330. Human Sacrifices
2 Kings 3:27. Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall.
The offering of human sacrifices is a very ancient custom, and was practiced at different times among many nations. Burder, in an elaborate note, (Oriental Literature, No. 570,) gives a long list of nations who offered human sacrifices. Among these are the Ethiopians, the Phenicians, the Scythians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Persians, the Indians, the Gauls, the Goths, the Carthaginians, the Britons, the Arabians, and the Romans. These sacrifices were offered in various ways. Some were slaughtered by the knife; some were drowned; some were burned; some were buried alive. In some instances, as in the case recorded in the text, parents sacrificed their own offspring. The idolatrous Israelites followed the example of their Phenician neighbors in this respect. See Jeremiah 19:6. Allusion is made to this custom in Micah 6:7.
A few years since an inscription was discovered in Behistun, which, according to the rendering of Professor Grotefend of Hanover, contained an offer of Nebuchadnezzar to let his son be burned to death in order to ward off the affliction of Babylon (Savile’s Truth of the Bible, p. 281).