Acts 7:39-45 To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,… "My father," said a convert to a missionary in India, "was an officiating priest of a heathen temple, and was considered in those days a superior English scholar, and, by teaching the English language to wealthy natives; realised a large fortune. At a very early period, when a mere boy, I was employed by my father to light the lamps in the pagoda, and attend to the various things connected with the idols. I hardly remember the time when my mind was not exercised on the folly of idolatry. These things, I thought, were made by the hand of man, can move only by man, and, whether treated well or ill, are unconscious of either. Why all this cleaning, anointing, illuminating etc.? One evening these considerations so powerfully wrought on my youthful mind that, instead of placing the idols according to custom, I threw them from their pedestals and left them with their faces in the dust. My father, on witnessing what I had done, chastised me so severely as to leave me almost dead. I reasoned with him that, if they could not get up out of the dust, they were not able to do what I could, and that, instead of being worshipped as gods, they deserved to lie in the dust where I had thrown them. He was implacable, and vowed to disinherit me, and, as the first step to it, sent me away from his house. He repented on his death-bed, and left me all his wealth." Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch. — Moloch, the king of gods, from Malek, king, or from "Melkarth" at Tyre, "the god of the city," and Saturn, or the Sun, are the same as Baal, or Baal Samen, "the Lord of heaven," in Phoenicia. In 1 Kings 11:5-7, the name occurs under the forms of Moloch and Milcom, and is there spoken of as the abomination of the Ammorites. The worship of the deity was, as the names by which the idol was known in various countries will show, widely diffused. It was, in its origin at least, a kind of Sub,an worship, and hence the seven cavities in the image, and the seven chapels of its temple, in reference to the seven planets of the ancient cosmogony. That Baal and Moloch are one is evident not only from the characteristics of the god and his worship, but from Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:35. He was a god of terror and destruction: the god of consuming fire, the burning sun, the god who smites the land with unfruitful-ness and pestilence, dries up the springs, and begets poisonous winds. See with reference to these characteristics 1 Kings 18.; where even his prophets are representing as in vain invoking him when the land was suffering from drought, and note the answer of Jehovah to Elijah in vers. 44, 45. The most acceptable sacrifice to this god was little children. The idol had a bull's head, and his arms were outstretched. On these arms when glowing hot the victims were laid by their parents, and when, writhing from the heat of the metal, they rolled off, they fell into the flames below. Drums drown the cries of the children, and hence the place of sacrifice was called Zophet — a drum. Besides children animals Were offered, sheep, lambs, bulls, and even horses. (W. Denton, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, |
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