Sacred Sex, Sacrifice and Death

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Sacred sex, child sacrifice, the cult of the dead—these are the subjects of a powerful, 11-verse poem in Isaiah 57:3–13. Our task will be to understand how the poet makes his points, why he juxtaposes these three seemingly different subjects and what they tell us about the times in which the poet wrote.

In the sidebar is my new translation of this poem. It would be well to give it a first reading at this point. Read it again after you have read this article. I hope then you will do so with new eyes.

Difficult as this poem may at first appear in my translation, it is clearer than the translation you will find in most Bibles because, with the help of modern linguistic and archaeological research, I think I have better understood it and have therefore been better able to translate some of the difficult lines. But even so, as you see from an occasional ellipsis (…) and question mark, not all of the cruxes have been solved.

Before we get started, just a word about Isaiah—or rather the Book of Isaiah. Scholars are almost universally agreed that there is a sharp break at chapter 40 of this book. Whoever wrote the first 39 chapters—let’s call him Isaiah—lived before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.^a and the Exile that followed it. Beginning in chapter 40, the author is someone else—scholars call him deutero-Isaiah—who lived in Babylonia during the Exile and perhaps in Jerusalem after the exiles returned in about 520 B.C.E. The setting for our poem from chapter 57 is in the post-Exilic period at about the time of the rebuilding of the Temple, what we now call the Second Temple period.

References to fertility rituals—predominantly sexual images—are found throughout the poem. The prophet, speaking in the name of the Lord, addresses Jerusalem and her citizens. In the very first verse (verse 3), Jerusalem is pictured as a harlot and the scion of an adulteress. The sexual imagery is expanded in verse 5:

“[You] who burn with lust among the 039terebinths, under every green tree.”

The phrase “burn with lust” obviously connotes sexual intercourse. That the sexual activity is religious in nature is clear from the fact that it occurs “under every green tree.” From elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible we know that fertility rituals involving sexual intercourse frequently took place under sacred trees or in sacred groves (see, for example Isaiah 1:29–30; Hosea 4:12–13; Ezekiel 20:28; and possibly Isaiah 6:13).¹ Indeed, the Bible often describes this sacred intercourse as taking place “under every green tree,” just as in this case! (See Deuteronomy 12:2; 1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 16:4 [= 2 Chronicles 28:4], 17:10; Jeremiah 2:20, 3:6, 13, 17:2; Ezekiel 6:13.)

The sacred nature of the intercourse referred to in this poem is also indicated by a Hebrew pun. The Hebrew word for “terebinths” (‘elim), among which die Israelites are accused of lusting, is the same as the Hebrew for “gods” (also ‘elim).^b There is thus a secondary implication here that the lusting is among the gods, as well as among the terebinths, under every green tree.

The purpose of this sacred sexual intercourse was to “emulate and stimulate”² the gods who brought fertility to the land. One of these gods was probably the Canaanite fertility god Baal. Another was certainly the great Canaanite mother goddess Asherah who was worshipped in sacred groves. Asherah’s sacred symbol, also called the asherah, was in fact a tree! See, for example, Deuteronomy 16:21, where the Israelites are commanded: “You shall not plant for yourself as an asherah any tree” (see also Deuteronomy 12:2–3; 1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10; Jeremiah 17:2; possibly Isaiah 6:13). The worship of Asherah and possibly Baal is thus implied in this verse of our poem.

Let us move now to verses 7 and 8:

⁷“On a mountain high and lofty you have set your bed. There you went up to offer sacrifice. ⁸“And behind the door and the doorpost you set up your symbol. For a hundred times you stripped, and you mounted and spread out your bed. You…yourself from them the love of their bedding, the phallus which you envisioned.”

The three mentions of the bed or bedding which the harlot Jerusalem sets up clearly suggest some kind of sexual activity. Moreover, at the beginning of verse 8, we are told that a “symbol” was erected. The Hebrew word for symbol is zikkaron. Here it obviously makes a pun on the Hebrew word for male, zakar. The symbol was probably a phallus. This is further suggested by the use of the Hebrew word yad at the end of verse 8 which I have translated as phallus. Although the primary meaning of yad is hand, it is used with the meaning phallus in the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran and also in the famous Canaanite mythological texts Ugarit.³ I believe it means phallus and phallic symbol here. (The Revised Standard Version translates yad as “nakedness” and then adds a note that the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.)

