Commentary on Psalms Volume 3 John Calvin (continued)
COMMENTARY ON PSALMS - VOLUME 3 carried them away to such a pitch of enthusiasm, that they did not spare even their own offspring. Were good intentions meritorious, as idolaters suppose, then indeed the laying aside of all natural affection in sacrificing their own children was a deed deserving of the highest praise. But when men act under the impulse of their own capricious humor, the more they occupy themselves with acts of external worship, the more do they increase their guilt. For what difference was there between Abraham and those persons of whom the prophet makes mention, but that the former, under the influence of faith, was ready to offer up his son, while the latter, carried away by the impulse of intemperate zeal, cast off all natural affection, and imbrued their hands in the blood of their own offspring.
38. And they shed He inveighs with still greater indignation against that religious phrensy which led them to sacrifice their own children, and thus to pollute the land by the shedding of innocent blood. Should any one object that Abraham is praised, because he did not withhold his only son, the answer is plain, That he did it in obedience to God's command, so that every vestige of inhumanity was effaced by means of the purity of faith. For if obedience is better than sacrifice, (1 Samuel 15:22) it is the best rule both for morality and religion. It is an awful manifestation of God's vindictive wrath, when the superstitious heathens, left to their own inventions, become hardened in deeds of horrid cruelty. As often as the martyrs put their life in jeopardy in defense of the truth, the incense of such a sacrifice is pleasing to God. But when the two Romans, by name Decii, 270 in an execrable manner devoted themselves unto death, that was an act of atrocious impiety. It is not without just cause, therefore, that the prophet enhances the guilt of the people by this consideration, that to the perverse mode of worshipping God, they had added excessive cruelty. Nor is there less cause for charging them with having polluted that land out of which God had commanded
",לשדיםto the devils. This word is found only here and in Deuteronomy 32:17, 'They sacrificed unto devils, not to God,' etc. Some persons derive it from,שודto lay waste. Michaelis, from an Arabic word, signifying to be black. Hengstenberg, from an Arabic word, signifying to exercise lordship. Whatever root may be the true one, there is no doubt thatשדיםdenotes false gods of some kind or another to which human sacrifices were offered " — Phillips. That the Canaanites, and their descendants, the Carthaginians, as well as other heathen nations, sacrificed men, and even their dearest children, to appease their deities, is a fact established not only from the Sacred Writings, but also from profane history; and strange as it may seem, it is no less certain, that in this they were imitated by the Israelites, who offered their sons and daughters to the same false gods. Compare 2 Kings 16:3; 17:17; 21:6; 2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6. They had been expressly warned against this horrid practice, (Leviticus 18:21; 20:3; Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10;) but so infatuated were they, and such is the desperate wickedness of the human heart and the power of Satan over men, that they frequently relapsed into it. Dr Adam Clarke translates the original word which Calvin renders devils by demons. "Devil," says he, "is never in Scripture used in the plural; there is but one devil, though there are many demons."
"Mais quand les deux Romains nommez Decii." — Fr.