Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God,.... Not serve and worship him after the manner of the Gentiles, nor introduce their rites and customs into his service, used by them in the worship of their gods:for every abomination which he hateth have they done unto their gods; as murder, adultery, &c.
which God has expressed his aversion to, and indignation at; one instance of the former sort is given here:for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods; not only men have they sacrificed to them, but such near relations; and not only caused them to pass through the fire, but burnt them in it; so the Carthaginians are said to do, who learned this inhuman practice from the Phoenicians; they were a colony of the inhabitants of this land of Canaan.
Of the Phoenicians Porphyry says , that in great calamities, as war or pestilence, they sacrificed to Saturn some one of those that were dearest to them, appointed by suffrage. The Phoenician history, adds he, is full of such sacrifices, which Sanchoniatho wrote in the Phoenician language; and Curtius says , this custom of sacrificing a fine boy to Saturn was received by the Carthaginians from their founders (the Tyrians and Phoenicians), and which they continued even to the destruction of their city.
De Abstinentia, l. 2. sect. 56. Hist. l. 4. c.