Child Sacrifice: Returning God’s Gift

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Six barren woman in the Bible receive an annunciation from God promising an end to their barrenness. In a 1983 article,¹ Robert Alter borrowed the term “type-scene” from Homeric scholarship and used it to describe these six biblical stories about women who had difficulty conceiving but ultimately became pregnant after an annunciation: to Sarah, wife of Abraham^a (Genesis 18:9–15); to Rebecca, wife of Isaac (Genesis 25:19–26); to Rachel, wife of Jacob (Genesis 30:1–8, 22–24); to the unnamed wife of Manoah and mother of Samson (Judges 13:1–24); to Hannah, wife of Elkanah and mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:1–28); and to the nameless Shunammite woman^b (2 Kings 4:8–17) (see the sidebar to this article). Alter demonstrated that these six stories share a basic tripartite structure: (1) Each begins With an indication of the woman’s barrenness, (2) followed 024by a promise that the woman’s barrenness will end—a promise made to Sarah by three divine visitors, to Manoah’s wife by an angel of the Lord, to Rebecca by an oracle, to Rachel by God remembering her, to Hannah by Eli the priest and to the Shunammite woman by the prophet Elisha, a man of God; and (3) concluding with the conception and birth of the promised son.

As Alter noted, this basic tripartite structure is truncated or elaborated in various ways in different versions of the annunciation type-scene. The initial notice of the woman’s barrenness, for example, can also include the name of her husband and his ethnic background or even the wife’s tribal identification. Also in this initial section information concerning other wives and sons can be added and, in lengthier versions, this information can provide the basis for a conflict between the barren wife and a fertile rival.² The second element of the type-scene, the annunciation itself, can likewise be elaborated, often by describing the doubts of the husband and/or wife about the woman’s ability to bear.³ Elaborations of the third major section of the story, the childbirth and the subsequent naming of the child, may include some mention of the extraordinary nature of the child in question, his role, for example, as an ancestor to the covenant community Israel (Isaac and Jacob), or as a redeemer (Samson and Samuel), or as a person vowed as a Nazirite^c to God (again, Samson and Samuel).

The childbirth section of the story of the Shunammite’s son, however, has what Alter terms a “salient peculiarity”⁴ when compared to the typical kinds of elaboration found in the other five type-scenes. In the Shunammite story, “the type-scene does not signal the birth of a hero at all but rather of an anonymous peasant boy whose sole functions in the narrative are to be born and then [2 Kings 4:18–37] to be brought back from the brink of death.”⁵ Alter characterizes the part of the narrative describing how the Shunammite’s son is brought back to life as a second type-scene, the scene of the life-threatening trial in the wilderness. The purpose of these two juxtaposed type-scenes of annunciation and trial, Alter argues, is to provide a commentary on Elisha’s miraculous abilities to give and to restore life.

Alter is undoubtedly correct that the point of the Shunammite story in both its parts is to focus attention on Elisha and especially, to engender wonder as we contemplate Elisha’s gifts as a servant of God. In this respect, the Shunammite annunciation does, as Alter argues, differ from the stories of the births of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson and Samuel, in which the focus is the child of the annunciation and not the annunciator. Still, I am not convinced that this different focus makes the Shunammite story as distinctive as Alter might suggest. Rather, if we consider the larger context of all the annunciation stories, we frequently see the same pattern found in the Shunammite tale: The child of promise, very shortly after the narrative describing his birth, is faced with the threat of death in much the same way that the Shunammite’s son is threatened. I think particularly of Sarah’s son, Isaac; of Rebecca’s favored son, Jacob; and of Rachel’s first-born son, Joseph.

The case of Isaac is particularly instructive. Isaac’s birth and his early childhood (through weaning) are described in Genesis 21:1–8; the next scene that involves Isaac is Genesis 22:1–19, the story of the akedah, when God puts Abraham to the test by instructing him to “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). Here, Isaac is pictured as significantly older than he was in Genesis 21:1–8, where he is described from birth to his weaning. Isaac is at least old enough to know the normal practices of sacrificial ritual and to ask his father, “Where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Such maturity is also a feature of the story of the Shunammite’s son, who is described in 2 Kings 4:17 (at the end of the scene of annunciation) as an infant and in 2 Kings 4:18 (as the scene of his death and resurrection begins) as a grown boy, or adolescent, who is stricken and dies while working with his father in the fields. Both the Isaac story and the story of the Shunammite’s son, that is, describe the birth of a child of promise and then turn immediately to describe a threat the child faces as an older boy, or teenager.⁶