The first line of verse 7 tells where this sexual, activity is taking place: “On a mountain high and lofty, you have set your bed.” The words “high and lofty mountain” refer elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible only to one mountain: Mt. Zion, the mount on which the Temple was built in Jerusalem. (See Isaiah 2:2, 40:9; Ezekiel 17:22, 40:2; Micah 4:1.) Thus, the sacred sexual activity described in verses 7–8, as well as that alluded to in verses 3 and 5, must have occurred on the Temple Mount itself. That this occurred at a sacred site is further indicated by a clever wordplay. The Hebrew word for bed (mishkab) differs by only one letter from the word for shrine (mishkan). The description of offering sacrifice at the “bed” in verse 7 confirms that the bed/shrine pun is intended, as does the reference to a “door and doorpost” in the beginning of verse 8: Shrines have doors and doorposts; beds do not.

Child sacrifice to appease some deity was well known in Israel before the Exile. The Book of Judges describes the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter as payment for Jephthah’s rash and irresponsible vow to sacrifice to God the first thing he saw on his return home from battle (Judges 11:29–40). King Ahaz of Judah (734–715 B.C.E.) burned his own son as an offering (2 Kings 16:3). Ahaz’s contemporary in Israel, King Hoshea (732–722 B.C.E.), allowed the cult of child sacrifice to flourish among his subjects (2 Kings 17:16–17). In seventh-century Judah, after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.E., child sacrifice continued. King Manasseh (687–642 B.C.E.), like Ahaz before him, sacrificed his own son (2 Chronicles 33:6). Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:30–32, 19:5, 32:35) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:21, 20:31, 23:39) both condemn the practice of child 040sacrifice in the early sixth century B.C.E.

Our poem indicates child sacrifice continued even after the Israelites returned from Exile. In verse 5, the prophet asks if these are not the people “who slaughter children in the wadis,^c among the clefts of the rocks.”

Additional evidence that this poem concerns child sacrifice comes from verse 9. According to the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the first half of 57:9 reads:

“You journeyed to Molech with oil and multiplied our perfumes.”

The word translated “Molech” (Hebrew: molek) is found in several other passages in the Hebrew Bible which have to do with child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, 20:2–5; 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35). An older generation of biblical scholars identified Molech as a foreign god to whom idolatrous worshippers in Israel and Judah offered their children in sacrifice. Even today some maintain this view. But most modern scholars, inspired by the work of the German biblicist Otto Eissfeldt, now define molek as a technical term meaning sacrificial offering.

My new translation (“You anointed the mulk-sacrifice with oil”) builds on Eissfeldt’s insight and is based primarily on archaeological evidence from Phoenician and Punic precincts of child sacrifice at Carthage and elsewhere.^d On votive inscriptions dedicating sacrifices to Phoenician and Punic gods, the word mulk, meaning “sacrificial offering of a child,” frequently occurs. This Phoenician and Punic word mulk is cognate with Hebrew molek. Indeed, the original pronunciation of molek in Hebrew was probably mulk. Thus, the sacrificial offering referred to in Isaiah 57:9 is of a human child; we can now translate the verse as follows:

“You anointed the mulk-sacrifice with oil, you multiplied your perfumed oils.”^e

What is being described here is the preparation of a sacrificed child’s body for immolation and/or burial. To anoint and perfume corpses was standard 041burial practice in the ancient Near East. We know this best perhaps from New Testament descriptions of how Jesus’ body was anointed and oiled before it was entombed (Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56; John 19:39–40).

In the second half of verse 9 of our poem, people are accused of participating in yet another idolatrous activity. The poet says to them:

“You sent your envoys to a distant throne (?), sent them down even to Sheol.”

Sheol is the underworld. The people are being condemned for necromancy. They are sending magicians to seek out some spirit of the dead. Their goal: to try to learn from that spirit special, but illicit, knowledge.

