Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto
devils.
] Who have their name here given them from a word that signifies to waste and destroy, they being the destroyers of mankind. So the Targum renders it by (ayqyzm) , which signifies spirits noxious and hurtful; but R. Elias Levita, in his Tishbi, p. 233, says it is a mistake to derive it from the root which signifies to waste and destroy; for then he says the "daleth" should have a "dagesh"; but does not tell us from whence it is derived. De Dieu, on ( Matthew 9:32 ) , derives it from the Arabic word (dav) , "to rule", for these demons were heroes, princes who ruled over others, and so were reckoned among the gods. As Satan, the head of them, was a murderer from the beginning, the cause of the ruin of our first parents, and of all their posterity; and may be truly called, as the king of the locusts is, "Apollyon" or "Abaddon", ( John 8:44 ) ( Revelation 9:11 ) these the Israelites sacrificed unto, as the Gentiles did, ( Leviticus 17:7 ) ( Deuteronomy 32:17 ) ( 1 Corinthians 10:20 ) and not lambs and rams, sheep, goats, and bullocks, but their sons and daughters; which they not only caused to pass through the fire to Moloch, which was a lustration of them by the flame, or causing them to pass between two fires; but they sacrificed them to be devoured, and actually burned them; see ( Jeremiah 7:31 ) ( Ezekiel 16:20 Ezekiel 16:21 ) . From whence we may see of what a hardening nature sin is, and how by degrees persons may be brought to commit things the most shocking to nature, and which they some time before shuddered at. First, these Israelites mix themselves with the Heathens they spared, whom they should have destroyed; then they learn, by being among them, to do as they did, to walk in the vanity of their minds like them; and then they are enticed to serve their idols, and at last to sacrifice their sons and daughters to devils; which was no other than murder, and that of the most heinous nature: as follows.