Exod 22:28 You shall not put off the skimming of the first yield of your vats. You shall give Me the firstborn among your sons. 22:29 You shall do the same with your cattle and your flocks: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me. The JPS translation of דמעך quoted here is based on a connection of דמע with דמעה, “tear,” taking it to refer to liquid products, namely wine and oil, but it may also refer to agricultural produce more generally. See Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (New York: JPS, 1991), 140–41.
Exod 34:19-20 contains what appears to be another iteration of this law—but one that mercifully spares the human child the fate of sacrifice:
שמות לד:יט כָּל פֶּ֥טֶר רֶ֖חֶם לִ֑י וְכָֽל מִקְנְךָ֙ תִּזָּכָ֔ר פֶּ֖טֶר שׁ֥וֹר וָשֶׂה:לד:כ ופטר חֲמוֹר֙ תִּפְדֶּ֣ה בְשֶׂ֔ה וְאִם לֹ֥א תִפד֖ה וַערַפְתּ֑וֹ כֹּ֣ל בְּכ֤וֹר בָּנֶ֙יךָ תפדֶ֔ה ולא יֵרא֥וּ פָנַ֖י רֵיקָֽם: Exod 34:19 Every first issue of the womb is Mine, from all your livestock that drop a male as firstling, whether cattle or sheep. 34:20 But the firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a sheep; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck. And you must redeem every firstborn among your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.
This passage as well presents an analogy between the treatment of firstborn animals and humans: all belong to God. The Priestly texts (Exodus 13, Numbers 3, and Numbers 8) trace the giving of the firstborn to God to the exodus from Egypt, when God killed the Egyptian firstborn sons and animals but allowed the Israelite firstborn to live. Yet the earliest versions of the law, Exodus 22:28–29 and 34:19–20—both non-Priestly texts—make no such connection. Instead, these texts link the law of the firstborn to providing God with the first or best of other agricultural products, suggesting that God’s possession the firstborn is part and parcel of his right to the first and best of all things.
But here the firstborn of an ass—an animal that may not be sacrificed—must be redeemed, or exchanged, for a sheep, and the firstborn of a human mother must likewise be redeemed. This law upholds the principle that all firstborns belong to God, while making a practical distinction between firstborns that are slaughtered on an altar (“kosher” animals) and those that are not (“non-kosher” animals and humans). These are not the only texts in the Pentateuch that deal with the firstborn. The books of Exodus (ch. 13) and Numbers (chs. 3, 8, and 18) also discuss what to do with firstborn, and legislate exchanging the firstborn for silver (pidyon haben) or for Levites. See my joint discussion with Zev Farber, “Relegating Redemption of the Firstborn to a One Time Event in the Wilderness.”
The Traditional Approach to Exodus 22
Redeem Them (Pidyon Haben)
Traditional Jewish exegesis assumes that the Torah’s laws agree with each other. Therefore, most traditional scholars interpret the phrase “you shall give me the firstborn among your sons” in line with Exodus 34:20, as a command to redeem the firstborn. For instance, Rashi (1041-1105) states:
בכור בניך תתן לי – לפדותו בחמשה סלעים מן הכהן. “You shall give me the firstborn among your sons” – redeem him for five coins from the priest.
(Rashi derives the five coin rule from a yet a third source, one of the Priestly versions of this law [Num 18:16]).
Even starker is the comment by R. Tobiah ben Eliezer (11th cent.) in his Lekach Tov (Exod 22:28):
בכור בניך תתן לי. כמשמעו להיות פודהו ונותן דמיו לכהן: “You shall give me the firstborn among your sons” – as it sounds: to redeem him and give the
R. Tobiah doesn’t seem to realize that a simple reading of the verse does not yield what he says “it sounds like.” He is so influenced by the other verses that he no longer actually hears what it seems to explicitly say.
Sanctuary Workers
An alternative interpretation of this verse assumes that the firstborn are being commanded to serve God, in the way Priests and Levites will do. R. Obadiah Seforno (ca. 1475-1550) suggests this reading:
בכור בניך תתן לי. לכל עבודת קדש, לעבודת המקדש ולתלמוד תורה כמו שהיה אחר כך בכהנים… “You shall give me the firstborn among your sons” – for all forms of holy service, whether working in the Temple or studying Torah, as will be done afterwards by the Priests…
Seforno assumes that the verb נ-ת-נ means to give to God as a temple servant; in fact, the same verb is used in 1 Sam 1:11, where Hannah promises to give to God the boy that she is hoping for (ונתתיו לי-הוה). Seforno suggests that Exodus 22:28 represents God’s original plan, to have the firstborn serve him, but this plan changes later when the Levites and Priests take their place.
