2 Kings 3:26-27
“Did the child sacrifice work?”
26 When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him 700 swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom, but they could not. 27 Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.
2 Kings 3:26-27
Every now and then, you’ll come across a passage of scripture that may make you say, “Huh?!” This is one of those passages. When we encounter anything in scripture that gives us this response, it is important for us to do a couple of things.
1.) Don’t start making assumptions.
The first thing we don’t want to start doing is to jump to conclusions like, “Wait, the King of Moab sacrificed his on son in the middle of a battle, and then Israel withdrew from the battle. Is the Bible saying that this offering WORKED?” This approach to the Bible will not work. We have to remember that any trouble or difficult piece of scripture has always been there. In other words, you are probably not the first person to struggle with what you are reading. One of the beautiful things about being a part of the family of God is we have over 2,000 years of our very own brothers/sisters in Christ who have already done much of the wrestling through difficult passages. Let’s ask for help and seek understanding from them before we attempt to wrestle a difficult passage that has most likely already been wrestled. This is the beauty of study and commentaries!
2.) Get some context.
The second thing we SHOULD do is look at the chapter as a whole and see what we can find by taking more of a bird’s-eye view. By simply doing this, we can see Israel had a completely different perspective on this incident than King Mesha of the Moabites. We are told that on their way to pursue the Moabites, Israel breaks from travel due to a lack of water for their troops and animals. They end up finding the prophet Elisha who prophecies TWO signs and wonders that God will do for the Israelites. First, the Lord was going to provide plenty of water for His people. He says, “This is a light thing in the sight of the Lord.” A piece of cake for the Almighty God. But there’s more. Elisha says, “Oh and by the way, He will give the Moabites into your hands.”
So Israel is going into this encounter with a completely different perspective than the Moabite king. They don’t know how God is going to do it, but they do know that He is going to bring the victory. The miracle of the water being provided for the Israelites ends up having a two-fold outcome; Israel gets water and the Moabites are confused. Scripture lets us know that they think that the water is the land covered in blood. Mesha thinks that the Israelite tribes have turned on each other, giving him an easy victory. To his surprise, he finds the FULL Israelite army (recently hydrated) and ready to fight. He is completely overtaken, and in an act of pure desperation decided to sacrifice his eldest son in hopes that the god Chemosh will aid in their defeat.
King Mesha tried to attack and kill the king of Edom, but he could not. In the ancient Near East nations generally viewed defeat in battle as a sign that they had offended their gods who were punishing them. For this reason, Mesha offered the supreme sacrifice: his heir to the throne, to Chemosh, the Moabite god. Mesha's sacrifice of his son was an integral part of an age-old Canaanite tradition of performing sacred rites in warfare. It virtually guaranteed, from his point of view, that his god would save the lives of the entire population under siege.
Baruch Margalit
On the surface, it seems as if this worked. Israel retreats. Why is that?
Here are some popular interpretations.
Israel was not desperate for a victory.
Once they saw the desperation in Mesha, they decided enough had been done.
The battle meant everything to him. Nevertheless, it was not that important to the members of the alliance that opposed him. All they wanted to do was keep Moab under Israelite control. Therefore the allies departed from Mesha and returned home having won the battle, even though, as Josephus recorded, they could not take Mesha's stronghold.
Josephus
The child sacrifice displeased Israel.
Sickened by the maddened spectacle of senseless human sacrifice, the allies lifted the siege and returned to their homes.
Patterson and Austel
The child sacrifice put a holy fear in the heart of Israel.
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name.
Letivicus 20:1-3
It’s possible that Israel did not want to be present when the ONE TRUE GOD released His holy anger towards Mesha for the child sacrifice.
3.) How can the rest of scripture, as well as Christian thinkers who have done more work on this than us, inform us and shed light on the particular passage?
When I read this story, a New Testament scripture instantly comes to mind; Romans 1.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
Romans 1:24-28
Not only do we see a progression of mental/spiritual decline in this model found in Romans 1, we see the same thing taking place with the Moabite King. First, God gives them up to the lusts of their heart. Then God will give them up to the dishonorable passions. If there is no repentance, God will then give people what they want which is a debased mind. In the Moabite King, who is not submitted to Yahweh, we see a similar progression take place. Confusion, which led to an inability to admit defeat, which then finally led to an act of complete evil and desperation in the form of child sacrifice (a debased mind).