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Moral problem

Jeremiah, Topheth, and the children of fire

Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5, and 32:35 charge Judah with burning children to Baal at a place called Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom. The same accusation runs through 2 Kings 23:10, 2 Kings 21:6, and Psalm 106. The question is what actually happened there. Three positions have stood in the literature for more than a century, and the recent Carthage skeletal analyses have moved the conversation again.

What's at stake

Topheth was a precinct in the Valley of Hinnom, on the southwest side of Jerusalem. The Hebrew name later became Gehinnom, which the Greek New Testament transliterates as Gehenna. Jesus uses the word for the place of final judgment. The geography is not abstract. It was a real ravine just outside the city wall. Jeremiah 7:31 says the people 'have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.' Jeremiah 19:5 repeats the charge against Baal. Jeremiah 32:35 names Molech. The question this article tracks is what those verses are reporting. A literal infant-sacrifice cult, a dedication rite in which children passed through fire but lived, or a prophet's polemical exaggeration of a rarer or non-lethal practice. The answer turns on the biblical texts, the Phoenician material from Carthage and Motya, and a skeletal-age debate that flared up again after 2010.

What the biblical texts say

The accusation runs across the historical books, the prophets, and the psalms. The frame is Deuteronomic. Deuteronomy 12:31 forbids burning sons and daughters as offerings to other gods. Deuteronomy 18:10 lists 'one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire' first in a catalogue of forbidden cultic practices. Leviticus 18:21 and 20:2-5 forbid giving children to Molech. The law treats the practice as a known threat and names it explicitly.

The historical books report it happening. 2 Kings 16:3 says King Ahaz 'made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen.' 2 Kings 21:6 says Manasseh did the same. 2 Kings 23:10 says Josiah, in his 622 BCE reform, 'defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.' The verb in 2 Kings is heʿebir, 'cause to pass over.' This is the verb the dedication-rite reading turns on.

Jeremiah uses different verbs. Jeremiah 7:31 has lisrof, 'to burn,' and qualifies it as ʿolot, 'burnt offerings.' Jeremiah 19:5 repeats lisrof and adds the triple denial 'which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.' The triple denial is one of the strongest negations in the prophetic corpus. Jeremiah 32:35 also has lisrof and again adds 'which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind.' The verbs Jeremiah chooses describe burning, not passing through. Whether the two vocabularies (Deuteronomy and Kings using passage language; Jeremiah using burning language) describe the same ritual or different ones is itself contested.

Psalm 106:37-38 closes the canonical witness. 'Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.' The psalm uses the strongest sacrifice vocabulary in the Hebrew Bible (zabaḥ, 'sacrifice') and reads the practice as a defilement of the land itself.

Three positions on what happened at Topheth

How the practice has been reconstructed

Three families of reading. Each reads the biblical texts, the Phoenician material, and the modern skeletal evidence differently.

