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Easton's Bible Dictionary
(FROM MOLOCH) king, The name of the national god
of the Ammonites, to whom children were sacrificed by fire. He was the consuming
and destroying and also at the same time the purifying fire. In Amos 5:26 , "your
Moloch" of the Authorized Version is "your king" in the Revised Version (Compare
Acts 7:43 ). Solomon ( 1 Kings 11:7 ) erected a high place for this idol on the
Mount of Olives, and from that time till the days of Josiah his worship continued
( 2 Kings 23:10 , 23:13 ). In the days of Jehoahaz it was partially restored,
but after the Captivity wholly disappeared. He is also called Molech ( Leviticus
18:21 ; 20:2 - 5 , etc.), Milcom ( 1 Kings 11:5 , 11:33 , etc.), and Malcham (
Zephaniah 1:5 ). This god became Chemosh among the Moabites.
Hitchcock's Dictionary of Bible Names
Moloch
Smith's Bible Dictionary
(king). The fire-god Molech was the tutelary deity of
the children of Ammon, and essentially identical with the Moabitish Chemosh. Fire-gods
appear to have been common to all the Canaanite, Syrian and Arab tribes, who worshipped
the destructive element under an outward symbol, with the most inhuman rites.
According to Jewish tradition, the image of Molech was of brass, hollow within,
and was situated without Jerusalem. "His face was (that) of a calf, and his hands
stretched forth like a man who opens his hands to receive (something) of his neighbor.
And they kindled it with fire, and the priests took the babe and put it into the
hands of Molech, and the babe gave up the ghost." Many instances of human sacrifices
are found in ancient writers, which may be compared with the description of the
Old Testament of the manner in which Molech was worshipped. Molech was the lord
and master of the Ammonites; their country was his possession, ( Jeremiah 49:1
) as Moab was the heritage of Chemosh; the princes of the land were the princes
of Malcham. ( Jeremiah 49:3 ; Amos 1:15 ) His priests were men of rank, ( Jeremiah
49:3 ) taking precedence of the princes. The priests of Molech, like those of
other idols, were called Chemarim. ( 2 Kings 23:5 ; Hosea 10:5 ; Zephaniah 1:4
)
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
mo'-lek, mo'-lok (ha-molekh, always with the article,
except in 1 Kings 11:7; Septuagint ho Moloch, sometimes also Molchom, Melchol;
Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) Moloch):
1. The Name:
The name of a heathen divinity whose worship figures largely in the later history
of the kingdom of Judah. As the national god of the Ammonites, he is known as
"Milcom" (1 Kings 11:5,7), or "Malcam" ("Malcan" is an alternative reading in
2 Samuel 12:30 , 31; compare Jeremiah 49:1 , 3 ; Zechariah 1:5, where the Revised
Version margin reads "their king"). The use of basileus, and archon, as a translation
of the name by the Septuagint suggests that it may have been originally the Hebrew
word for "king," melekh. Molech is obtained from melekh by the substitution of
the vowel points of Hebrew bosheth, signifying "shame." From the obscure and difficult
passage, Amos 5:26, the Revised Version (British and American) has removed "your
Moloch" and given "your king," but Septuagint had here translated "Moloch," and
from the Septuagint it found its way into the Acts (7:43), the only occurrence
of the name in the New Testament.
