Note 9 — IV THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH

The employment of such a picture presupposes that the occurrence depicted was not unknown to the poet and his public, whether it came before their eyes from acquaintance with the religious ideas of their neighbours or because they were accustomed to see it in their own native usages. As a matter of fact in ancient Israel human sacrifices were by no means unusual. This appears from numberless passages of the Old Testament, and has been already exhaustively set forth by Ghillany in his book “Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer” (1842), and by Daumer in his “Der Feuer- und Molochdienst der alten Hebräer.” Thus we read in 2 Sam. xxi. 6–9 of the seven sons of the House of Saul, who were delivered over by David to the Gibeonites, who hung them on the mountain before the Lord. Thus was God appeased towards the land.9 In Numb. xxv. 4 Jahwe bade Moses hang the chiefs of the people “to the Lord before the sun, in order that the bitter wrath of the Lord might be turned from Israel.” And according to the Book of Joshua this latter dedicated the inhabitants of the city of Ain to the Lord, and after the capture of the city hung their king upon a tree,10 while in the tenth chapter (15–26) he even hangs five kings at one time. Indeed, it appears that human sacrifice formed a regular part of the Jewish religion in the period before the Exile; which indeed was but to be expected, considering the relationship between Jahwe and the Phœnician Baal. Jahwe himself was, moreover, originally only another form of the old Semitic Fire- and Sun-God; the God-king (Moloch or Melech), who was honoured under the image of a Bull, was represented at this time as a “smoking furnace”11 and was gratified and propitiated by human sacrifices.12 Even during the Babylonian captivity, despite the voices raised against it by some prophets in the last years of the Jewish state, sacrifices of this kind were offered by the Jews; until they were suppressed under the rule of the Persians, and in the new Jewish state were expressly forbidden. But even then they continued in secret and could easily be revived at any time, so soon as the excitement of the popular mind in some time of great need seemed to demand an extraordinary victim.13