MOLOCH, or rather MOLECH (Obri, always with the article, except in 1 Kings xi. 7). The Septuagint most frequently render it as an appella tive, by 6 dpxwp or pacrAelis ' • but they also write 3IoX6X, as Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, appear to have generally done. \Vhatever reasons there may be for doubting whether llIalehelm is a name of this god, or is merely their king,' in a civil sense, in Amos i. 15 ; Zeph. i. 5 (on which see the notes of Hitzig, Die xii. K7einen Propheten), yet the context, in Jer. xlix. r, seems to require that it should there denote this god, as indeed the Septuagint and Syriac versions have expressed it. But MilchSin—which Movers considers to be an Aramaic pronunciation of Ma/chant, Le., to be an appellative, their king,' in a theocratical sense (Die Phonizier, i. 358)—is evidently a name of this god (comp. t Kings xi. 5 and 7). [MALcHam.] Molech is chiefly found in the O. T. as the national god of the Ammonites, to whom children were sacrificed by fire. There is some difficulty in ascertaining at what period the Israelites became acquainted with this idolatry ; yet three reasons render it probable that it was before the time of Solomon, the date usually assigned for its introduc tion. First, Molech appears—if not under that name, yet under the notion that we attach to it— to have been a principal god of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, whose other idolatries the Israel ites confessedly adopted very early. Secondly, There are some arguments which tend to connect Molech with Baal, and, if they be tenable, the worship of Molech might be essentially as old as that of the latter. Thirdly, If we assume, as there is much apparent ground for doing, that wherever human sacrifices are mentioned in the O. T. we are to understand them to be offered to Molech the apparent exception of the gods of Sepharvairn being only a stronger evidence of their identity with him—then the remarkable passage in Ezek. xx. 26 (cf. ver. 31) clearly shows that the Israelites sacrificed their first-born by fire, when they were in the wilderness.* Moreover, those who ascribe the Per.tateuch to Moses will recognise both the early existence of the worship of this god, and the apprehension of its contagion, in that express prohibition of his bloody rites which is found in Lev. xx. 1-5. Nevertheless, it is for the first time directly stated that Solomon erected a high place for Molech on the Mount of Olives (1 Kings xi. 7) ; and from that period his worship continued uninterruptedly there, or in Tophet, in the valley of Hinnom, until Josiah defiled both places (2 Kings xxiii. to, 13). Jehoahaz, however, the son and successor of Josiah, again did what was evil in the sight of Jehovah, according to all that his fathers had done' (2 Kings xxiii. 32). The same broad condemnation is made against the succeed ing kings, Jehoiakim, Jelioiachin, and Zedekiah ; and Ezekiel, writing during the captivity, says, Do you, by offering your gifts, and by making your sons pass through the fire, pollute yourselves with all your idols until this day, and shall I be inquired of by you ?' (xx. 31). After the restoration, all
traces of this idolatry disappear.
It has been attempted to explain the terms in which the act of sacrificing children is described in the O. T. so as to make them mean a mere passing between two fires, without any risk of life, for the purpose of purification. This theory—which owes its origin to a desire in some Rabbins to lessen the mass of evidence which their own history offers of the perverse idolatries of the Jews—is effectually declared untenable by such passages as Ps. cvi. 3S ; Jer. vii. 31 ; Ezek. xvi. 20 ; xxiii. 37 ; the last two of which may also be adduced to show that the victims were slaughtered before they were burned.
As the accounts of this idol and his worship found in the O. T. are very scanty, the more detailed notices which Greek and Latin writers give of the bloody rites of the Phoenician colonies acquire peculiar value. Miinter has collected these testimonies with great completeness, in his Religion der Karthager. Many of these notices, however, only describe late developments of the primitive rites. Thus the description of the image of Molech as a brazen statue, which was heated red hot, and in the outstretched arms of which the child was laid, so that it fell down into the flaming fur nace beneath—an account which is first found in Diodorus Siculus, as referring to the Carthaginian KpOvos, but which was subsequently adopted by Jarchi and others—is not admitted by Movers to apply to the Molech of the O. T.
The connection between Molech and Baal—the very names, as meaning king' and lord,' being almost synonymous—is seen in comparing Jer. xxxii. 35 with xix. 5, in which both names are used as if they were interchangeable, and in which human sacrifices are ascribed to both. Another argument might be drawn from Jer. iii. 24, it which Habbosheth, ' shame,' is said to have devoure their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters. Now, as Bosheth is found in the names lsh. bosheth and Jerubbesheth, to alternate with Baal, as if it was only a contemptuous perversion of it, it would appear that human sacrifices are here again ascribed to Baal. Further, whereas Baal is the chief name under which we find the principal god of the Phoenicians in the O. T., and whereas only the two above-cited passages mention the human victims of Baal, it is remarkable that the Greek and Latin authors give abundant testimony to the human sacrifices which the Phoenicians and their colonies offered to their principal god, in whom the classical writers have almost always recog nised their own Kp6vos and Saturn. Thus we are again brought to the difficulty, alluded to above [BAAL], of reconciling Molech as Saturn with Baal as the sun and Jupiter. In reality, however, this difficulty is in part created by our association of classical with Semitic mythology. When regarded apart from such foreign affinities, Molech and Baal may appear as the personifications of the two powers which give and destroy life, which early religions regarded as not incompatible phases of the same one God of nature.—J. N.