Judah practiced infant and child sacrifice at Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom during the late monarchic period. The biblical accusations describe a real cult that paralleled the Phoenician-Punic tophet rite documented at Carthage, Motya, Tharros, and Sulcis. The verbs Jeremiah uses (burning, burnt offerings) mean what they say.
Held by
  • George Foot Moore, 'Molech, Moloch' in Encyclopaedia Biblica (1902)
  • Otto Eissfeldt, partial: literal in early dating (1930s), but see Position 2
  • Lawrence E. Stager, 'The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage,' in New Light on Ancient Carthage (1980)
  • Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, 'Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Religious Rite or Population Control?' (BAR 1984)
  • George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek: A Reassessment (JSOT, 1985)
  • John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (Cambridge, 1989)
  • Susanna Shelby Brown, Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in Their Mediterranean Context (Sheffield, 1991)
  • Francesca Stavrakopoulou, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice (de Gruyter, 2004)
  • Patricia Smith and Lawrence E. Stager (et al.), 'Age estimations attest to infant sacrifice at the Carthage Tophet' (Antiquity, 2013)
Evidence
  • • Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5, and 32:35 all use lisrof ('to burn') and ʿolot ('burnt offerings'). The vocabulary is the same that elsewhere describes animal sacrifice consumed by fire on the altar
  • • Psalm 106:37-38 uses zabaḥ, the strongest sacrifice verb in Biblical Hebrew, and pairs it with 'innocent blood... the blood of their sons and of their daughters'
  • • 2 Kings 16:3, 17:17, 21:6, and 23:10 corroborate the practice across the eighth and seventh centuries BCE under named kings
  • • The Carthage Tophet, excavated from 1921 to the present, contains thousands of stone urns with cremated infant remains, stratified from the eighth century BCE into the second century BCE, in a precinct distinct from the city's ordinary cemeteries
  • • Many Carthage stelae are inscribed with the term mlk ('molk-offering'), the same root as Hebrew Molech, used as a technical term for the sacrificial act
  • • Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca 20.14 (first century BCE), reports that during Agathocles' siege of Carthage in 310 BCE, two hundred children of leading families were offered as a public emergency rite
  • • Plutarch, On Superstition 13 (early second century CE), records the same practice with the additional detail of drums to mute the parents' cries
  • • Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 18.6.11-12, describes the practice as a Phoenician custom carried from Tyre to its colonies
  • • Smith, Stager, and Greene (2013, Antiquity) re-examined skeletal age estimates from the Carthage Tophet and concluded the deposit was consistent with sacrificial selection rather than ordinary perinatal mortality
  • • The Pozo Moro funerary monument in Spain (sixth century BCE, Phoenician-influenced) depicts a seated figure receiving a bowl with what appears to be a child inside, beside a pig and a winged demon. Most interpreters read it as a sacrificial scene
Challenges
  • • Jerusalem's Topheth has not been excavated. The Wadi er-Rababi (the modern identification of the Hinnom Valley) is built over. There is no direct archaeological evidence from the biblical site
  • • Some Hebrew Bible texts use 'pass through fire' language (Deut 18:10, 2 Kgs 23:10) rather than 'burn.' The dedication-rite reading takes this as evidence the practice was different from what Jeremiah describes
  • • The classical sources (Diodorus, Plutarch, Justin) are late and hostile. They write within a Greco-Roman tradition that already framed Phoenician religion as barbaric
  • • The frequency and scale of the practice in Judah cannot be reconstructed. Even on a literal reading, the cult may have been limited to royal-court contexts (Ahaz, Manasseh) and emergency moments rather than a regular liturgy

The biblical witness and the Phoenician material side by side

The disagreement above is partly an argument about how the biblical texts read on their own and partly an argument about which extra-biblical analogy is closest. The Phoenician-Punic tophet sites are the closest comparanda in the ancient world. Six are known: Carthage (Tunisia), Motya (Sicily), Tharros (Sardinia), Sulcis (Sardinia), Nora (Sardinia), and the Hazor cremation deposit (debated). The three columns below set the biblical accusations beside the Phoenician sites and beside the modern skeletal debate.

Three witnesses to the same question

The biblical texts, the Phoenician material, and the modern skeletal analyses. The same evidence is read differently by each position.

