Ex 22:29-30 – “Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give me the firstborn of your sons. You must also do this for your oxen and for your sheep; seven days they may remain with their mothers, but give them to me on the eighth day. “ (Emphasis added)

Does this command require the sacrificial slaughter of firstborn sons?

Jon Levinson (Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, 1993):  Ex 22:29 requires the sacrificial slaughter of firstborn sons.  No Bible passage has led to greater resistance to a literal interpretation.  He agrees that there is no scholarly consensus on the interpretation of the clause under discussion.  Indeed, he thinks that ‘the majority of scholars’ would, with Roland de Vaux, deny that the biblical writers ever mandate or accept child sacrifice, and that the gift of the son to the Lord, in this passage and elsewhere, is not the same at the gift of the first-born male of the cattle and sheep.

Christopher Hays (The Widening of God’s Mercy): Seeks to build a case for God changing his mind, using this command as a case in point.  Like Levenson, he understands Ex 22:29 as mandating child sacrifice.  But later texts, including those found in Ezekiel and Jeremiah, would speak out against the terrible abuse of children putatively taught here.

Taking now what I regard as the most substantial arguments of Levinson and others.

(a) If the ‘giving’ of oxen and sheep took the form of sacrificial slaughter, would this not also have been the case for firstborn sons?

Response in brief

Ex 22:29 gives the bare command, and this is expanded in other texts, which indicate that the firstborn son should be ‘redeemed’.

Response in detail

Brevard Childs: The heart of the problem is that the same word for ‘giving’ is used for both men and animals.  This may suggest, but certainly does not prove, that the ‘giving’ was to take the same form in both cases.

Hamilton: This text does not speak specifically of ‘sacrifice’.  Nor is there any hint about that the giving of the firstborn son leads to access to God and winning his approval.  Moreover, the main focus of the text is not on the giving of the firstborn son: it is on giving to the Lord the first and best of one’s products.  The giving of the firstborn son is mentioned almost as an aside.

Moreover, this text is not alone in referring to individuals being ‘given’ to the Lord, without an explicit mention of redemption:

Num 8:16 – “For they [the Levites] are entirely given to me from among the Israelites. I have taken them for myself instead of all who open the womb, the firstborn sons of all the Israelites.”

1 Sam 1:11 ‘[Hannah] made a vow saying, “O LORD of hosts, if you will look with compassion on the suffering of your female servant, remembering me and not forgetting your servant, and give a male child to your servant, then I will dedicate [give] him to the LORD all the days of his life. His hair will never be cut.”’

Other texts fill out the command, specifying that the firstborn should be redeemed (rather than sacrificed).

Ex 13:13 – “Every firstborn of your sons you must redeem.”

Ex 34:19f – “Every firstborn of the womb belongs to me, even every firstborn of your cattle that is a male, whether ox or sheep.  Now the firstling of a donkey you may redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then break its neck. You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons.”

Num 18:14-16 “Everything devoted in Israel will be yours.  The firstborn of every womb which they present to the LORD, whether human or animal, will be yours. Nevertheless, the firstborn sons you must redeem, and the firstborn males of unclean animals you must redeem.  And those that must be redeemed you are to redeem when they are a month old, according to your estimation, for five shekels of silver according to the sanctuary shekel (which is twenty gerahs).”

Some scholars regard these texts that refer to redemption as later modifications of the command, and that Ex 20:29 represents the earliest version of it.  I am not competent to evaluate the arguments for and against such hypotheses; I simply note that the text under discussion is bracketed by others which make explicit the provision for redemption, and note that Ex 20:29 by no means excludes the possibility of that provision.

Cole: Agrees that Ex 22:29 articulates the bare principle.  We need not assume that the author was unaware of the texts  which speak of redemption or substitution.

Enns: This law is a reiteration of Ex 13:12f, and should be read in to the light of the redemption that is provided for in that earlier text.

Tuell (UBCS on Eze 20:26): Ex 13:13; 34:20 provide for redemption of the firstborn by offering a sheep in his place.  Num 8:16-19 introduces the Levites, who are consecrated for service in the place of Israel’s firstborn.

A similar interpretation is adopted by Durham (WBC), Walton (IVPBBC), and Stuart.

McCloughlin: Hays’ argument rests on the assumption that Ex 22 predates Ex 13 (with its provision for redemption).  But even if this is the case, a command for Israelites to sacrifice their firstborn sons makes no sense within the overall narrative of the book.  At the Passover, God protected the Israelite firstborns.  It is absurd to think that this would be reversed as soon at the Israelites left Egypt.  This is precisely the argument of Ex 13:14f – it is because the firstborn were redeemed at the Passover that they must continue to be reddemed.

