THF. EVOLUTION OF THEOT.OCY VTIT 



Totiii ftlu- <;'"d whom ho hud evnked|, t,> rxert all your in- 

 fluence with the other ^uds that I alone may Duller all iho 

 punishment they desire to inflict (vol. i. p. 



So wlicn the king- of Israel has sinned by 

 " numbering the people," and they are punished 

 for liis fault by a pestilence which sl.-iys seventy 

 thousand innocent men, David cries to Jah- 

 veh : 



Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely : Inn these 

 shoq>, what have they done ? let thine hand, I pray thee, l>o 



sigainst mo, and against my father's house (2 Sam. xxiv. 17). 



Human sacrifices were extremely common in 

 Polynesia ; and, in Tonga, the " devotion " of a 

 child by strangling was a favourite method of 

 averting the wrath of the gods. The well-known 

 instances of Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter 

 and of David's giving up the seven sons of Saul to 

 be sacrificed by the Gibeonites "before Jnhvrh." 

 appear to me to leave n<> doubt that the old 

 Israelites, even when devout worshippers of 

 Jahveh, considered human sacrifices, under certain 

 circumstances, to be not only permissible but 

 laudable. Samuel's hewing to pieces of the 

 miserable captive, sole survivor of his nation, 

 Agag, " before Jahveh," can hardly be viewed in 

 any other light. The life of Moses is redeemed 

 from Jahveh, who " sought to slay him/' by 

 /ipporah's symbolical sacrifice of her child, by the 

 bloody operation of circumcision. Jahveh expressly 

 at'tirms that the first-born males of men and beasts 