It is somewhat more difficult to discern this pattern in the stories of Jacob and Joseph, but I believe it is there. Jacob, following the description of his birth in Genesis 25:26, when he “emerged, holding on to the heel of Esau,” is faced with near death in Genesis 27:41, when Esau plans to kill him because Jacob has stolen the birthright of the first-born from him. Jacob is pictured as a fully mature character in Genesis 27; however, since he has not yet married, we presume the narrator means us to envision him as a younger rather than older man. If this presumption is correct, then the story concerning Jacob as the child of promise, like those about Isaac and the Shunammite’s son, 025describes first his infancy and then quickly turns to consider a death threat he faces in the first decades of his life. Unlike the Isaac and Shunammite stories, in the Jacob story a narrative (Genesis 25:27–34) intervenes between his birth and the threat his life. This narrative describes Jacob’s purchase of Esau’s birthright for a bowl of lentils. Because it is thematically linked to Jacob’s deception of Isaac (Genesis 27), I read Esau’s selling his birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25:27–34) as still within the context of threat. Hence, as with Isaac and the son of the Shunammite woman, the Jacob narrative moves immediately from birth to near-death. Jacob escapes this death threat, of course, by fleeing from Esau (Genesis 27:41–45), but this only delays the danger. Many years later, when Jacob returns Canaan, he still fears for his life at Esau’s hands (Genesis 32:11). Although the brothers reconcile eventually, Jacob is right to be fearful, because ahead of him is the night when he will wrestle with God face to face (Genesis 32:24–32)—a clear threat to his life.

Joseph, the elder son of the previously barren Rachel, also faces a death threat as a young man: His brothers plot to kill him (Genesis 37:12–24). Joseph’s death is averted when traders carry him into Egypt, either after hauling his body up out of the pit where his brothers had left him (Genesis 37:28) or after buying him from his brothers when they opt for profit rather than revenge (Genesis 37:26–27). (Source critics see two versions of the story that the final editor has combined.) Joseph, like the previous actors, is understood by the narrator to be an adolescent or a young man when this incident occurs. Genesis 37:2 observes that Joseph was 17 years of age when he “tended the flocks of his brothers.”

Although the notice of Joseph’s birth, (Genesis 30:22–24), and the threat to his life (Genesis 37:12–28), are widely separated in the biblical text, there is no story concerning Joseph that intervenes between birth and threat. The life story of Joseph, like the life story of the Shunammite’s son, of Isaac and of Jacob, proceeds directly from his birth child of promise to the specter of his near death.

How are we to interpret this second act of stories of Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, Hannah and the Shunammite woman, where the child of promise is threatened with death before reaching adult-hood? One suggestion, made by Athalya Brenner, is that we apply the birth-of-the-hero paradigm.⁷ This paradigm describes the miraculous birth of a child to a previously barren woman, an achievement that signals the extraordinary nature of the child. The child’s extraordinary qualities are further highlighted when, somewhat later, the hero faces dangers “which would have conquered a lesser mortal”;⁸ the threat of the child’s death is particularly significant in this regard, for, to quote Brenner, “the more severe the circumstances described, the more impressive the results are.”⁹

Brenner’s birth-of-the-hero paradigm may illuminate the stories of Sarah’s son Isaac, of Rebecca’s son Jacob and of Rachel’s son Joseph, each of whom faces a threat to his life during his youth. The paradigm falls short, however, when we try to apply it to the stories of Hannah’s son Samuel, to 026Samson, the son of Manoah’s wife and to the son of the Shunammite woman. These three stories each show significant anomalies that the birth-of-the-hero paradigm does not address.

The Shunammite story cannot be understood in the light of the birth-of-the-hero paradigm since it does not depict a heroic life. The story in 2 Kings 4:8–37 simply relates that “The woman conceived and bore a son…” and “the child grew up.” The unnamed child goes out into the field with the reapers and experiences a terrible headache. He is carried back to his house where at noon he dies in his mother’s lap.

Likewise, the Samson story in Judges seems to differ in important respects from the birth-of-the-hero pattern. Samson although he does meet with threatening situations later in his life, is not, unlike his counterparts, faced with such challenges while still a boy or adolescent; rather, his confrontations come when he sees a Philistine woman who pleases him (Judges 14:1–15:17) and then later, after he has married Delilah (Judges 16:4–30). Even more significant is that when Samson, as an adult, encounters threats of death, he delivers himself from them with the aid of Yahweh. Delivered to the Philistines bound with ropes, Samson is gripped by “the spirit of the Lord…the bonds melted off his hands” (Genesis 14:15). Then, picking up the fresh jawbone of an ass, Samson kills a thousand Philistines. Somewhat later, betrayed by Delilah, Samson, shorn of the hair that was his power, is blinded and imprisoned by the Philistines. When they bring him to the temple, Samson stands between the two pillars that support the temple. Calling out “O Lord God! Please remember me and give me strength just this once, to take revenge of the Philistines,” he topples the pillars, bringing death to himself and to thousands of Philistines beneath the collapsed temple (Judges 16:28–30).

