In our last post we gave a sketch of what many today presume to be the gospel. We referred to it as PSA (penal substitutionary atonement). It is aptly captured in this lyric from the song, In Christ Alone:

Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

Jesus’ death substitutes for ours and appeases God’s wrath. If we believe this then the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf is applied to us. Our sins are paid for and we are forgiven.

Part of the uneasiness with this account of the cross has to do with what it implies about God. It seems to say that God requires, or at least is accepting of, human sacrifice. I can’t help but think of the old trope about a virgin being thrown into a volcano to satisfy the anger of the gods. 

But is this how God is described in Scripture?

Human Sacrifice in Scripture

There are two haunting passages in the Old Testament where God seems to be ok with human sacrifice. One is the well known story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac in Genesis 22. The other, more obscure one, is the story of Jephthah, who in Judges 11 actually does the deed and sacrifices his daughter. We could easily dedicate an entire series to try and make sense of these difficult texts. But the fact that we find these stories out of place within the Bible goes to show how the overall witness of Scripture seems to say that human sacrifice is appalling.

In fact we have a host of passages where God says just that. In Deuteronomy 12:31 God warns Israel not to imitate the practices of the surrounding nations:

“You must not do the same for the Lord your God, because every abhorrent thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods. They would even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.”

Later on, the prophet Jeremiah has God chastising Israel for doing exactly what Deut. 12:31 explicitly forbids:

“For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind,” (Jer. 7:30-31). 

There are also other verses in Leviticus and 2 Kings that clearly state God wants nothing to do with human sacrifice.

Jephthah and His Daughter

So then what about the Abraham and Jephthah stories?

The first thing to notice about both accounts is that God is not angry in either one of them. That is, God is not demanding a human sacrifice in order to appease his anger.

In the case of Judges 11, we see Jephthah making this strange vow to God: “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering,” (Judges 11:31).

Sadly, when Jephthah comes home, it is his daughter who is the first to greet him.

The wording to describe what Jephthah actually does to his daughter is telling. We are not told that he “sacrifices” or “offers” her up. Rather we read, “he did with her according to the vow he had made,” (Judges 11:39). It is, I think, a subtle way of passing judgment on what Jephthah did — it is too detestable a thing to even mention outright.

In the end, the story seems to be a cautionary tale about making rash vows before God and the grim consequences that could follow.

It is also worth nothing that we are not given any indication as to whether God approves of all of this. We don’t actually know what God thinks about Jephthah and the vow he made or what he ends up doing to his daughter. God is largely silent and in the background.

Abraham and Isaac

With Abraham and Isaac it’s a different story. It is indeed God who commands the sacrifice of Isaac (one wonders if Jeremiah had read Genesis 22!). But again it is not out of anger. God, we are told from the outset in the very first verse, is testing Abraham (Genesis 22:1).

However we may want to explain the morality of God giving such a test, the point of the story seems to be that, in the end, God rejects human sacrifice. We call the story the Sacrifice of Isaac, but Isaac is not actually sacrificed. He is only bound, which is what Jewish readers know this story as — The Binding of Isaac. Abraham straps his son down and just as he raises his knife to do the deed, an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells him to stop. Then Abraham looks up and sees a ram stuck in a thicket and sacrifices it instead of his son.

We often think of this story as giving a rationale for how sacrifice works in the Old Testament. In the story a ram is provided, we assume, as a “substitute” for Isaac. And this we imagine is what sacrifice is about. God is angry and can only be satisfied by putting to death the object of his anger. In his mercy, God allows for animals to serve as substitutes. The animal dies in our place to satisfy God’s anger. This is why sacrifices are made.

But this is reading our own presumptions back into the text. If we pay close attention to the story, the logic is flipped. It is not an animal in place of a human, but a human in place of an animal. In commanding the sacrifice of Isaac God seems to be asking Abraham to substitute his son for the expected sacrifice of an animal. We see this when Isaac asks Abraham, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 11:7). Isaac assumes that they need an animal — not because he thinks he should be sacrificed and there needs to be an animal substitute, but because this is just the normal way sacrifice works. You sacrifice animals not people.

As Andrew Rillera writes in his book Lamb of the Free:

“The surprise of the story as it stands in Genesis is not that an animal is ultimately sacrificed as a burnt offering, but rather (1) that God would even ask Abraham for a human substitute and (2) that Abraham would acquiesce. The story only works because animal sacrifice is presumed as the standard such that offering up Isaac is understood within the narrative as a break from what is normal,” (p. 13).

Conclusion

The overwhelming witness of the Old Testament seems to be that God detests human sacrifice. The two stories we have that could be used to justify human sacrifice are (1) at best quiet on the matter (in the case of Jephthah) or (2) end up being a rejection of human sacrifice and an affirmation of animal sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac). Add this on top of the collection of verses where God clearly condemns the practice of human sacrifice, it would seem wildly out of character for God then to require his Son to die as a (human) sacrifice for us.