The best-known story in the Hebrew Bible of conjuring the dead is the story of King Saul’s encounter with the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:3–25). Saul, terrified by the Philistines and unsure of what to do, attempts to consult God by the legitimate means of dreams, lots and prophets. But Saul, having fallen out of favor with Yahweh, is not answered. In his panic, Saul turns to the witch of Endor in an attempt to communicate with his deceased counselor, Samuel. By a necromantic ritual the ghost of Samuel appears. The word used for Samuel’s ghost in the Hebrew text is very important: it is elohim. Usually in Hebrew elohim means God; it is, in fact, one of the names used to refer Yahweh, the Israelite God, throughout the Bible. But evidence from other cultures in the ancient Near East indicates that elohim and its cognate term in other Semitic languages, ilu, can have a second meaning: a dead spirit. This usage is known from all over the ancient world—from Phoenicia, from the Hittite realm, from Mesopotamia and from elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, where elohim means dead spirits (in Isaiah 8:19). It is also found in the Canaanite texts from Ugarit, where its cognate, ilu, designates dead kings, and in another text occurs in a list words all of which mean the dead.⁴

The Ugaritic material is especially important, for one of the other words at Ugarit which means deceased spirits is qbsm. This brings us back to the poem we are examining. In verse 13 we find Hebrew word qbwsyk, which is equivalent to Ugaritic qbsm. This Hebrew word must refer to none other than the spirits of the dead who are summoned by the necromancers in verse 9. The poet indicates his scorn for this practice by saying of the spirits (verses 12–13):

“They will not help you when you cry out,

they will not save you—those deceased

spirits (qbwsyk) of yours.”

The poet further indicates his contempt for the ghostly spirits in the next line:

“The wind will carry all of them off,

a breath will take them away.”

Necromancy, to our poet, is just so much hot air.

But the people obviously think differently: they are convinced that the dead can somehow benefit the living. We can see this in a subtle allusion to a cult of the dead in verse 6:

“With the perished of the wadi

is your portion,

they, they are your lot.

Even to them you have poured

out a libation,

you have offered up an offering.”

The first word in the Hebrew of this passage is bhlqy, which is usually translated, as it is in the RSV, “among the smooth stones”:

“Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion;

they, they are your lot;

to them you have poured out a drink offering,

you have brought a cereal offering.”

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This translation of bhlqy is based on the meaning of the Hebrew root hlq, “to be smooth.” But W. H. Irwin, using data from the mythological texts from Ugarit, determined that hlq could have a second meaning in Semitic languages such as Hebrew, namely, “to die” or “to perish.”⁵ Hebrew bhlqy would thus mean among the perished. That is how I have translated it.

The “them” to whom the offering is made is thus the spirits of the dead mentioned in the first line of verse 6. The people are condemned for offering sacrifices to the deceased.

The tradition of offering sacrifice to deceased spirits is well known from Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors. In Mesopotamian religion, a relative of the deceased was appointed to pour out water libations to the deceased and to provide funerary offerings; similar rituals are known from Ugarit. In both Mesopotamia and Ugarit the purpose of these sacrifices was to assure the well-being of the dead and, thus, to ensure their favorable action on behalf of the living. At the same time (and this is perhaps the more important point), sacrifices made to the dead were supposed to discourage the dead from undertaking evil actions against those still alive. For our purposes, what is crucial to note is the assumption (in verses 6, 9, 12 and 13) that dead spirits do have—or are thought by the people to have—the power to affect the living.

The language in verses 7–8 also draws on the vocabulary of death. For example, the word for the bed which the harlot Jerusalem spreads out, in Hebrew mishkab, also means grave or resting place (see Isaiah 57:2; Ezekiel 32:25; 2 Chronicles 16:14); it also means grave in several Semitic inscriptions from the biblical period.⁶

Similarly, the symbol, or zikkaron, which Jerusalem erects in verse 8 has both fertility and death connotations. In the context of fertility language the zikkaron, as I suggested above, is a phallic symbol, as the pun with zakar, “male,” suggests. But zikkaron can also be understood as a monument erected when someone dies, a memorial stela. The verb zakar (with one long a—in contrast to zakar, “male,” which has two long a’s) means to remember. Likewise yad, the word I translated as “phallus” or “phallic symbol,” which the harlot Jerusalem envisions at the end of verse 8, can also mean monument or memorial for the dead, as it does in 2 Samuel 18:18 (Absalom’s tombstone is a yad; see also 1 Samuel 15:12 and Isaiah 56:5; and note the name of the modern Israeli holocaust memorial, Yad va-Shem).