In striking contrast, in the stories about Isaac and Jacob, in particular, it is Yahweh who provokes 027the near death of the hero (by asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, in the case of Isaac, and by sending a divine adversary, in the case of Jacob in Genesis 32).

The story of Samson’s mother, Manoah’s wife, has an element that the stories of the mothers of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the Shunammite’s son do not have: When the angel of the Lord brings the news to Manoah’s wife that she will bear a son, she is also instructed to dedicate the extraordinary child to God as a Nazirite—“Let no razor touch his head.” Similarly, the story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, includes a Nazirite vow, a vow made by Hannah to God that “if you will grant your maid-servant a male child I will dedicate him to the Lord for all the days of his life; and no razor shall ever touch his head” (1 Samuel 1:11). What the Samuel story does not have, however, is the near-death threat to the child of promise.

To explore these apparent anomalies, let us turn first to the stories of Manoah’s wife/Samson’s mother and of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Those stories contain two distinctive points: the lack of a death threat to Samson and Samuel in their youths and the dedication of the two babies as Nazirites. These elements are related. While the narrative details in the other stories differ from the stories of Manoah’s wife and Hannah, the underlying theological motif is the same. That theological motif is the Israelite understanding that a child given to a barren woman is a gift of Yahweh. In a sense, Yahweh, who is clearly imagined in this literature as male, is the child’s father, his creator and his patriarch. Because it was Yahweh who gave the child life in the first place, Yahweh has a right to the life of the offspring. Yahweh can thus ask for him to be sacrificed, as the deity asked of Isaac; Yahweh can thus send an angel to prevail over the child, as the deity confronted Jacob; Yahweh can thus demand the child be given to him as a Nazirite, as the deity demands of Samson and Samuel. This is the motif that holds together the six diverse stories we have been examining: the idea that if Yahweh fills the womb, then Yahweh has a particular claim on what comes forth from it.

The most persuasive evidence for such a thesis comes from the various manifestations of the Canaanite cult of child sacrifice. The bulk of our data concerning this Canaanite ritual comes from Phoenician and Punic colonies in the western Mediterranean, particularly Carthage. Inscriptional evidence from the Carthage tophet, the precinct of child sacrifice reveals that the deity to whom children were sacrificed was called Ba‘al Hammon;^d inscriptions, as well as classical authors, make clear that Semitic Ba‘al Hammon is to be identified with Greek Kronos and Latin Saturnus. Moreover, Hittite evidence from Zinjirli in modern Turkey, as well as data found in classical sources, suggest that Ba‘al Hammon, Kronos and Saturnus are all to be identified with the Canaanite God El. El is also associated with child sacrifice in Semitic mythology, as the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos makes clear when it three times recounts the story of El’s sacrifice of his own son. This tradition is also alluded to by Diodorus Siculus, a first-century B.C.E. historian, and by Augustine, a bishop and leading figure in the church in North Africa in the late fourth and fifth centuries C.E. It is specifically cited by Tertullian, a church father (c. 160–225 C.E.) who lived most of his life in Carthage.

This association of the Canaanite God El with a cult of child sacrifice may appear surprising, since El is regularly called the “Kindly One” and the “Compassionate One” at Ugarit^e and “Merciful One” in the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions from Serabit el Khadem.^f Moreover, in Canaanite myth El is the progenitor par excellence. In texts from Ugarit he is called “father,” as in the epithets “father of years,” “father of humanity,” and “father of the Gods” and also “patriarch” and “creator.” The deities of the Canaanite pantheon are “the children of El” and “the generation of El.” In the Ugaritic epics of Kirta and Aqhat, El both promises and provides progeny to the human kings Kirta and Dan’il when they find themselves without heirs.

How can this procreator God extraordinaire simultaneously be the god of child sacrifice in Canaanite mythology and in Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa? I would suggest that as progenitor par excellence, El has particular claim on all that comes from the womb. Children are sacrificed to El because they are his. He is both a god of fertility who gives children and a god of child sacrifice who demands their return. Gruesome as it may seem to us, El’s association with child sacrifice is in fact integral to his nature.

