<\/p>\n
One of my favourite stories from the Old Testament is found in 2 Kings Chapter 3.\u00a0 Have a read<\/a> \u2013 it\u2019s absolutely fascinating!<\/p>\n The story goes like this.\u00a0 Mesha<\/a>, the king of Moab<\/a>, was one of Israel\u2019s vassals.\u00a0 But, when King Ahab<\/a> of Israel died, Mesha decided it was time to stop paying his tribute.\u00a0 Upset with this, the new Israelite king, Joram<\/a>, decided to attack Moab.\u00a0 He enlisted the help of Judah and Edom.\u00a0 But, most importantly, he had Yahweh\u2019s assurance that he would defeat Moab:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord; he will also deliver Moab into your hands.\u00a0 You will overthrow every fortified city and every major town.\u00a0 You will cut down every good tree, stop up all the springs, and ruin every good field with stones.\u201d\u00a0 (2 Kings 3:18-19)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It could not be clearer \u2013 Yahweh has promised to deliver Moab into Joram\u2019s hands.\u00a0 As the Israelites approached, the Moabites went out to fight the allied attackers.\u00a0 Things were not going well for them; the Israelites were clearly getting the better of the battle:<\/p>\n \u201cBut when the Moabites came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and fought them until they fled. \u00a0And the Israelites invaded the land and slaughtered the Moabites. \u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>They destroyed the towns, and each man threw a stone on every good field until it was covered. \u00a0They stopped up all the springs and cut down every good tree. \u00a0Only Kir Hareseth\u00a0was left with its stones in place, but men armed with slings surrounded it and attacked it.\u201d\u00a0 (2 Kings 3:24-25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n By this time, the Moabite king realised the battle was getting away from him.\u00a0 After a failed attempt to break through with a company of swordsmen, he decided there was only one option left:<\/p>\n \u201cThen he took his firstborn\u00a0son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.\u201d\u00a0 (2 Kings 3:27)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wow!\u00a0 King Mesha sacrificed his own son, the heir to his throne, to the Moabite god.\u00a0 (Other sources identify this god as Kemosh<\/a>; see Numbers 21:29, Jermiah 48:7,13,46, and the very interesting Mesha Stele<\/a>.)\u00a0 But, most importantly, the sacrifice worked<\/em>!\u00a0 Even though the Moabites had been all but decimated by the Israelites, the tide turned as soon as Mesha sacrificed his son to Kemosh.\u00a0 Despite Yahweh\u2019s clear promises to defeat the Moabites, Israel was defeated.<\/p>\n Now, what do we learn from this interesting story?\u00a0 That Kemosh is a real god, and really defeated Yahweh in battle?\u00a0 No, of course not.\u00a0 What we do learn is that the author(s) of this part of the Old Testament believed:<\/p>\n Naturally, conservative evangelical scholars attempt to reinterpret this story in a variety of ways in order to deny the three points above.\u00a0 It is not my intention here to argue against these positions, since this has already been done.\u00a0 Instead, I\u2019d like to direct my readers to the writings of Thom Stark<\/a>.\u00a0 Stark discusses the 2 Kings 3 passage in his book The Human Faces of God<\/a> (in the context of Israelite polytheism on pp78-80, and in the context of human sacrifice on pp91-92).\u00a0 But far more thorough is the treatment in his freely available online book Is God a Moral Compromiser?<\/a> (pp65-89), in which he engages with conservative scholars like Paul Copan and Richard Hess, decisively showing that their attempts to deny the three conclusions above are entirely inadequate. \u00a0After more than 20 pages of demolishing every single attempt to make the very clear words of 2 Kings 3 say something they do not, Stark concludes:<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact is, the text says that Yahweh promised Israel victory, but Mesha trumped them with a human sacrifice, and Kemosh beat Yahweh.\u201d\u00a0 (Stark, Is God a Moral Compromiser?, pp88-89)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Conservative Christians want to maintain the view that polytheism in the Bible is limited to the Israelites going astray, that Yahweh was always understood to be the only true God.\u00a0 But modern scholarship has shown that the Old Testament as we have it today is the result of centuries of editing and revising.\u00a0 Israelite religion was thoroughly polytheistic in its original form, with Yahweh only one of a pantheon of gods, one of the several sons of Elyon<\/a> (see especially Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32, and Thom Stark\u2019s article<\/a> on this).\u00a0 Only later, when subsequent biblical authors began to embrace monotheism, were the original writings suppressed.\u00a0 But not all<\/em> traces of the original polytheistic writings were entirely erased, and the story of Yahweh vs Kemosh from 2 Kings 3 is a prime example.<\/p>\n\n