In verses 7–8 of our poem, then, images of death and fertility are closely interwoven through extended wordplays. Moreover, in verses 5–6 the cult of child sacrifice is closely bound to the cult of fertility and the cult of the dead. In these verses the poet mentions fertility rituals taking place “under every green tree” (verse 5a), the slaughter of children in valleys (verse 5b) and libations poured out to the dead (verses 6a and b)—all in one breath, so to speak. Nothing intervenes between the notices of these activities.

We find the same order of these phenomena repeated in verses 7 through 9. The following structural pattern can be identified:

1. a. fertility cult (verse 5a; sexual activity under sacred trees);

b. child sacrifice (verse 5b; slaughtering children in the valleys);

c. cult of the dead (verse 6a and b; offerings to those who have perished);

2. a. fertility cult (verses 7–8; the harlot Jerusalem sets up her bed);

b. child sacrifice (verse 9a; anointing of the sacrificial offering);

c. cult of the dead (verse 9b; necromancy).

Clearly, this structure indicates that in the prophet’s mind there is an organic unity between sexual fertility rituals, child sacrifice and cults of the dead. What is the basis of this unity?

In the cult of the dead, the dead must be provided with continuous offerings to ensure eternal rest and eternal happiness. These offerings are provided by the descendants of the dead person, who give to their ancestors the fruits reaped from the family land. The dead thus have a critical interest in the fertility of the family homestead. They need the fertility of the land to be stimulated so that bounty is available for proper mortuary offerings.

Some ancient Israelites, like their neighbors, believed that the way to stimulate this fertility was through fertility rituals involving sacred sexual intercourse. That is, fertility rituals that encourage agricultural fecundity are necessary if there is to be fitting observance of the cult of the dead. Here, then is the link between at least two of our cults: sexual fertility cults and cults of the dead.⁷

But what of child sacrifice? Where does it fit in?

In the legal material in the Book of Exodus we find numerous laws concerning child sacrifice. Child sacrifice is considered among the laws concerning the “first fruits.” In these laws the Israelites are commanded to sacrifice to Yahweh their first fruits, the first bounty of their harvest and the firstborn of their flocks. Children are likewise considered first fruits. Yahweh is entitled to the firstborn among Israelite children (Exodus 13:1–2, 22:29, 34:19). Of course, Yahweh in the biblical tradition does not insist on his right to the firstborn child. Rather, the deity provides a mechanism of substitution, and an animal is sacrificed instead. (Such redemption is 044commanded in Exodus 13:13, 15, 34:20 and Numbers 18:15; see also Genesis 22.)

The crucial point however is that children are considered in a complex with crops and animal herds. As we have noted, the fertility of fields and herds was thought by ancient peoples (including some Israelites) to be stimulated by fertility rituals such as those described in our poem. But since children can be considered along with crops and herds, the obvious implication is that in the ancient Israelite imagination the fertility rituals which stimulate agricultural fecundity also stimulate human fecundity. And, as the bounty reaped from agricultural fecundity must be sacrificed, so, too, according to some Israelites, must the bounty reaped from human fertility. Here, then, is the link between child sacrifice and fertility rituals.

Isaiah 57:3–13 is proved to be a rich poem indeed. Even after the return from Exile, non-Yahwistic cult practices such as sexual fertility cults, cults of child sacrifice and cults of the dead apparently still thrived in Jerusalem. And our poet, acting out the prophetic tradition of which he is a pan, condemns these cults as heterodox and wrong. But our author has done more: he has demonstrated that in the ancient Israelite imagination fertility cults, cults of child sacrifice and cults of the dead were bound together in a complex whole. He has done this through his poetry, drawing on wordplay and structure to make his point.

Few of us are masters of even one craft. Our poet-prophet, however, is doubly skilled. He has given to us some of the best in both prophecy and poetry.

Sacred sex, child sacrifice, the cult of the dead—these are the subjects of a powerful, 11-verse poem in Isaiah 57:3–13. Our task will be to understand how the poet makes his points, why he juxtaposes these three seemingly different subjects and what they tell us about the times in which the poet wrote. In the sidebar is my new translation of this poem. It would be well to give it a first reading at this point. Read it again after you have read this article. I hope then you will do so with new eyes. Difficult as this poem […]