Idols Under the Leafy Trees

… the One who would set you in order for godliness through the commands of the Gospel.

“You who urge others on to the idols under leafy trees, slaughtering their children in the ravines among the rocks: that is your portion, this is your lot. To them you poured out drink offerings, and to them you offered up sacrifices. Shall I not be angry at these things? On a high and lofty mountain, there is your bed, and there you brought up sacrifices; and behind the posts of your door you set your memorial” (Isaiah 57:5–8).

Having shown them to be killers of the Lord, he shows that their God-hating sickness and their readiness for bloodshed were nothing new in them, but had been in them for a long time, from of old. “For you are the ones,” he says, “who in the times of old urged others on to the idols under leafy trees.”

The Law given through Moses awarded them what was good for them and said plainly, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10; compare Deuteronomy 6:13). Yet they slid into such madness, or rather into a godlessness unrestrained and beyond all measure, that they became makers of idols, offered sacrifice to them, and urged others, that is, taught them, to worship under leafy trees and to crown the idols with honors fit only for God.

The God of all makes this plain through the voice of Jeremiah, saying: “Have you seen what the house of Israel has done to me? They went up on every high mountain and under every leafy tree, and there they prostituted themselves” (Jeremiah 3:6). For they took over the mountain peaks and the most flowering parts of the groves, built altars and sacred precincts, and brought sacrifices and drink offerings there to the unclean demons. And there were some who did not spare even their own children. Jechonias, indeed, slaughtered his own son to gods that do not exist.

God himself said this somewhere through one of the holy prophets, exposing the cruelty of those who were used to doing such things: “Sacrifice human beings, for the calves have run out” (Hosea 13:2).

“You, then,” he says, “are the ones who urge others on to the idols, slaughtering their children under leafy trees in the ravines among the rocks.” What then follows? “That is your portion, this is your lot.” “You have worshiped empty things,” he says, “and you will have a portion like them, and your lot will be empty.”

Or perhaps he means this: “You slaughtered their children in the ravines,” he says. “So that is your portion, this is your lot”; that is, you will be caught in the same evils, and slaughter will become your portion and lot. For what reason? First, because you became a killer of children; then, because you poured out drink offerings to unclean demons and lifeless idols, and offered up sacrifices to them. So then, at these things shall I not be angry …