Commentaria in IV Regum
25. THAT ONLY THE BRICK WALLS REMAINED,—the Hebrew is, until they left its stones in the wall of Haresh, that is, of earthenware or brickwork, namely a wall built of bricks. So the Septuagint, Pagninus and others. Second, the Rabbis and Vatablus translate, only in Kir-haresh did they leave its stones, as if Kir-haresh had been the chief city of Moab, which had walls of brick, and to which, therefore, when all the rest had been laid waste by the Hebrews, the king of Moab had fled with his men; whence of it he presently adds: “And the city was beset by the slingers;” both versions therefore agree, and both are true, as I said on Isaias xvi, 7, and Jeremias xlviii, 31.
27. THEN HE TOOK HIS ELDEST SON, etc., AND OFFERED HIM FOR A BURNT OFFERING UPON THE WALL,—both that the gods, appeased by this so beloved and notable holocaust, might defend the wall, and that he might move the Israelites besieging the wall to compassion, when they saw the king reduced to such straits that he sacrificed his first-born son, and so they might cease to besiege and pursue him, and leaving him return home, as in fact they did. That the kings of the Phoenicians were also accustomed in extreme straits to do this, to sacrifice to their god the dearest thing, namely a son, Porphyry relates in Eusebius, book IV of the Preparation, chapter vii: “The Phoenicians,” he says, “when they were hard pressed, whether by war, or famine, or even by heat, would sacrifice to Saturn one of their nearest, assigned by common votes: of which kind of examples the history of the Phoenicians is full, which Sanchuniathon wrote in the Phoenician tongue,” etc. So Josephus, Theodoret, Procopius, Abulensis and others.
Moreover Rabbi Solomon, and with him some others, translating beno as “his son,” namely the son of the king of Edom, fable that the king of Moab, bursting out of the city with 700 men, took the son of the king of Edom, and led him captive into the city; wherefore the king of Edom, to free his son, abandoned the siege, and, indignant, departed from the king of Israel, who pressed the siege more obstinately; and when he had gone, the king of Moab slew and sacrificed his captive son upon the wall. But this has no appearance of probability.
AND THERE WAS GREAT INDIGNATION IN ISRAEL,—they were moved with indignation at so cruel and unworthy a deed, namely that the king of Moab had sacrificed his son, and therefore pitied him, when they saw him reduced to such necessity and misery that he sacrificed his son. So Josephus: “The kings, seeing this, pitying so great a necessity, and mindful of human vicissitudes, raised the siege, and each returned to his own home.” Theodoret follows him: “When the Moabites,” he says, “were being utterly destroyed, their king tried to flee. But after a strong and vigorous band would not allow him, he offered his first-born son and the successor to the kingdom, on a certain tower, as a holocaust. When the multitude of the enemy beheld this, it pitied that calamity, and raised the siege.” So also Abulensis, Serarius, Vatablus, Salianus and others. Wherefore the Moabites afterwards dug up and burned the bones of the king of Idumea (because he had compelled their king to sacrifice his son), as Amos, chapter ii, verse 1, says. See what was said there. Hear now the opinions of others. First, Rabbi Solomon, and from him Lyra, hold that the king of Moab in so great a necessity invoked the true God and sacrificed to Him, because neither men nor gods could rescue him from it, and that he was impelled to it by the example of Abraham, who, wishing to sacrifice his son Isaac to God, pleased Him wonderfully and received great gifts from Him. But he did that by God’s command, without which it would have been unlawful, indeed homicide and parricide. So Abulensis and Burgensis. Add: the king of Moab did not worship the true God, but idols, that is, the demon, who impelled him to this crime; for the demon delights in human blood offered to him, and demands it from his worshippers, and therefore persuades them that he, when offended, is appeased by such victims, and averts the calamities brought on, and bestows the goods desired.
Second, Burgensis says that the king of Moab consulted his priests why the Hebrews were so strong and fortunate, and that they answered, because they worshipped the god Moloch, and sacrificed and burned their sons to him; the king therefore wished to imitate them, and in such straits to win the god over to himself by a like victim of his son. But Moloch was the god of the Ammonites, whereas that of the Moabites was Chamos, whom the priests doubtless recommended to the king of Moab as his own and domestic god. Burgensis adds that the great indignation, of which mention is made here, was not that of men, namely the Israelites, but of God: for God, he says, was indignant at the Israelites, because by sacrificing their sons to the idol Moloch they had given the Moabites an example of doing the same. So also Lyra takes it as the indignation of God, not of the Israelites. For he says that God was indignant against the Hebrews, because an Angel represented to Him the sins of the Hebrews, and showed them to be more grievous than the crimes of the Moabites; therefore God sent a plague into the camp of the Hebrews, so that they were forced to abandon the siege of the city of Moab.
Third, Cajetan, and from him Pereira on Genesis xxii, number 105, understands an indignation of the Israelites against one another, and explains its cause and manner thus: Because the holocaust of the king’s first-born is related as the cause of the wrath, and its effect is related to be the withdrawal from the assault on the king of Moab, we may understand that the idolatrous Israelites, seeing that holocaust, the devil cooperating, made much of it, and despaired of victory against the king, fortified by the protection of so great a holocaust. Wherefore they were moved to anger against the Israelites who wished to persist in the war: finally the greatness of the anger prevailed, and brought about the withdrawal from the war. Understand, however, that this withdrawal was made after the league was renewed with the king of Moab about paying tribute to the king of Israel; so that the withdrawal did not take away the end of the war undertaken.
This opinion is more probable than the two former; but the first, which I assigned at the beginning, is the most probable.
Finally, the Carthaginians imitated this sacrilegious and execrable rite of sacrificing their sons in grave calamity, as being descended from the Phoenicians (to whom this rite was proper, as I said a little before). For Carthage was a colony of the Tyrians. Hear Quintus Curtius, book IV: “There were some who urged the renewal of a sacrifice interrupted for many ages, that a freeborn boy should be sacrificed to Saturn: which sacrilege, rather than sacrifice, the Carthaginians are said to have practised, handed down from their founders, until the destruction of their city.” And Diodorus, book XX of his History, speaking of the Carthaginians, says: “They said that Saturn was angry with them, because formerly they had sacrificed the most excellent of their own sons. But afterwards, having secretly bought infants and brought them up, they sacrificed them in place of their children.” Whence Imilce, the wife of Hannibal, when her son Aspar was about to be slain, laments thus in Silius Italicus at the end of book IV of the Punic War:
Was it not enough to have seen the heifers slain before the altars; Or if it is the will of the gods, and fixed and settled, that crime be wished, Me, me, who bore him, consume by your vows, Why does it please to despoil the Libyan nations of this offspring?
Moreover the Fathers thunder against this sacrilegious and parricidal sacrifice, such as Tertullian, Apology, chapter ix, Cyril, book IV Against Julian, Lactantius, book I On false religion, chapter xxi, St. Augustine, book VII of the City of God, chapter xix, Theodoret, book VII On Providence.