Molech

Molech is the recipient of the child-sacrifice cult carried out at the Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where, the sources charge, worshippers 'passed their children through the fire'. The name is written mōleḵ, the word for king pointed with the vowels of the word for shame, and it is linked with Milcom, the national god of the Ammonites whose high place Solomon is said to have built and Josiah to have defiled. The law-codes of Leviticus and the prophets condemn the rite in the strongest terms as polluting the sanctuary and profaning the divine name. Scholars debate whether the term denotes a distinct deity at all or, following Eissfeldt's reading of Punic evidence, a technical term for a type of sacrifice; the tradition itself treats it as a god.

Domains

• child sacrifice
• underworld kingship

Powers

• receives children passed through the fire at the Topheth

Epithets

• מִלְכֹּם שִׁקֻּץ בְּנֵי עַמּוֹן — Milcom, the abomination of the AmmonitesHebrew Bible, 1 Kings 11:5, 7 (primary)

Sources

• Molech is a deity or sacrificial cult associated with child offering at the Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom, condemned by the law and the prophets and linked with the Ammonite god Milcom.: Hebrew Bible, Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35; 1 Kings 11:7 (primary); John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (1989) (secondary)
• Whether mlk names a god or a kind of sacrifice is disputed, following Otto Eissfeldt's identification of Punic mulk offerings.: Otto Eissfeldt, Molk als Opferbegriff im Punischen und Hebräischen (1935) (secondary)