrian empire, but the rapid decline of Assyria after c.630 led Josiah to assert his independence and institute a religious reform stressing loyalty to Yahweh, the national God. Josiah was killed in 609 and Judah became a vassal of the new regional power, the Babylonian empire. In 597, following a rebellion against Babylon, Ezekiel was among the large group of Judeans taken into captivity by the Babylonians. He appears to have spent the rest of his life in Mesopotamia. A further deportation of Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon occurred in 586 when a second unsuccessful rebellion resulted in the destruction of the city and its Temple and the exile of the remaining elements of the royal court, including the last scribes and priests. The various dates given in the book suggest that Ezekiel was 25 when he went into exile, 30 when he received his prophetic "call", and 52 at the time of the last vision c.571.

So according to scholarship, Ezekiel lived before the earliest draft of Exodus.