Biblical accusations
Jeremiah 7:31
'They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.' Verbs: lisrof ('to burn'). Frame: an unauthorized cult at Topheth.
Jer 7:31
Jeremiah 19:5
'They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.' Adds the recipient (Baal) and the offering type (ʿolot, burnt offerings).
Jer 19:5
Jeremiah 32:35
'They built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech.' Combines 'pass through' (heʿebir) and 'Molech' language with the Topheth location.
Jer 32:35
2 Kings 23:10
Josiah's reform: 'And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.' Verb: heʿebir. Site: Topheth.
2 Kgs 23:10
2 Kings 21:6 (Manasseh)
'And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards.' Names a specific royal episode.
2 Kgs 21:6
Psalm 106:37-38
'Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood... whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan.' Verb: zabaḥ. Frame: defilement of the land.
Ps 106:37-38
Phoenician / Punic material
Carthage Tophet (Salammbô)
Excavated since 1921. Thousands of stone urns, infant cremated remains, stratified eighth to second centuries BCE. Stelae often inscribed mlk (the same root as Hebrew Molech) and mlk ʾdm ('molk-offering of a man').
Stager 1980; Brown 1991; Smith and Stager et al. 2013
Motya Tophet (Sicily)
Phoenician colony site, ninth to fifth centuries BCE. Roughly 1000 urns with cremated infant remains plus animal substitutes. Smaller scale than Carthage but the ritual pattern is parallel.
Whitaker, Motya (1921); Ciasca excavations 1964-72
Tharros, Sulcis, Nora (Sardinia)
Three Phoenician-Punic colony sites with tophet precincts, eighth century BCE through the second. The Tharros tophet alone has produced more than 5,000 stelae. Sulcis stelae include the mlk formula.
Bartoloni and Tronchetti, Tharros (1981); Bernardini, Sulcis (1995)
Pozo Moro relief (Spain)
Late sixth century BCE Phoenician-influenced funerary monument. Carved scene shows a seated figure holding a bowl with what most interpreters read as a child inside, accompanied by a pig and a winged demon. Read as iconographic evidence for the rite.
Almagro-Gorbea 1983; Blázquez 1985
Classical reports
Diodorus 20.14 (Carthage 310 BCE: 200 noble children offered during Agathocles' siege). Plutarch, De Superstitione 13 (parents required to watch in silence; drums to drown the children's cries). Justin, Epitome 18.6.11-12 (the custom traces to Tyre).
Diodorus, Bibliotheca 20.14; Plutarch, Moralia 171C-D; Justin 18.6
Jerusalem Topheth
Not excavated. The Wadi er-Rababi (the modern Valley of Hinnom) is built over by the southern edge of the Old City. There is no material assemblage from the biblical site itself.
Survey: Reich, Excavating the City of David (2011)
The modern skeletal debate
Stager (1980)
Lawrence Stager's American Schools of Oriental Research excavation reports first argued from urn density, stratigraphy, and stelae that the Carthage Tophet was a sacrificial precinct. This became the dominant reading by the mid-1980s.
Stager, 'The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage' (1980)
Schwartz et al. (2010, 2012)
Jeffrey Schwartz and collaborators published age estimates on a sample of urn skeletal remains in PLOS ONE (2010) and a follow-up in Antiquity (2012). They argued many remains were stillborns or perinatally-deceased infants, consistent with infant mortuary practice rather than active sacrifice.
Schwartz, Houghton, Macchiarelli, Bondioli, PLOS ONE 2010; Schwartz et al., Antiquity 2012
Smith and Stager et al. (2013)
Patricia Smith, Stager, and colleagues responded in Antiquity (2013) with a reanalysis of the same data. They argued the skeletal age estimates were consistent with selection from the early postnatal period, that prematurity at term is not evidence of stillbirth, and that the deposit's stratigraphy fits ritual not mortuary use.
Smith, Avishai, Greene, Stager, Antiquity 2013
Xella, Quinn, et al. (2013)
Paolo Xella, Josephine Crawley Quinn, and colleagues published a separate critique of the Schwartz reading in Antiquity (2013), arguing the inscriptions, the iconography, the classical reports, and the precinct context all weigh against the natural-mortality reading.
Xella, Quinn, Melchiorri, van Dommelen, Antiquity 2013
Current state
The literature as of the mid-2020s has not closed. The Smith-Xella reading (deliberate sacrifice) is the majority position in Phoenician archaeology. The Schwartz reading (mortuary or mixed) is held by a minority and continues to publish revised data.
Recent reviews: Lopez-Bertran 2019; Quinn, In Search of the Phoenicians (2018)
Bearing on Jerusalem
The Carthage debate is about the Phoenician West, not Jerusalem. Whatever conclusion the skeletal analyses support, the biblical texts are an independent literary witness to a practice in monarchic Judah. The Phoenician material is comparanda, not direct evidence for the Hinnom Valley.
Stavrakopoulou 2004; Dewrell 2017

Why Jeremiah goes to Topheth

Jeremiah 19 is a sign-act. The prophet is told to take a clay flask, gather the elders of the people and the senior priests, walk out the Potsherd Gate to the Valley of Hinnom, stand at the entrance of Topheth, and deliver an oracle. The geography is the point. The chapter relocates the message from inside the temple courts to the site that names the indictment. This is the Hebrew prophet's version of trial-by-place. The verdict is delivered at the scene.

