Firstborn

Since I had known him—and that was a very, very long time—there was a darkness in him, an inscrutable malice that surfaced now and then, often through lies, through taunts and then through perversion.

He showed his iPad to me once, proudly displaying the electronic versions of the Bible he had downloaded.

Idly I flipped through his library: positioned alphabetically next to his translations of the Bible was pornography.

He chatted about nothing, either oblivious or unconcerned that this aspect of his inner life was so easily revealed.

He could present himself well to the world, if he wanted, but later as he aged, his clothing and body reflected filth.

I sat across from him once at a formal meeting: his shirt had food stains and his arms were inexplicably black with some substance other than dirt.

Perhaps his sickness was pushing outward, blackening his very skin, seeping to his outward appearance.

I cannot say I ever understood him.

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I have read about a place in Israel just outside the Jerusalem city walls that is tranquil and green, offering “beautiful views” of the Holy Land. Travel brochures claim the location has had bad press dating back to its biblical days.

This place is called the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom. Part of it is called Tophet, which means fire-stove.

You can reach this valley by exiting Jerusalem through the Dung Gate, one of the eleven city gates so named and described by Nehemiah when he and the Israelites rebuilt the city’s walls.

This place, the Hinnom Valley, is where the Israelites, whom Yahweh had warned repeatedly to abhor pagan practices, had chosen to burn their children alive, usually firstborn, offering their tiny living bodies to a statue of the god Moloch in return for a better harvest, for rain or for prosperity.

The Israelites themselves are considered God’s firstborn; He had made clear that their position among the pagan nations conferred on them distinctive privileges and responsibilities. God rescued them from Egypt, preserving their firstborn sons through the Passover and substituting the tribe of the Levites as firstborn to serve Him in the Temple.

In Jewish tradition, the firstborn child in a family belonged to God. The firstborn son received a double portion of the family’s inheritance.

Yet in the Valley of Hinnom the Israelites had chosen a different, profane path of behavior that mirrored countries that surrounded them.

The Scriptures spit disgust at child sacrifice, ascribing the act of Israel’s sons and daughters as made to “pass through the fires,” to false gods, often Molech (Chemosh among the Moabites).

In this peaceful valley-the valley of slaughter-the burning place—stood a large hollow metal statue with outstretched arms, open to receive the tiny body of a child.

Rich parents could purchase a substitute child from poor people; tradition says the parents of the child to be sacrificed were not to make noise, wail or moan, but just in case, drums were beaten to drown screams.

This place reeked of death and burnt flesh, so abhorrent that it was used as a dumping ground for refuse and even cadavers. Again, tradition says that this heap of garbage, so representative of stolen and wasted life, burned without stopping, ridding the city of its refuse, a constant reminder just outside the city walls of life without Yahweh.

Its history makes it a place of horror, regardless the beauty the travel brochures say it may have today.

Jesus referred to this place as Gehenna, what we perceive now as hell. In our culture, hell is a nebulous and fiery location deep in the earth where a bad person is cast as punishment after death for doing bad things.

Someone like Hitler.

When Jesus spoke of Gehenna, you could go see it—hell-- because it was a very real place just outside the city walls, a place that always burned, a place where people threw detritus they no longer wanted.

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When God called Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, He created a type of Christ, the Firstborn Son of God who would voluntarily substitute Himself as sacrifice.

The hand of God saved Isaac son of Abraham when a substitute was made with a ram caught in a nearby thicket.

The act of substitution for Isaac also broke the pagan pattern of killing the firstborn child to acquire the favor of a false god.

Not so with the future sacrifice of God’s own son, who would free us of having to meet the impossible standards of His Law.

For that Firstborn, we waited.

************* Dark Moon pastels on paper