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| PentecostalTheology.com
"The altar which was at Bethel, the high place built by Jeroboam, son
of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—this same altar and high place he
tore down and burned, grinding the high place to powder and burning
the asherah. 16 When Josiah turned and saw the graves there on the
mountainside, he ordered the bones taken from the graves and burned on
the altar…" (2 Kings 23)
The narrator seems to approve of this action, but it strikes me that digging up graves and burning them on an altar is a form of human sacrifice–not in the sense of taking a human life to offer it to a deity, but in the sense of using human bodies in a kind of reverse-offering, to defile an unauthorized altar.
So: did Josiah conduct a type of human sacrifice? Is there a biblical justification for digging up dead bodies and burning them on an Israelite altar?
