21 “‘You must not allow any of your offspring to be offered* to Moʹlech.+ You must not profane the name of your God in that way.+ I am Jehovah.

2 “You are to say to the Israelites, ‘Any man of Israel and any foreigner who resides in Israel who gives any of his offspring to Moʹlech should be put to death without fail.+ The people of the land should stone him to death.

16 In the 17th year of Peʹkah the son of Rem·a·liʹah, Aʹhaz+ the son of King Joʹtham of Judah became king.

3 Instead, he walked in the way of the kings of Israel,+ and he even made his own son pass through the fire,+ following the detestable practices of the nations+ that Jehovah had driven out from before the Israelites.

33 Ma·nasʹseh+ was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned for 55 years in Jerusalem.+

6 And he made his own sons pass through the fire+ in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom;+ he practiced magic,+ used divination, practiced sorcery, and appointed spirit mediums and fortune-tellers.+ He did on a grand scale what was bad in Jehovah’s eyes, to offend him.

31 They have built the high places of Toʹpheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom,*+ in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire,+ something that I had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’*+

26 I let them become defiled by their own sacrifices—when they made every firstborn child pass through the fire+—in order to make them desolate, so that they would know that I am Jehovah.”’