The Demons Who Devour Babies

They sacrificed their sons
     and their daughters to the demons. (Psalm 106:37)

I’ve wondered if demons ever appear as bees. At night, my children sometimes come to me complaining that the bees are after them. “What bees?” I ask. “The bees right there,” they say, pointing insistently to the air.

Even if the riddle of these recurring events can be solved in the shared imaginations of my children, we know demons do exist. They harass, enslave, and stalk. These fallen angels, cursed with their captain, know their time is short — and so they rage (Revelation 12:12). Like a tiger held down by a strong man, Satan thrashes, bites, claws with every dying gasp. His kingdom swarms like a beehive pierced through by three nails.

That world knows a lake of fire is reserved for them — fallen angels have no gospel, no Christ to save them. So they content themselves to play cosmic arsonists, burning as much as they can before they fall.

Principalities and Powers

But Scripture reveals that they do not deploy their chaos from a grassroots resistance against the Almighty — they have had a hegemony over the nations. “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (Deuteronomy 32:8). The sons of God, which can refer to divine beings in the Old Testament, rule from above, influencing and governing the affairs of men, fostering the spirit of unbelief and idolatry — yet all under the permissive lordship and impending return of Christ.

Demons behind our politics. Demons behind false religions. Demons behind cultural madness. Demons throwing nation against nation in utter darkness, trying to snuff out the light of the gospel. Demons as bees, following, stinging.

“Demons stand behind the deaths.”

Moses, David, and Paul lived in this same world. A world where dark spirits acted. A world where such things as idols were not just blocks of wood transfigured by the fevered imaginations of men. Beings heard their praises and watched them bow before them.

Moses writes of Israel,

They stirred [the Lord] to jealousy with strange gods;
     with abominations they provoked him to anger.
They sacrificed to demons that were not God,
     to gods they had never known,
to new gods that had come recently,
     whom your fathers had never dreaded. (Deuteronomy 32:16–17)

Paul writes,

What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. (1 Corinthians 10:19–20)

The gods of the nations, though dealt the decisive blow by Christ (Colossians 2:15), continue to be what they have been — demons, harassing the souls of men and encouraging rebellion against God. Demons are alive today and manipulating a secularism that denies their existence.

Blood on the Altar

From Moses in the Old to Paul in the New, we see men sacrificing to “gods” and idols which are not divine but demonic. Paul speaks of offering food to them, but Psalm 106 mentions something far more treacherous.

They served their idols,
     which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons
     and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
     the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
     and the land was polluted with blood. (Psalm 106:36–38)

God’s people — not just the pagan savages — poured out the blood of their own sons and daughters to the idols of the nations, to demons. The land was polluted with blood. “They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jeremiah 32:35). Spilling the blood of one’s own children is so abominable that the Almighty says such an evil never even entered his mind, and he promises “the land shall become a waste,” devoid of joy and gladness, on account of it (Jeremiah 7:31–34).

God forbade such unutterable villainy and commanded his people not to tolerate any hint of such sacrifice.

Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to [the demon] Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech. (Leviticus 20:2–5)

Molech is most commonly the “god” in view with child sacrifice. Ironically, demonically, many of the child sacrifices in the ancient Near East were offered to fertility gods, who demanded a return on the goods they (allegedly) granted (cf. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, 53).

They burned some of their children to honor the supposed god who gave them children — in hopes of having more children. They killed their children to ensure the gods gave them more. Today our world kills its children in the womb and vows to be more careful to prevent conception next time. This — if walls matter in hell — is a distinction.

American Idol

Our world — and my own land — is polluted with far more blood than ancient Israel. Our altars are visited more religiously; devils here are better fed. Secularism allows wickedness to flourish without the statues, the ceremonies, or the idols. We destroy life without fearing any gods’ wrath. We sacrifice our children to our ambitions and comforts. We serve no god higher than ourselves; our evil stands unpropped by superstition.

Consider: Today, in just the United States, hundreds of babies will be vacuumed out of their mothers’ womb with a suction 29 times the power of a household vacuum cleaner. Hundreds of others will be cut up in the womb and extracted. Others will be given amniotic fluid that kills through salt poisoning and hemorrhaging of the brain. Mothers and fathers of the child will pay money for this. Insurance companies and tax money will fund the rest. Doctors will perform the assassination and go home to have dinner. Consciences will be seared. Little bodies of babies will be thrown away.

And behind this sophisticated barbarity will be something more sinister than flesh and blood. Demons — watching, smiling.

Our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly realms. They hate God’s image-bearers, body and soul. They love our ruin. They receive our child sacrifices, whether at the altar or in the abortion clinic. Demons stand behind the deaths. May God have mercy upon us.

Have we grown tired of praying and protesting and preaching? This battle needs spiritual men to fight it; the flesh will not prevail. So yes, work toward legal justice and stay earnest about confronting this evil, but the Supreme Court that we appeal to most must always be the very throne of God. At his feet, demons fall. At his feet, nations receive mercy to repent and believe.