2. The Worship in Old Testament History:
In the Levitical ordinances delivered to the Israelites by Moses there are stern
prohibitions of Molech-worship (Leviticus 18:21 ; 20:2 - 5). Parallel to these
prohibitions, although the name of the god is not mentioned, are those of the
Deuteronomic Code where the abominations of the Canaanites are forbidden, and
the burning of their sons and daughters in the fire (to Molech) is condemned as
the climax of their wickedness (Deuteronomy 12:31 ; 18:10 - 13). The references
to Malcam, and to David's causing the inhabitants of Rabbath Ammon to pass through
the brick kiln (2 Samuel 12:30 , 31), are not sufficiently clear to found upon,
because of the uncertainty of the readings. Solomon, under the influence of his
idolatrous wives, built high places for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and
for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon. See CHEMOSH. Because of
this apostasy it was intimated by the prophet Ahijah, that the kingdom was to
be rent out of the hand of Solomon, and ten tribes given to Jeroboam (1 Kings
11:31 - 33). These high places survived to the time of Josiah, who, among his
other works of religious reformation, destroyed and defiled them, filling their
places with the bones of men (2 Kings 23:12 - 14). Molech-worship had evidently
received a great impulse from Ahaz, who, like Ahab of Israel, was a supporter
of foreign religions (2 Kings 16:12). He also "made his son to pass through the
fire, according to the abominations of the nations, whom Yahweh cast out from
before the children of Israel" (2 Kings 16:3). His grandson Manasseh, so far from
following in the footsteps of his father Hezekiah, who had made great reforms
in the worship, reared altars for Baal, and besides other abominations which he
practiced, made his son to pass through the fire (2 Kings 21:6). The chief site
of this worship, of which Ahaz and Manasseh were the promoters, was Topheth in
the Valley of Hinnom, or, as it is also called, the Valley of the Children, or
of the Son of Hinnom, lying to the Southwest of Jerusalem (see GEHENNA). Of Josiah's
reformation it is said that "he defiled Topheth .... that no man might make his
son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech" (2 Kings 23:10).
3. The Worship in the Prophets:
Even Josiah's thorough reformation failed to extirpate the Molech-worship, and
it revived and continued till the destruction of Jerusalem, as we learn from the
prophets of the time. From the beginning, the prophets maintained against it a
loud and persistent protest. The testimony of Amos (1:15 ; 5:26) is ambiguous,
but most of the ancient versions for malkam, "their king," in the former passage,
read milkom, the national god of Ammon (see Davidson, in the place cited.). Isaiah
was acquainted with Topheth and its abominations (Isaiah 30:33 ; 57:5). Over against
his beautiful and lofty description of spiritual religion, Micah sets the exaggerated
zeal of those who ask in the spirit of the Molech-worshipper: "Shall I give my
firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
(Micah 6:6). That Molech-worship had increased in the interval may account for
the frequency and the clearness of the references to it in tile later Prophets.
In Jeremiah we find the passing of sons and daughters through the fire to Molech
associated with the building of "the high places of Baal, which are in the Valley
of the Son of Hinnom" (Jeremiah 32:35; compare 7:31; 19:5). In his oracle against
the children of Ammon, the same prophet, denouncing evil against their land, predicts
(almost in the very words of Amos above) that Malcam shall go into captivity,
his priests and his princes together (Jeremiah 49:1 , 3). Ezekiel, speaking to
the exiles in Babylon, refers to the practice of causing children to pass through
the fire to heathen divinities as long established, and proclaims the wrath of
God against it (Ezekiel 16:20 ; 20:26 , 31 ; 23:37). That this prophet regarded
the practice as among the "statutes that were not good, and ordinances wherein
they should not live" (Ezekiel 20:25) given by God to His people, by way of deception
and judicial punishment, as some hold, is highly improbable and inconsistent with
the whole prophetic attitude toward it. Zephaniah, who prophesied to the men who
saw the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah, denounces God's judgments upon the
worshippers of false gods (Zechariah 1:5 f). He does not directly charge his countrymen
with having forsaken Yahweh for Malcam, but blames them, because worshipping Him
they also swear to Malcam, like those Assyrian colonists in Samaria who feared
Yahweh and served their own gods, or like those of whom Ezekiel elsewhere speaks
who, the same day on which they had slain their children to their idols, entered
the sanctuary of Yahweh to profane it (Ezekiel 23:39). The captivity in Babylon
put an end to Molech-worship, since it weaned the people from all their idolatries.
We do not hear of it in the post-exilic Prophets, and, in the great historical
psalm of Israel's rebelliousness and God's deliverances (Psalms 106), it is only
referred to in retrospect (Psalms 106:37 , 38).
