of Ben-hinnom, and then sacrificed by being laid in the heated arms and burned (Eze 16:20-21; Eze 20:31; Jer 32:35; 2Ki 23:10; 2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 17:17; 2Ki 21:6, cf. Psa 106:37-38). Now although this offering of children in the valley of Ben-hinnom is called a “slaughtering” by Ezekiel (Eze 16:21), and a “burning through (in the) fire” by Jeremiah (Jer 7:31), and although, in the times of the later kings, children were actually given up to Moloch and burned as slain-offerings, even among the Israelites; it by no means follows from this, that “passing through to Moloch,” or “passing through the fire,” or “passing through the fire to Moloch” (2Ki 23:10), signified slaughtering and burning with fire, though this has been almost unanimously assumed since the time of Clericus. But according to the unanimous explanation of the Rabbins, fathers, and earlier theologians, “causing to pass through the fire” denoted primarily going through the fire without burning, a februation, or purification through fire, by which the children were consecrated to Moloch; a kind of fire-baptism, which preceded the sacrificing, and was performed, particularly in olden time, without actual sacrificing, or slaying and burning. For februation was practised among the most different nations without being connected with human sacrifices; and, like most of the idolatrous rites of the heathen, no doubt the worship of Moloch assumed different forms at different times and among different nations. If the Israelites had really sacrificed their children to Moloch, i.e., had slain and burned them, before the time of Ahaz, the burning would certainly have been mentioned before; for Solomon had built a high place upon the mountain to the east of Jerusalem for Moloch, the abomination of the children of Ammon, to please his foreign wives (1Ki 11:7 : see the Art. Moloch in Herzog's Cycl.). This idolatrous worship was to be punished with death by stoning, as a desecration of the name of Jehovah, and a defiling of His sanctuary (Lev 20:3), i.e., as a practical contempt of the manifestations of the grace of the living God (Lev 20:2-3).
verses 22-23
Lastly, it was forbidden to “lie with mankind as with womankind,” i.e., to commit the crime of paederastia, that sin of Sodom (Gen 19:5), to which the whole of the heathen were more or less addicted (Rom 1:27), and from which even the Israelites did not keep themselves free (Jdg 19:22.); or to “lie with any beast.”