The break of the flask follows. The wet clay of chapter 18 could be remade by the potter; the fired flask of chapter 19 cannot. Jeremiah breaks the vessel and tells the assembled witnesses that the city will be broken the same way. The chapter then closes with the prophet carrying the broken jar back into the temple courts and repeating the verdict to the priests and worshippers inside.

The Topheth setting matters because of the indictment Jeremiah is making. The chapter is not addressing idolatry in the abstract. It names the burning of children as the breaking point. The triple denial ('which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind') sets this practice apart from other covenant violations the prophet indicts elsewhere. The grammar is the prophet's strongest available form of repudiation, and the location of the sign-act makes the repudiation visible.

The verbs and the recipients

The vocabulary differences across the biblical texts are not stylistic. They are part of the case. The texts using 'pass through fire' language (heʿebir) cluster in Deuteronomy and Kings. The texts using 'burn' language (saraf) cluster in Jeremiah. The texts using full sacrifice language (zabaḥ) cluster in Ezekiel and Psalms. The literal-sacrifice position treats the three vocabularies as describing the same rite from different angles. The dedication-rite position treats the older vocabulary as preserving the original practice and Jeremiah's vocabulary as polemical heightening. The polemic position treats Jeremiah's vocabulary as deliberately maximizing the charge.

The recipient is also contested. Some texts name Baal (Jer 19:5; 32:35 in part). Some name Molech (Lev 18:21; 20:2-5; 2 Kgs 23:10; Jer 32:35 in part). Some name neither and simply describe burning of children (Jer 7:31; Ps 106). On the older reading, Molech was a separate Canaanite deity. On the Eissfeldt reading, mlk was the name of the offering itself rather than a god. On the consolidating reading, Molech and Baal are both ways the biblical authors name the recipient of an offering that was understood within Israel's broader Canaanite religious environment. The Hebrew Bible does not give a unified picture, and the prophets do not try to.

The Hebron Tophet question

One further archaeological wrinkle. Reports from the 1990s and 2000s of possible tophet-style cremation deposits at Tel Hebron and at other Iron Age Levantine sites have appeared periodically in Israeli archaeology. None of these has produced a precinct comparable in scale to Carthage or Motya. Stavrakopoulou's 2004 reassessment argued that the absence of a recognized tophet precinct in Iron Age Judah does not weigh against the biblical accusations, because Topheth was likely a small enclosed installation rather than a multi-acre precinct of the Carthage type, and because the Jerusalem site has not been available for excavation. Dewrell's 2017 monograph treats the absence as significant and weighs it toward the polemic position. The question is open at the level of material evidence and unlikely to close without excavation of the Hinnom Valley site.

How Topheth becomes Gehenna

Jeremiah 19:6 names what will happen to the place. 'Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place shall no more be called Topheth, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.' The valley's name is to become its sentence. The same renaming logic appears in Isaiah 30:33, which uses the word tophteh (a related form) for a burning place prepared for the king of Assyria.

By the late Second Temple period, the Hebrew name Ge-hinnom ('Valley of Hinnom') had been transliterated into Aramaic and then into Greek as Gehenna. The Greek word appears twelve times in the New Testament, all on the lips of Jesus, all referring to final judgment (Matt 5:22, 29-30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43-47; Luke 12:5). The geography becomes eschatology. The site where the prophet broke the flask becomes the New Testament's image of judgment outside the city. Whether the development is direct (the valley remained a refuse-and-burning site after the exile and the name attached to that ongoing function) or literary (the prophetic verdict at Topheth became the typological vocabulary for final judgment) is debated. The pathway from Jeremiah 19 to Matthew 5 runs through this place.

Reading the chapter with the question open

Jeremiah 19 is one of the texts readers come back to. The chapter records that the people who built Topheth were Judahites, that the site sat within sight of the temple, that the children were the people's own. The three positions above do not collapse into each other, and the Carthage skeletal debate has not closed. The chapter does not let the question stay bracketed. The prophet went to the site, broke the flask, and brought the broken pieces back into the temple courts. The chapter is structured so that the indictment cannot stay outside the city wall.

Most readers who have stayed with the text over time end up holding some combination of the three. Few literal-sacrifice readers deny that prophetic vocabulary intensifies the charge. Few dedication-rite readers deny that some episodes involved actual deaths. Few polemic readers deny that the practice was real, only that it was as routine as the prophets describe. What the chapter requires is that the reader hold the question open in the form Jeremiah holds it. The prophet was standing at the place when he broke the jar. The geography is part of the text.

