Add parallel Print Page Options

23 For while they practice either child sacrifices or occult mysteries,
    or frenzied carousing in exotic rites,(A)

Read full chapter

Prophets. When you come into the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of the nations there.(A) 10 (B)Let there not be found among you anyone who causes their son or daughter to pass through the fire,[a] or practices divination, or is a soothsayer, augur, or sorcerer, 11 or who casts spells, consults ghosts and spirits, or seeks oracles from the dead. 12 Anyone who does such things is an abomination to the Lord, and because of such abominations the Lord, your God, is dispossessing them before you.(C)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 18:10–11 Causes their son or daughter to pass through the fire: to Molech. See note on Lv 18:21. Such human sacrifices are classed here with various occult and magical practices because they were believed to possess powers for averting a calamity; cf. 2 Kgs 3:27. Three other categories of magic are listed here: divination of the future (by a soothsayer or augur); black magic (by a sorcerer or one who casts spells); and necromancy (by one who consults ghosts and spirits, or seeks oracles from the dead to divine the future).

    the arrogant cannot stand before your eyes.
You hate all who do evil;

Read full chapter

VI

28 They joined in the rites of Baal of Peor,(A)
    ate food sacrificed to the dead.

Read full chapter

VIII

34 They did not destroy the peoples
    as the Lord had commanded them,(A)
35 But mingled with the nations
    and imitated their ways.(B)
36 They served their idols
    and were ensnared by them.(C)
37 They sacrificed to demons[a]
    their own sons and daughters,
38 Shedding innocent blood,
    the blood of their own sons and daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
    desecrating the land with bloodshed.
39 They defiled themselves by their actions,
    became adulterers by their conduct.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 106:37 Demons: Hebrew shedim occurs in parallelism with “gods” in an important inscription from Transjordan and hence can also be translated “the gods.”

All because they have forsaken me and profaned this place by burning incense to other gods which neither they nor their ancestors knew; and because the kings of Judah have filled this place with innocent blood,(A) building high places for Baal to burn their children in fire as offerings to Baal—something I never considered or said or commanded.(B)

Read full chapter

You shall say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: By origin and birth you belong to the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, your mother a Hittite.[a](A)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 16:3–4 By origin and birth…Hittite: Jerusalem’s pre-Israelite origins are the breeding ground for its inability to respond faithfully to the Lord’s generosity.

20 [a](A)The sons and daughters you bore for me you took and offered as sacrifices for them to devour! Was it not enough that you had become a prostitute? 21 (B)You slaughtered and immolated my children to them, making them pass through fire.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 16:20–21 Also a reference to the practice of child sacrifice introduced under Judah’s impious kings; cf. 2 Kgs 16:3; 17:17; Jer 7:31; 19:5; 32:35.

36 Thus says the Lord God: Because you poured out your lust and exposed your nakedness in your prostitution with your lovers and your abominable idols, because you gave the life-blood of your children to them,

Read full chapter