Oddly, according to this model, the law only remains relevant for a few days. By the time the mishkan is built (which begins in the next parasha), the Levites and the Priests, not the firstborn, will serve as functionaries. In fact, following the traditional conception of when the Torah was written, the law was only put to ink after it was already defunct.
Explaining the Multiple Versions of the Law: Academic Approach
In contrast to the midrash, critical scholarship does not assume that different instantiations of the same law were originally meant to be read in light of one another. In some cases, one text may be building on another, or one text may be revising or even attempting to polemicize against another.
The relationship between the laws in Exodus 22 and 34 is a matter of debate in contemporary scholarship. The laws in Exodus 22 are part of what is known as the Covenant Collection, an ancient collection of laws which was included as part of the northern E document. The origin of the laws in Exodus 34 is more complex. Many scholars believe that these laws are an alternate Decalogue (referred to in scholarship as the “Ritual Decalogue”) and that it was part of the J document (See, for example, Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 179.). This claim has been challenged of late by redaction-critical scholars such as Shimon Gesundheit, who see the law collection in ch. 34 as a supplement meant to revise the laws in ch. 22 (Shimon Gesundheit, Three Times a Year: Studies on Festival Legislation in the Pentateuch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 12-43 (=ch. 1).
If we assume that the law about redeeming the firstborn in Exodus 34 is independent of the law in the Exodus 22, then we should not interpret the latter in terms of the former. If it was written in reaction to the law in the chapter 22, then it is revising or even polemicizing against the older law by rewriting it. Either way, we have no choice but to attempt to understand the law in Exodus 22 in its own terms.
Interpretation 1: Exodus 22 as Requiring Child Sacrifice
As stated at the outset, on its own terms, the simplest interpretation of Exodus 22:28 is that it requires the slaughter of all firstborn sons. This is the view taken by many modern biblical scholars, including Jon Levenson, who defends it in his Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity.
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Analogy to the Cherem Law in Leviticus:
The possibility that the Torah has a law mandating child sacrifice may be shocking, but this would not be the only Torah text to require human sacrifice. The law of the cherem, the donation of something (or someone) to God, found in Leviticus 27 also references something akin to human sacrifice:
כז:כח אַךְ כָּל חֵ֡רֶם אֲשֶׁ֣ר יַחֲרִם֩ אִ֨ישׁ לַֽי-הֹוָ֜ה מִכָּל אֲשֶׁר ל֗וֹ מֵאָדָם ובְהֵמָה֙ וּמִשְּׂדֵ֣ה אֲחֻזָּת֔וֹ לֹ֥א ימכר וְלא יגָּאֵ֑ל כָּל חֵ֕רֶם קֹֽדֶשׁ קָֽדָשים ה֖וּא לַי-הֹוָֽה: כז:כטכָּל חֵ֗רֶם אֲשֶׁ֧ר יָחֳרַ֛ם מִן הָאָדָ֖ם לֹ֣א יִפָּדֶ֑ה מ֖וֹת יוּמָֽת: 27:28 But any cherem that a person declares cherem to Yhwh from his property, whether of humans or a beast or of his ancestral field, it shall be neither sold nor redeemed; all cherem is holy of holies unto Yhwh. 27:29 Every human cherem that is declared cherem shall not be redeemed; he shall be put to death.
Here we see explicitly that once a person is dedicated to God, the person must be killed. Due to the criterion of embarrassment by later Jewish authors such as Rashi who have to change the wording, this is likely the original meaning.
The verse explicitly rejects redemption as an option ( For more on this law, see Isaac Sassoon’s TABS essay, “Obliterating Cherem.”).
On the most straightforward reading, it would seem that the author of Exodus 22:28 held a similar view with regard to firstborn sons.
Examples of Child Sacrifice in the Bible
There are also several narrative texts that seem to portray child sacrifice as a legitimate practice, or at least do not explicitly condemn it:
God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son (Gen 22). Although in the end God prevents Abraham from going through with the sacrifice, a plain reading of the text does not suggest that child sacrifice is inappropriate. Instead, God praises Abraham for his willingness to offer his son.
Jephthah makes an oath to sacrifice whoever is first to come out to greet him when he returns home successful from war. It turns out to be his daughter, and this is what he does (Judg 11:39).[10]
Mesha, king of Moab, finding that he is about to lose in battle against the combined forces of Israel and Judah, sacrifices his firstborn son and heir, which turns the tide of the battle in his favor (2 Kings 3:27).
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