Sources

Primary sources
  • Jeremiah 7:30-34; 19:1-15; 32:35 (MT; LXX)
  • 2 Kings 16:3; 17:17; 21:6; 23:10 (MT)
  • Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5 (MT; LXX)
  • Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10 (MT)
  • Psalm 106:37-38 (MT)
  • Ezekiel 16:20-21; 20:25-26; 23:37-39 (MT)
  • Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 20.14 (first century BCE; LCL, Oldfather)
  • Plutarch, On Superstition (De Superstitione) 13, Moralia 171C-D (early second century CE; LCL)
  • Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 18.6.11-12 (third century CE epitome of an Augustan-era source)
  • Tertullian, Apology 9.2-4 (c. 197 CE; mentions Carthaginian child sacrifice as an ongoing memory)
  • Carthage Tophet stelae and urns (eighth-second centuries BCE; Bardo Museum, Tunis; Carthage Museum)
  • Motya Tophet finds (ninth-fifth centuries BCE; Whitaker collection; Marsala Museum)
  • Tharros, Sulcis, Nora tophet stelae (eighth-second centuries BCE; Cagliari Museum)
  • Pozo Moro funerary monument (late sixth century BCE; Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid)
  • Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Leviticus 18:21 (medieval recension of older traditions)
  • Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:7 (on the Molech rite)
  • Septuagint Leviticus 18:21 (archon for molek)
  • Targum Jonathan on Jeremiah (Sperber, Brill 1959-1973)
  • Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah (PL 24-25)
  • Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah (GCS / SC editions)
Modern scholarship cited
  • George Foot Moore, 'Molech, Moloch' in Encyclopaedia Biblica vol. 3 (Black, 1902)
  • Otto Eissfeldt, Molk als Opferbegriff im Punischen und Hebräischen und das Ende des Gottes Moloch (Niemeyer, 1935)
  • Roland de Vaux, Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice (Cardiff, 1964)
  • Moshe Weinfeld, 'The Worship of Molech and of the Queen of Heaven and its Background' (Ugarit-Forschungen 4, 1972)
  • Morton Smith, 'A Note on Burning Babies' (Journal of the American Oriental Society 95, 1975)
  • Lawrence E. Stager, 'The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage,' in New Light on Ancient Carthage, ed. J. G. Pedley (University of Michigan, 1980)
  • Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, 'Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Religious Rite or Population Control?' (Biblical Archaeology Review 10, 1984)
  • George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek: A Reassessment (JSOT Supplement 43; JSOT Press, 1985)
  • John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (Cambridge, 1989)
  • Susanna Shelby Brown, Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in Their Mediterranean Context (JSOT Press, 1991)
  • Sabatino Moscati and Sergio Ribichini, Il sacrificio dei bambini: un aggiornamento (CNR, 1991)
  • Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (Yale, 1993)
  • Klaas A. D. Smelik, 'Moloch, Molekh or Molk-Sacrifice? A Reassessment' (Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 9, 1995)
  • Francesca Stavrakopoulou, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice in the Israelite Religion (de Gruyter, 2004)
  • Rüdiger Schmitt, Magie im Alten Testament (Ugarit-Verlag, 2004)
  • Bennie H. Reynolds III, 'Molek: Dead or Alive?' in Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Brill, 2007)
  • Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Frank D. Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli, Luca Bondioli, 'Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants' (PLOS ONE 5, 2010)
  • Patricia Smith, Gal Avishai, Joseph A. Greene, Lawrence E. Stager, 'Age Estimations Attest to Infant Sacrifice at the Carthage Tophet' (Antiquity 87, 2013)
  • Paolo Xella, Josephine Crawley Quinn, Valentina Melchiorri, Peter van Dommelen, 'Phoenician Bones of Contention' (Antiquity 87, 2013)
  • Heath Dewrell, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel (Eisenbrauns, 2017)
  • Josephine Crawley Quinn, In Search of the Phoenicians (Princeton, 2018)
  • Mireia Lopez-Bertran, 'Funerary Ritual' in The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean, ed. Doak and Lopez-Ruiz (Oxford, 2019)
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