A Bible Study Perspective

from Commentary Magazine

**Also see added note by C.A. Davidson at the end of this article

Gehenna in Connecticut

John Podhoretz

Gehenna, a synonym for Hell, is a real place, or so the Bible tells us. You can see it today. It is a valley outside Jerusalem, the valley of the son of Hinnom, and it was where worshippers of the idol Moloch sacrificed children to sate their god’s hungers.

Gehenna was revived today in Newton, Connecticut, where as many as 20 children at last report were slaughtered in an elementary school this morning.

We learn in the book of Kings that in the seventh century BCE, the prophet Jeremiah demanded that King Josiah destroy the idolator’s temple in Gehenna to prevent more sacrifices to Moloch. We can presume from the newsworthiness of this act that child sacrifice was once a relatively common practice in the ancient Middle East, as we know it to have been in other pagan cultures.

Bible Study and Child Sacrifice

The connection between the protection of children and the practice of monotheism dates back to the beginning. After Abraham becomes the first Jew, the first monotheist, he is tasked by God to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, the miracle child of his and his wife Sarah’s old age, and he takes up the task without complaint until God stays his hand.

The story of Isaac’s binding, the akedah, is one of the most challenging of the Bible and is often taken to mean God was testing Abraham’s faith with the ultimate demand. But one might also say that at the very dawn of the worship of the One God, the Bible was placing the sacrifice of children outside the realm of the thinkable for the first time.**

The idea that civilization is dedicated to the protection and preservation the weak and the innocent, and not about fulfilling evil impulses to defile and destroy innocence, is the root and core of the West. One cannot conceive of anything more monstrous than a person or persons who could look small children in the eye and systematically shoot them dead. Which is why this crime, among the worst crimes in American history, is not just an assault on the children, or their families, or the town of Newtown—though it is all those things.

What the killer(s) did today was nothing less than a contemporary sacrifice to Moloch, in whatever form Moloch manifests himself today—the appeasement of a voice in the head, most likely. Evil, even if it is loosed due to mental illness, is an effort to destroy the common good by making good appear powerless, ineffectual, weak. Today saw a horrifically effective effort to give evil a victory. It has opened a portal and brought Hell to earth.

Gehenna is real again.

“The story of Isaac’s binding, the akedah, is one of the most challenging of the Bible. . .”

**NOTE: History is fraught with child murder and infanticide, including during the time of Josephus. Christianity brought about a heightened regard for the sacredness of life, until now, when Christianity is so ruthlessly rejected in favor of abortion.

The story of Abraham and Isaac has an additional, deeper meaning. To quickly review, Abraham was asked by God to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice on the altar. Surely, in view of the abominations offered in the name of Moloch during that time, it was even more painful for Abraham. With undaunted faith in the Resurrection, Abraham proceeded to comply with God’s command.  When Isaac asked his father where the sacrifice was, Abraham replied that God would provide it.

Yes, this was a monumental test of Abraham’s faith, but this Biblical narrative is in fact a Christian archetype. It was a powerful teaching moment to Abraham which only God could give. God the Father was giving Abraham a glimpse into the feelings God might have had when He sacrificed His only Begotten Son that all His other children might have a chance to be saved from hell. At the last moment, Isaac was spared. God did indeed provide the sacrifice. Metaphorically speaking, the Savior Jesus Christ was the ram in the thicket.

Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, all those precious innocent children who were murdered in Connecticut are in heaven with Jesus, and their parents can be with them again in the next life.

~C.A. Davidson