Molech, Moloch
Molech, Moloch
MOLECH, MOLOCH.A deity worshipped by the Israelites, especially by the people of Judah, towards the close of the monarchy. Melech (king) was evidently the title of this god; and the present form is due to the combination of the original consonants with the vowels of bsheth (shame). The passages in which reference to this divinity is probably found are Lev 18:21; Lev 20:2-5, 1Ki 11:7, 2Ki 23:10, Isa 30:33; Isa 57:9, Jer 32:35. The chief feature of the worship seems to have been the sacrifice of children. Its special centre was just outside Jerusalem, at a place in the Valley of Hinnom called the Topheth (which see). The cult was introduced, according to 1Ki 11:7, by Solomon. If the reference here is an error (see below), Ahaz may have1 been the innovator (2Ki 16:3). At any rate, it flourished in the 7th cent. b.c., as we gather from prophetic denunciation and the legislation of Deuteronomy. Manasseh sacrificed his son (2Ki 21:6). Josiah suppressed the worship and defiled Topheth. But under Jehoiakim this worship revived, and continued till the Captivity.
As to the identity of Melech, there is an interesting question. Very ancient tradition identifies him with Milcom (wh. see), the national god of Ammon. But the only basis for this view which the Heb. text of the OT furnishes is 1Ki 11:7, and the Gr. VSS [Note: SS Versions.] offer evidence that the original reading in this passage may have been Milcom, as in 1Ki 11:5 and 1Ki 11:3. On the other hand, we are told that, while Melech was worshipped at Topheth, the sanctuary of Milcom was on the Mount of Olives (2Ki 23:13). Moreover, this cult seems to have been regarded as Canaanitish in origin (Deu 12:28-31; Deu 18:9-14). Again, we learn from many sources that the most atrocious child-sacrifice was a prominent feature in the public religion of the Phnicians, both in their Palestinian homeland and in Carthage; and in this connexion we find constant reference to the pit of fire into which the victims were cast (see Topheth). Among other Semitic peoples also there are occasional instances of the offering of children, but not as a regular practice such as we are considering.
Melech is a title of many Semitic deities, and in the OT is frequently applied to Jahweh. We find that the object of this worship is also called Baal (master) (Jer 19:5; Jer 32:35). This is likewise a title of numerous Semitic divinities, and is sometimes used of Jahweh (see Baal). When the name Baal is used in the OT with specific reference to a particular god, it means Melkarth of Tyre (1Ki 16:32, 2Ki 3:2; 2Ki 8:18; 2Ki 8:27; 2Ki 10:18-27; 2Ki 11:18). The prophets undoubtedly regarded the cult as foreign, and as an apostasy to heathenism. But does this necessarily prove that Melech was a false god? Jeremiahs protest that Jahweh had not required these sacrifices (Jer 7:31; Jer 19:5; Jer 32:35) would seem to imply that the people did not regard this as the worship of another god. Indeed, Ezekiel goes further, and claims that Jahweh Himself gave them these statutes that are not good, and sacrifices of the firstborn, because they had rejected purer worship (Eze 20:25 f., Eze 20:31). On the whole, the evidence seems to indicate that this cultus was due to Phnician influence, and was introduced because of popular misunderstanding of the laws relating to the giving of the firstborn to Jahweh. The origin of such a cult, together with a possible more or less complete identification with Melkarth, would explain the constant use of the titles Melech and Baal rather than the name Jahweh.
W. M. Nesbit.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Molech, Moloch
molek, molok (, ha-molekh, always with the article, except in 1Ki 11:7; Septuagint , ho Moloch, sometimes also , Molchom, , Melchol; Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) Moloch):
1.The Name
2.The Worship in Old Testament History
3.The Worship in the Prophets
4.Nature of the Worship
5.Origin and Extent of the Worship
LITERATURE
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 (1Ki 11:5, 1Ki 11:7), or Malcam (Malcan is an alternative reading in 2Sa 12:30, 2Sa 12:31; compare Jer 49:1, Jer 49:3; Zep 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, Amo 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 (Act 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 (Lev 18:21; Lev 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 (Deu 12:31; Deu 18:10-13). The references to Malcam, and to David’s causing the inhabitants of Rabbath Ammon to pass through the brick kiln (2Sa 12:30, 2Sa 12:31), 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 (1Ki 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 (2Ki 23:12-14). Molech-worship had evidently received a great impulse from Ahaz, who, like Ahab of Israel, was a supporter of foreign religions (2Ki 16:12 ff). 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 (2Ki 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 (2Ki 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 (2Ki 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 (Amo 1:15; Amo 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 (Isa 30:33; Isa 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? (Mic 6:6 ff). 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 (Jer 32:35; compare Jer 7:31 ff; Jer 19:5 ff). 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 (Jer 49:1, Jer 49:3). 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 (Eze 16:20 f; Eze 20:26, Eze 20:31; Eze 23:37). That this prophet regarded the practice as among the statutes that were not good, and ordinances wherein they should not live (Eze 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 (Zep 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 (Eze 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 (Ps 106), it is only referred to in retrospect (Psa 106:37, Psa 106:38).
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 (Ezek 8). A priesthood is spoken of as attached to the services (Jer 49:3; compare Zep 1:4, Zep 1:5). 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 (Jer 19:5; Eze 16:20, Eze 16:21).
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 f, 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 (1Ki 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 ff; Buchanan Gray, Hebrew Proper Names, 138 ff.
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