(b) If the text does not mandate child sacrifice, why did many later Israelites seem to think it did, and so slaughtered their own children in supposed obedience to this command?

Response in brief

There is minimal evidence that later Israelites thought that Ex 22:29 mandated child sacrifice.  Rather, instances of such sacrifice took place in imitation of pagan practices, in defiance of (not in obedience to) the Mosaic law.

Response in detail

Levinson: Claims that later generations of Israelites interpreted Ex 22:29b as mandating sacrifice of firstborn sons to Yahweh.  The provision for substitution in Ex 34:20b cannot have been regarded as normative, or the practice of child sacrifice would not have been so widespread in ancient Israel.

Hays: If it is a mistake to read Ex 22:28f independently of the provisions for redemption, it is a mistake that many Israelites seem to have made.

Turning to some specific examples, Hays invites us to consider the following:

*The famous incident involving Abraham and his son Isaac (Gen 22:2).  But, of course, the outcome was that God prevented the slaughter of Isaac.  I have discussed this in detail elsewhere.

*Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter (Judg 11).  Jephthah is indeed mentioned in Heb 11:32 as a member of the pantheon of the faithful.  Of course, it is just possible that he is celebrated in this way despite the killing of his daughter.  But I don’t read the Judges text in that way.  I don’t think that his daughter was killed; I think that she was dedicated to the service of the Lord, in a similar way that Samuel was.  Moreover, the link with Ex 20:29 is tenuous, because, obviously, she was not his firstborn son.  Again, I have analysed this passage in some detail.

*King Mesha’s sacrifice of his firstborn son in 2 King 3:26f.  But this king was a Moabite, not an Israelite.  There is no indication that he killed his son in obedience to any Mosaic command.

*Mic 6:7, where the prophet asks, rhetorically:

Will the LORD accept a thousand rams,
or ten thousand streams of olive oil?
Should I give him my firstborn child as payment for my rebellion,
my offspring—my own flesh and blood—for my sin?

But this proves nothing: it certainly doesn’t prove that the Lord approved of child sacrifice, either then or at any other point in Israel’s history.

Hays cites the above texts as offering ‘ample’ evidence that child sacrifice was ‘commanded or carried out’.  But ‘commanded’ and ‘carried out’ are two different things.

It is certainly likely that child sacrifice was carried out from time to time.  Consider:

2 Kings 16:2-4 – ‘[Ahaz] did not do what pleased the LORD his God, in contrast to his ancestor David.  He followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel. He passed his son through the fire, a horrible sin practiced by the nations whom the LORD drove out from before the Israelites.  He offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.’

2 Kings 21:6 – ‘[Manasseh] passed his son through the fire and practiced divination and omen reading.’

It is not certain that these and similar passages refer to child sacrifice.  But even if they do, it is clear is that such acts were carried out in defiance of the Mosaic law, and not in supposed obedience to it.

The evidence that child sacrifice was ever commanded or condoned is very thin.  Even for Hays it pretty much boils down to one passage (Ex 22:29-31), and, as I have indicated, his interpretation of that text is highly debateable.

In short: God’s people fell into all kinds of sinful practices (idolatry, most notably), but we should not, and do not, argue thereby that they thought that God had commanded idolatry.  The whole point was from time to time they sacrificed their children in defiance of the law, not because of it.

Although Dewrell inclines to the view that the sacrifice of the firstborn did rarely occur, being practiced one by one or more hyper-pious groups, he concedes that there is no record, anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, of a firstborn son being sacrificed on the eighth day (which Levenson and others would regard as following the literal meaning of Ex 22:29).

Conversely, there are numerous  instances of firstborn males who were not sacrificed – including (Esau Gen 27:19), Reuben (Gen 35:23), Manasseh (Gen 41:51), Nadab (Num 3:2), and Amnon (2 Sam 3:2).

I conclude, contra Levinson, Hays and a few others, that Exodus 22:29f does not teach that God ever required the Israelites to engage in the hideous practice of child sacrifice.

Bibliography

In addition to the commentaries (identified by authors’ surnames):

Dewrell, H. H., in Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel (2017)

Feinstein, Giving Your Firstborn Son to God.  Online

Hays, R. and Hays, C. The Widening of God’s Mercy (2024)

Stark, Thom, The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals when it Gets God Wrong (and why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It) (2011)