It has been argued by many, dating back to Julius Wellhausen,¹⁰ that Yahweh, the deity of the Hebrew Bible, originated as an El figure. Yahweh shares with El attributes of creator, progenitor and giver of offspring. The very name “Yahweh,” in fact, likely means “he who creates.” The stories of barren women on which we have been focusing clearly demonstrate Yahweh’s role as a god who 028opens the womb. Even more telling, perhaps, is Jacob’s response to Rachel when she cries out in frustration at her barrenness: “Give me children, or I shall die!” Jacob responds with anger, “Do I take the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:1–2). Fertility, in short lies with Yahweh.

Yet while these citations demonstrate that Yahweh, like El, was conceived of in Israelite religion as a giver of progeny, there are an equal number of biblical passages demonstrating that Yahweh also like El, was a god associated with child sacrifice. To be sure, the biblical authors are resolute in their condemnation of the cult of child sacrifice. The law codes found in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus both expressly forbid the rite. The narrative materials in the Books of Kings reaffirm the law code set forth in Deuteronomy that regards child sacrifice as an “abomination to Yahweh.” Among the prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah and the author of Isaiah 40–66^g castigate those who practice child sacrifice.

Despite these emphatic legal, narrative and prophetic condemnations in the Hebrew Bible of the Cult of child sacrifice, however, such a cult is not wholly alien to Yahwism. It is an obvious point, often overlooked, that the biblical polemics against child sacrifice suggest that there was something to object to. That these polemics are found throughout the Bible and throughout most of Israel’s history further indicates a widespread and long-lived practice. Certainly, as can be seen from Genesis 22, Yahweh felt no compunction about requesting from Abraham the sacrifice of his firstborn son, Isaac; Abraham, at least in the story as it has come down to us, expresses no doubt that his god had the right to make such a demand. The deity, in short, could make a legitimate claim to the child.

Indeed, this is made explicit in legal texts in the Bible. Exodus 22:29 demands, “the firstborn of your sons you shall give to me”; similarly, in Exodus 34:19, the deity claims, “all that opens the womb is mine.” Equally emphatic is Exodus 13:1–2 when God speaks to Moses saying: “Consecrate to me every first-born; man and beast, the first issue of every womb among the Israelites is mine” (see also Leviticus 27:26; Numbers 3:13, 8:17–18, 18:15). All these texts point toward a Yahwistic cult of child sacrifice that existed side-by-side with a conception of Yahweh as a giver of progeny. My conclusion is that, as was posited for the cult of Yahweh’s predecessor El, the god who gives a child has a right to demand its return. The roles of giver of children and god of child sacrifice are integrally linked in both El and Yahweh worship.

There is, however, a difference between Canaanite El and Israelite Yahweh. In the biblical tradition, Yahweh, unlike El, does not typically exercise God’s right to the sacrifice of a child. Instead, the deity provides for a mechanism of substitution. The child can be redeemed by offering the sacrifice of an animal; in fact, such redemption by animal is explicitly commanded in Exodus 13:13–15, 34:20 and Numbers 18:15. This is, of course, exactly what happens in Genesis 22, where Isaac, the child of the barren Sarah, faces what I would now suggest is an expected ordeal of near death, but is redeemed at the last minute and a ram is sacrificed instead. So too are Jacob, Joseph and the Shunammite woman’s son redeemed by a God who ultimately chooses not to exercise the option of taking the progeny previously granted. And, I think, so too are Samson and Samuel redeemed by their mothers, who dedicate them to God even before their births. Their commission as Nazirites forestalls the need to sacrifice them.

My conclusion, then, is that the six stories of barren women are narratives with two acts: The first begins with a divine Promise that the woman will conceive, climaxed by the birth of the promised child; and the second describes some way that Yahweh exercises God’s claim upon the child. Yahweh’s ways of exercising the claim vary in the 056different stories: Through sacrifice in the case of Isaac; through a death apparently of natural or human causes in the cases of Joseph and the Shunammite’s son; through seeking to kill the promised child in the case of Jacob; through requiring the Nazirite vow in the cases of Samson and Samuel. But, although the narrative details vary, all the annunciation stories reflect in their two acts one theological theme: The God who opens a woman’s womb has the right to demand, in some fashion, the life that comes forth from it.

Six barren woman in the Bible receive an annunciation from God promising an end to their barrenness. In a 1983 article,1 Robert Alter borrowed the term “type-scene” from Homeric scholarship and used it to describe these six biblical stories about women who had difficulty conceiving but ultimately became pregnant after an annunciation: to Sarah, wife of Abrahama (Genesis 18:9–15); to Rebecca, wife of Isaac (Genesis 25:19–26); to Rachel, wife of Jacob (Genesis 30:1–8, 22–24); to the unnamed wife of Manoah and mother of Samson (Judges 13:1–24); to Hannah, wife of Elkanah and mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:1–28); and […]