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2 Chronicles 28 portrays Ahaz offering child sacrifice in the Valley of Hinnom and links this to Baal worship. These details draw on themes found in Jeremiah but not in Kings, suggesting the Chronicler used a distinct prophetic tradition.
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Jeremiah 19:5
Hebrew Bible
3 Say, ‘Listen to the Lord’s message, you kings of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem! This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, has said, “Look here! I am about to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it ring. 4 I will do so because these people have rejected me and have defiled this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children. 5 They have built places here for worship of the god Baal so that they could sacrifice their children as burnt offerings to him in the fire. Such sacrifices are something I never commanded them to make. They are something I never told them to do! Indeed, such a thing never even entered my mind. 6 So I, the Lord, say: ‘The time will soon come that people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Hinnom Valley. But they will call this valley the Valley of Slaughter!
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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2 Chronicles 28:3
Hebrew Bible
1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what pleased the Lord, in contrast to his ancestor David. 2 He followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel; he also made images of the Baals. 3 He offered sacrifices in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and passed his sons through the fire, a horrible sin practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out before the Israelites. 4 He offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree. 5 The Lord his God handed him over to the king of Syria. The Syrians defeated him and deported many captives to Damascus. He was also handed over to the king of Israel, who thoroughly defeated him.
Date: 4th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Jerusalem fell because of Judahites angered YHWH by burning incense “to other gods, whom they didn’t know, they, you, and your fathers,” so none of the Judahites in Egypt will return to Judah (a key to the theology of the return). As noted above, the popular response to Jeremiah’s oracle is rejection ... The devotions fulfill their vows ... 11:17: to ‘the Baal’; 18:5: lšw’, in Jeremiah’s usage either “vainly” or “to a vain thing”; 1:16: “they burned incense to other gods, and prostrated themselves to their own manufacture;” 19:4–5: in the Valley of ben-Hinnom ... Here, in the background to the destruction of the rooftops in 19:13; 32:29, where “the baal” is collective, for the Host – the combination of burning incense at the Tophet in the Valley of ben-Hinnom with child sacrifice is also projected onto Ahaz in 2 Chronicles 28:3, based on 2 Kings 16:3, where incense does not appear; 48:35: by Moabites who build high places and burn incense to their god ..."
Halpern, Baruch, and Matthew J. Adams
From Gods to God: The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies
(pp. 85-86) Mohr Siebeck, 2009
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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