My senior year of high school, I had a wonderful (if not eccentric) AP English teacher, Mrs. Anderson. She was the first teacher to really encourage my writing. She also encouraged our class, as a whole, to plunge deeply into the texts we were studying. We spent much of the year reading Dante’s Inferno. So committed was she to the immersion of the text, she encouraged our class to paint her room with various scenes from the story.
Have you ever read this poem? Looking back, it was pretty bold to have a bunch of immature eighteen-year-olds studying this, much less depicting its scenes on the walls. The story tells of Dante’s journey through the nine circles of hell. We started by painting the entire room black, as the backdrop for each circle. I was responsible for painting Satan in the ninth circle, trapped in ice from the waist down. I vividly remember spending many lunch breaks in Mrs. Anderson’s classroom, painting icicles.
Thinking back on that school year, I think Mrs. Anderson was trying to get her students to sit in the very darkest parts of humanity, to wrestle with the truth of our sin and what we really deserve. I certainly had to confront my own conviction and discomfort every day I walked in there. I credit her class as one of the many things God used that year to draw me to Himself. It’s hard to paint Satan and not think about your own treachery and desperate need of rescue.
Israel’s “Ninth Circle”
These last few weeks, we’ve looked at Israel’s tendencies to give their lives away to false idols. They’ve incorporated worship of gods from other nations into their own worship of Yahweh. They’ve prostituted themselves and sacrificed to poles and statues. But, if the nation of Israel descended to their own “ninth circle” moment, it would definitely be in their worship of the god Molech.
Molech’s name derives from combining the consonants of the Hebrew melech (“king”) with the vowels of boshet (“shame”). Molech, therefore, means King of Shame, a title appropriate for the god who demanded the lives of children as sacrifice.
His name first appears in the book of Leviticus, the priestly instruction manual on Yahweh worship:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech
-Leviticus 20:1-5
Apparently, the people of Israel were familiar enough with this practice to warrant such a strong warning from God. In preparation for moving into the Promised Land, God wanted His people to understand without question His views on child sacrifice.
Yet, even in this, Israel disobeyed. One of the nation’s worst kings, Manasseh, demonstrated just how broken God’s people would eventually become:
For [Manasseh] rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down, and he erected altars to the Baals, and made Asherahs, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them…And he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom…
-2 Chronicles 33: 3,6
Yet, even in the heart of all this darkness, God gives us a story of light. Manasseh’s grandson would take the throne and institute a radical reform in the nation of Israel.
King Josiah’s Reforms
Josiah was eight-years old when he inherited the throne, and eighteen when the Law of God was found in a closet of the Temple. When he read God’s word, his heart was stricken with conviction, and everything in his life changed.
A young man of action, Josiah wasn’t a king who simply ordered changes. He picked up the sledge hammer and took to the land.
And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook of Kidron, and burned it…and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people
-2 Kings 23:6
By scattering the ashes on the graves, he made the idol worship (once considered necessary to made one clean) unclean. Josiah turned their entire system of worship upside down. And he didn’t stop there:
And he defiled Topheth, which is int he Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech
vs. 10
While we can admire Josiah as a hero who restored justice to God’s land, we have to remember how entrenched the people were in this darkness. Restoring the light must have cost Josiah greatly, especially politically. Furthermore, all his reforms didn’t turn God’s wrath away from his people:
Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.
vs. 26
Josiah’s reforms weren’t enough to redeem the sins of the past. His efforts, however, point to the greater story coming in Jesus, in whose sacrifice brought healing and redemption for all of God’s people.
God abhor’s the sin of child sacrifice. Yet, He offered His own son to defeat the darkness inside of us. For this is the beautiful work of God: He takes the very worst parts of humanity, turns them upside down, and makes all things new again.
Final Idol Thoughts
It’s been a journey, looking at the Bible through the lens of Israel’s idol worship. I’ve learned much about the judgements I can make in my own heart towards the people of God. After all, I’m no different. I may not have little wooden statues in my house that I bow down to every day. But I know something about trying to pursue people and things and objects and titles and money and relationships in hopes of finding fulfillment and securing my future. We were made to worship something.
I’ll leave you with this nugget. When God created man, He said this:
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
-Genesis 1:26
That word for “image” is the Hebrew word “tes.lem,” meaning “idol.” When God created us, He made for himself living, breathing idols meant to rule and reign alongside of Him in this world. We’re meant to reflect His image and display Hid goodness to the world.
We aren’t meant to make idols because we are idols. Idols that reflect their Maker, the Living God.
Lindsay: I started reading your work without realizing it was YOU. Then Bo posted your articles (what do we call these substack things? Blogs?) and it was confirmed for me.
My heart has been heavy for some time with where we are as a nation. But I want to examine where my own heart is—how often I make idols instead of reflecting the image of the Father to those who need to know him and his amazing grace. Praying with you that we would forsake false idols and see his kingdom come more and more into men’s, women’s, children’s hearts. Keep writing, lady. And can we connect sometime? I have an itch I’d like to scratch with you…