Moloch

Moloch, Molech, or Molek is a word which appears in the Hebrew Bible several times, primarily in the Book of Leviticus. The Greek Septuagint translates many of these instances as "their king", but maintains the word or name Moloch in others, including one additional time in the Book of Amos where the Hebrew text does not attest the name. The Bible strongly condemns practices that are associated with Moloch, which are heavily implied to include child sacrifice. Traditionally, the name Moloch has been understood as referring to a Canaanite god. However, since 1935, scholars have speculated that Moloch refers to the sacrifice itself, since the Hebrew word mlk is identical in spelling to a term that means "sacrifice" in the closely related Punic language. This second position has grown increasingly popular, but it remains contested. Among proponents of this second position, controversy continues as to whether the sacrifices were offered to Yahweh or another deity, and whether they were a native Israelite religious custom or a Phoenician import. Since the medieval period, Moloch has often been portrayed as a bull-headed idol with outstretched hands over a fire; this depiction takes the brief mentions of Moloch in the Bible and combines them with various sources, including ancient accounts of Carthaginian child sacrifice and the legend of the Minotaur. Beginning in the modern era, "Moloch" has been figuratively used in reference to a power which demands a dire sacrifice. A god Moloch appears in various works of literature and film, such as John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), Gustave Flaubert's Salammbô (1862), Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), and Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1955).

Etymology The etymology of Moloch is uncertain: a derivation from the root mlk, which means "to rule", is "widely recognized". Since it was first proposed by Abraham Geiger in 1857, some scholars have argued that the word "Moloch" has been altered by using the vowels of bōšet "shame". Other scholars have argued that the name is a qal participle from the same verb. R. M. Kerr criticizes both theories by noting that the name of no other god appears to have been formed from a qal participle, and that Geiger's proposal is "an out-of-date theory which has never received any factual support". Paul Mosca, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, similarly argued that "the theory that a form molek would immediately suggest to the reader or hearer the word boset (rather than qodes or ohel) is the product of nineteenth century ingenuity, not of Massoretic [sic] or pre-Massoretic tendentiousness". Scholars who do not believe that Moloch represents a deity instead compare the name to inscriptions in the closely related Punic language where the word mlk (molk or mulk) refers to a type of sacrifice, a connection first proposed by Otto Eissfeldt (1935). Eissfeldt himself, following Jean-Baptiste Chabot, connected Punic mlk and Moloch to a Syriac verb mlk meaning "to promise", a theory also supported as "the least problematic solution" by Heath Dewrell (2017). Eissfeldt's proposed meaning included both the act and the object of sacrifice. Scholars such as W. von Soden argue that the term is a nominalized causative form of the verb ylk/wlk, meaning "to offer", "present", and thus means "the act of presenting" or "thing presented". Kerr instead derives both the Punic and Hebrew word from the verb mlk, which he proposes meant "to own", "to possess" in Proto-Semitic, only later coming to mean "to rule"; the meaning of Moloch would thus originally have been "present", "gift", and later come to mean "sacrifice". The spelling "Moloch" follows the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate; the spelling "Molech" or "Molek" follows the Tiberian vocalization of Hebrew, with "Molech" used in the English King James Bible.

Biblical attestations

Masoretic Text

The word Moloch (מלך) occurs eight times in the Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew text of the Bible. Five of these are in Leviticus, with one in 1 Kings, one in 2 Kings and another in The Book of Jeremiah. Seven instances include the Hebrew definite article ha- ('the') or have a prepositional form indicating the presence of the definite article. All of these texts condemn Israelites who engage in practices associated with Moloch, and most associate Moloch with the use of children as offerings. Leviticus repeatedly forbids the practice of offering children to Moloch:

And thou shalt not give any of thy seed to set them apart to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. The majority of the Leviticus references come from a single passage of four lines:

Moreover, thou shalt say to the children of Israel: Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones. I also will set My face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people, because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, 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 giveth of his seed unto Molech, and put him not to death; 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, to go astray after Molech, from among their people. In 1 Kings, Solomon is portrayed as introducing the cult of Moloch to Jerusalem:

Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh the detestation of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestation of the children of Ammon. This is the sole instance of the name Moloch occurring without the definite article in the Masoretic text: it may offer a historical origin of the Moloch cult in the Bible, or it may be a mistake for Milcom, the Ammonite god (thus the reading in some manuscripts of the Septuagint). In 2 Kings, Moloch is associated with the tophet in the valley of Gehenna when it is destroyed by king Josiah:

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