4. The Nature of the Worship:
When we come to consider the nature of this worship it is remarkable how few details
are given regarding it in Scripture. The place where it was practiced from the
days of Ahaz and Manasseh was the Valley of Hinnom where Topheth stood, a huge
altar-pyre for the burning of the sacrificial victims. There is no evidence connecting
the worship with the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel's vision of sun-worshippers
in the temple is purely ideal (Ezekiel 8). A priesthood is spoken of as attached
to the services (Jeremiah 49:3 ; compare Zechariah 1:4,5). The victims offered
to the divinity were not burnt alive, but were killed as sacrifices, and then
presented as burnt offerings. "To pass through the fire" has been taken to mean
a lustration or purification of the child by fire, not involving death. But the
prophets clearly speak of slaughter and sacrifice, and of high places built to
burn the children in the fire as burnt offerings (Jeremiah 19:5 ; Ezekiel 16:20
, 21).
The popular conception, molded for English readers largely by Milton's "Moloch,
horrid king" as described in Paradise Lost, Book I, is derived from the accounts
given in late Latin and Greek writers, especially the account which Diodorus Siculus
gives in his History of the Carthaginian Kronos or Moloch. The image of Moloch
was a human figure with a bull's head and outstretched arms, ready to receive
the children destined for sacrifice. The image of metal was heated red hot by
a fire kindled within, and the children laid on its arms rolled off into the fiery
pit below. In order to drown the cries of the victims, flutes were played, and
drums were beaten; and mothers stood by without tears or sobs, to give the impression
of the voluntary character of the offering (see Rawlinson's Phoenicia, 113, for
fuller details).
On the question of the origin of this worship there is great variety of views.
Of a non-Sem origin there is no evidence; and there is no trace of human sacrifices
in the old Babylonian religion. That it prevailed widely among Semitic peoples
is clear.
5. Origin and Extent of the Worship:
While Milcom or Malcam is peculiarly the national god of the Ammonites, as is
Chemosh of the Moabites, the name Molech or Melech was recognized among the Phoenicians,
the Philistines, the Arameans, and other Semitic peoples, as a name for the divinity
they worshipped from a very early time. That it was common among the Canaanites
when the Israelites entered the land is evident from the fact that it was among
the abominations from which they were to keep themselves free. That it was identical
at first with the worship of Yahweh, or that the prophets and the best men of
the nation ever regarded it as the national worship of Israel, is a modern theory
which does not appear to the present writer to have been substantiated. It has
been inferred from Abraham's readiness to offer up Isaac at the command of God,
from the story of Jephthah and his daughter, and even from the sacrifice of Hiel
the Bethelite (1 Kings 16:34), that human sacrifice to Yahweh was an original
custom in Israel, and that therefore the God of Israel was no other than Moloch,
or at all events a deity of similar character. But these incidents are surely
too slender a foundation to support such a theory. "The fundamental idea of the
heathen rite was the same as that which lay at the foundation of Hebrew ordinance:
the best to God; but by presenting to us this story of the offering of Isaac,
and by presenting it in this precise form, the writer simply teaches the truth,
taught by all the prophets, that to obey is better than sacrifice--in other words
that the God worshipped in Abraham's time was a God who did not delight in destroying
life, but in saving and sanctifying it" (Robertson, Early Religion of Israel,
254). While there is no ground for identifying Yahweh with Moloch, there are good
grounds for seeing a community of origin between Moloch and Baal. The name, the
worship, and the general characteristics are so similar that it is natural to
assign them a common place of origin in Phoenicia. The fact that Moloch-worship
reached the climax of its abominable cruelty in the Phoenician colonies of which
Carthage was the center shows that it had found among that people a soil suited
to its peculiar genius.
LITERATURE.
Wolf Baudissin, "Moloch" in PRE3; G. F. Moore, "Moloch" in EB; Robertson, Early
Religion of Israel, 241-65; Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 352; Buchanan
Gray, Hebrew Proper Names, 138.
T. Nicol.
Tags:
ammonites, bible commentary, bible history, bible reference, bible study, calf face, chemosh, children sacrificed, define, fire god, molech, outstretched arms
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