Exodus 22:29, 13:2, and Leviticus 27:28-29 appear to require dedicating/devoting the firstborn; Jephthah literally sacrifices his daughter (Judges 11:31); Exodus 34:20 allows animal substitution for firstborn sons but does not explicitly prohibit child sacrifice; archaeology shows child sacrifice was regionally practiced.

This overlaps with a dedicated Child Sacrifice sheet elsewhere in this project, so only the essential points are given here. Exodus 22:29-30 and 13:2's 'give me the firstborn' language is qualified everywhere else in the Pentateuch by explicit redemption requirements: Exodus 13:13 and 34:20 require substituting/redeeming firstborn sons (and unclean animals) rather than sacrificing them, and Numbers 3:12-13 and 8:16-18 formally reassign the firstborn's dedicated status to the Levites' priestly service — the 'dedication' is cultic service, not slaughter. Leviticus 27:28-29's herem ('devoted things... put to death') is a distinct legal category concerning irrevocably banned enemy persons/property under the war-ban, not parental child sacrifice; conflating the two categories is a category error. Jephthah's vow and its fulfillment (Judges 11:31, 39) is narrated within a book that explicitly frames its era as moral chaos ('everyone did what was right in his own eyes,' Judg 21:25) — description, not divine command or endorsement; Jewish exegetical tradition (e.g., medieval commentators such as David Kimchi/Radak) has long read Jephthah's vow as rash and culpable. Explicit, repeated prohibitions of child sacrifice to Molech (Lev 18:21, 20:2-5, Deut 12:31, 18:10, 2 Kings 23:10, Jer 7:31, 19:5, 32:35) show the practice is consistently condemned as a foreign Canaanite/Phoenician import, and the archaeological tophets (e.g., Carthage) are Phoenician/Punic cultic sites, not Israelite ones.

The Torah's redemption-of-the-firstborn system (substituting an animal or payment) functions as a deliberate polemical alternative to the child sacrifice practiced by Israel's neighbors, memorializing the Exodus deliverance (Ex 13:14-15) while explicitly ruling out the literal offering that surrounding cultures practiced.