The
following quote is taken from evilbible.com:
"Even
more peculiar is God's obsession with first-born sons. In Exodus 13:2 the
Lord said "Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb
among Israelites, both man and beast, for it belongs to me."
Later it says that you can redeem (replace) an ass with a sheep and that you
must redeem a child for an unspecified price. It is clear from the
context that "consecrate" means a burning sacrifice. These
priests are guilty of theft and kidnapping. Since any sins in the Old
Testament were punishable by death, these priests used the threat of death to
extort food and money from their followers. What do we call a scum-bag
that threatens to kill your kids unless you pay a ransom? A
kidnapper! If these priests were alive today they would be in prison with
Abraham."
Let us examine this passage, and others in the Torah that discuss the
dedication of firstborn males, both human and animal.
Evilbible.com claims that "it is clear from the context that 'consecrate'
means a burning sacrifice". The Hebrew word used in Exodus 13:2 is qadash, which means "to set apart,
consecrate, sanctify, be pure, separate, be holy" [1]. This differs
from the word that is normally used to describe a burnt offering: 'olah. It was not God's intention
that every firstborn human male was supposed to be sacrificed as a burnt
offering; rather, it was to set each firstborn male apart, dedicating them to
God. The sacrifice of a human child was forbidden; the Law clearly stated
that every firstborn son (and every unclean firstborn animal) had to be
redeemed with a price, not sacrificed (Exodus 13:15, 34:20; Numbers 18:15;
Deuteronomy 12:31, 18:10). The redemption price
was not unspecified; it was 5 shekels of silver, about 2 ounces (Numbers
18:16).
The reasoning behind this is given later in Exodus chapter 13: "In days to
come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty
hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. When Pharaoh
stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed the firstborn of both people
and animals in Egypt. This is why I sacrifice to the LORD the first male
offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’ And it will be
like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the LORD brought us
out of Egypt with his mighty hand” (Exodus
13:14-16).
The redemption of the firstborn sons was a permanent reminder to the Israelites
that God had spared their firstborn sons during the first Passover, when God
struck down all of the Egyptian firstborn males (Exodus 11-12). This was
partially in response to Pharaoh refusing to release the Israelites from
slavery, and partially because, years earlier, Pharaoh had commanded the murder
of thousands of Israelite baby boys (Exodus 1:8-22).
The purpose for redeeming a donkey with a sheep was because the donkey was
unclean, and unfit for sacrifice (Exodus 13:12-13; Numbers 18:15-17). All
clean firstborn animals were sacrificed as an offering to God.
References
[1]
Gesenius's Lexicon, Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (translated by
Samuel P. Tregelles), 1847
