– Ba’al

Moloch the God Ba’al, the Sacred Bull, was widely worshipped in the ancient Near East and wherever Punic culture extended. Baal Moloch was conceived under the form of a calf or an ox or depicted as a man with the head of a bull.

Hadad, Baal or simply the King identified the god within his cult. The name Moloch is not the name he was known by among his worshippers, but a Hebrew translation. The written form Moloch (in the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament), or Molech (Hebrew), is no different than the word Melech or king, transformed by interposing the vowels of bosheth or ‘shameful thing’.

He is sometimes also called Milcom in the Old Testament (1 Kings 11:5, 1 Kings 11:33 , 2 Kings 23:13 and Zephaniah 1:5)

Forms and grammar

The Hebrew letters מלך (mlk) usually stands for melek ‘king’ (Proto-Northwest Semitic malku) but when vocalized as mōlek in Masoretic Hebrew text, they have been traditionally understood as a proper name Μολοχ (molokh) (Proto-Northwest Semitic Mulku) in the corresponding Greek renderings in the Septuagint translation, in Aquila, and in the Greek Targum. The form usually appears in the compound lmlk. The Hebrew preposition l- means ‘to’, but it can often mean ‘for’ or ‘as a(n)’. Accordingly one can translate lmlk as “to Moloch” or “for Moloch” or “as a Moloch”, or “to the Moloch” or “for the Moloch” or “as the Moloch”, whatever a “Moloch” or “the Moloch” might be. We also once find hmlk ‘the Moloch’ standing by itself.

Because there is no difference between mlk ‘king’ and mlk ‘moloch’ in unpointed text, interpreters sometimes suggest molek should be understood in certain places where the Masoretic text is vocalized as melek, and vice versa.

Moloch has been traditionally interpreted as the name of a god, possibly a god titled the king, but purposely misvocalized as Molek instead of Melek using the vowels of Hebrew bosheth ‘shame’.

Moloch appears in the Hebrew of 1 Kings 11.7 (on Solomon’s religious failings):

Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and lmlk, the abomination of the Sons of Ammon.

But in other passages the god of the Ammonites is named Milcom, not Moloch (see 1 Kings 11.33; Zephaniah 1.5). The Septuagint reads Milcom in 1 Kings 11.7 instead of Moloch which suggests a scribal error in the Hebrew. Many English translations accordingly follow the non-Hebrew versions at this point and render Milcom.

(The form mlkm can also mean ‘their king’ as well as Milcom and therefore one cannot always be sure in some other passages whether the King of Ammon is intended or the god Milcom.) It has also been suggested that the Baâ’al of Tyre, Melqart ‘king of the city’ (who was probably the Baâ’al whose worship was furthered by Ahab and his house) was this supposed god Moloch and that Melqart/Moloch was also Milcom the god of the Ammonites and identical with other gods whose names contain mlk. But nothing particularly suggests these identifications other than mlk in the various names.

Amos 5.27 reads in close translation:

But you shall carry Sikkut your king,

and Kiyyun, your images, the star-symbol of your god

which you made for yourself.

The Septuagint renders ‘your king’ as Moloch, perhaps from a scribal error, whence the verse appears in Acts 7.43:

You have lifted up the shrine of Molech

and the star of your god Rephan,

the idols you made to worship.

Accordingly this association of Moloch with these other gods is probably spurious.

All other references to Moloch use mlk only in the context of “passing children through fire lmlk”, whatever is meant by lmlk, whether it means “to Moloch” or means something else. It has traditionally been understood to mean burning children alive to the god Moloch. But some have suggested a rite of purification by fire instead, though perhaps a dangerous one. References to passing through fire without mentioning mlk appear in Deuteronomy 12.31, 18.10–13; 2 Kings 21.6; Ezekiel 20.26,31; 23.37. So the existence of this practice is well documented. For a comparable practice of rendering infants immortal by passing them through the fire, indirectly attested in early Greek myth, see the entries for Thetis and also the myth of Demeter as the nurse of Demophon.

Biblical texts

The pertinent Biblical texts follow in very literal translation. The word here translated literally as ‘seed’ very often means offspring. The forms containing mlk have been left untranslated. The reader may substitute either “to Moloch” or “as a molk”.

Leviticus 18.21

And you shall not let any of your seed pass through Mo’lech, neither shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 20.25:

Again, you shall say to the Sons of Israel: Whoever he be of the Sons of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that gives any of his seed Mo’lech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people; because he has given of his seed Mo’lech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he gives of his seed Mo’lech, and do not kill him, then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go astray after him, whoring after Mo’lech from among the people.

2 Kings 23.10 (on King Josiah’s reform):

And he defiled the Tophet, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire Mo’lech.

Jeremiah 32.35:

And they built the high places of the Ba’al, which are in the valley of Ben-hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire Mo’lech; which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.

Moloch has also been referred to simply as a rebel angel.

Traditional accounts and theories

The 12th-century rabbi Rashi, commenting on Jeremiah 7.31 stated:

Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.

A different rabbinical tradition says that the idol was hollow and was divided into seven compartments, in one of which they put flour, in the second turtle-doves, in the third a ewe, in the fourth a ram, in the fifth a calf, in the sixth an ox, and in the seventh a child, which were all burnt together by heating the statue inside.

Later commentators have compared these accounts with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the Punic city of Carthage, which was a Phoenician colony. Cleitarchus, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch all mention burning of children as an offering to Cronus or Saturn, that is to Ba’al Hammon, the chief god of Carthage. Issues and practices relating to Moloch and child sacrifice may also have been overemphasized for effect. After the Romans finally defeated Carthage and totally destroyed the city, they engaged in post-war propaganda to make their archenemies seem cruel and less civilized.

Paul G. Mosca in his thesis (described below) translates Cleitarchus’ paraphrase of a scholia to Plato’s Republic as:

There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the ‘grin’ is known as ‘sardonic laughter,’ since they die laughing.

Diodorus Siculus (20.14) wrote:

There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.

Diodorus also relates relatives were forbidden to weep and that when Agathocles defeated Carthage, the Carthaginian nobles believed they had displeased the gods by substituting low-born children for their own children. They attempted to make amends by sacrificing 200 children at once, children of the best families, and in their enthusiasm actually sacrificed 300 children.

Plutarch wrote in De Superstitiones 171:

… the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.

Lev.20:1-5 (NAB) The Lord said to Moses, (2) “Tell the Israelites : Anyone, whether an Israelite or an alien residing in Israel, who gives any of his offspring too Molech shall be put to death. Let his fellow citizens stone him. (3) I myself will turn against such a man and cut him off from the body of his people; for in giving his offspring to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. (4) Even if his fellow citizens connive at such a man’s crime of giving his offspring to Molech, and fail to put him to death, (