What Does Psalm 106:37 Mean?
They slaughtered their sons and their daughters to the demons.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “sacrificed” keeps slaughter inside the offering, so no sacred label can make the children disappear from the act.
THE MEANING
The verse keeps the children visible inside a word that can sound ritual and abstract. It exposes how devotion can call an act sacred while the act remains lethal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a religious offering becomes good simply because it is called a sacrifice.
THE ROOT
וַיִּזְבְּחוּ
vayyizbeḥû
GROWS FROM
זבח
z-b-ḥ
To slaughter in sacrifice; to offer through ritual slaughter.
“slaughtered” in this verse is vayyizbeḥû. The זבח root carries slaughter into the act of offering. Its branches name both the sacrifice and the altar, keeping the violence visible within the ritual language.
ALSO GROWS
zebaḥ: Sacrifice or ritual slaughter.
זֶבַח
This noun shares the verb’s root and shows that the offering remains bound to the act of killing.
mizbēaḥ: Altar, the place of sacrifice.
מִזְבֵּחַ
The altar grows from the same root, joining the sacred place to the act performed there.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the violence of child-offering plainly even when it appears under the language of worship.
You shall not do so to the LORD your God, for every recoiling thing to the LORD, which he hates, they have done to their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods.And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it rise up into my heart.But I say that what the nations offer, they offer to demons and not to God, and I do not wish you to become sharers in common with demons.THE THREAD
They slaughtered to demons, not to God; to gods they had never known, to new gods come up from nearby, before whom your fathers did not shudder.Deuteronomy uses the same Hebrew verb זבח (zāvaḥ, sacrifice through slaughter) and the same word שֵׁדִים (shedim, devils). Its words “not to God” sharpen the distinction: the act is still called sacrifice, but its recipient reveals the loyalty it serves.
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