In the Bible, a god of the Canaanites and other peoples, in whose cult children were sacrificed by fire. He is a rebel angel in Milton's Paradise Lost. The name is used for any excessive and cruel religion.
Moloch or Molech or Molekh representing Hebrew מלך mlk is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of sacrifice associated historically with Phoenician and related cultures in north Africa and the Levant.
Ba'al
Moloch the God Ba'al, the Sacred Bull, was widely worshipped in the ancient Near East and wherever Punic culture extended.
Hadad, Baal or simply the King identified the god within his cult.
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. 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.
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; The Septuagint reads Milcom in 1 Kings 11.7 instead of Moloch which suggests a scribal error in the Hebrew.
(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 Ba‘al of Tyre, Melqart 'king of the city' (who was probably the Ba‘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.
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.
Biblical texts
The pertinent Biblical texts follow in very literal translation.
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 20.2–5:
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;
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;
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;
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.
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.
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:
...
It seemed to many commentators that this Cronus or Saturn must also be Moloch. However, disturbingly, nineteenth century and early twentieth century archaeology found almost no evidence of a god called something like Moloch or Molech. Rabbinical traditions about other gods mentioned in the Tanach appeared to be unreliable, just Jewish legends which raised reasonable doubt about what was said about Moloch. The descriptions of Moloch might be simply taken from accounts of the sacrifice to Cronus and from the tale of the Minotaur. This did not hold back some from identifying Moloch with Milcom, with the Tyrian god Melqart, with Ba‘al Hammon to whom children were purportedly sacrificed, and with any other god called 'Lord' (Ba‘al) or (Bel).
Moloch in medieval texts
Like some other gods and demons found in the Bible, Moloch appears as part of medieval demonology, as a Prince of Hell.
It is likely that the motif of stealing children was inspired by the traditional understanding that babies were sacrificed to Moloch.
Moloch in Milton's Paradise Lost
In Milton's Paradise Lost, Moloch is one of the greatest warriors of the rebel angels, vengeful and militant,
"besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears."He is listed among the chief of Satan's angels in Book I, and is given a speech at the parliament of Hell in Book 2:43 - 105, where he argues for immediate warfare against God.
Modern research, theories and concepts
Flaubert's conception
Salammbô, a sensationalist semi-historical novel about Carthage by Gustave Flaubert published in 1888 was extraordinarily successful. But he also included the god Moloch, and made Moloch rather than Khamon to be the god to whom the Carthaginians offered children. From chapter 7:
Then further back, higher than the candelabrum, and much higher than the altar, rose the Moloch, all of iron, and with gaping apertures in his human breast.
Chapter 13 describes luridly how, in desperate attempt to call down rain, the image of Moloch was brought to the center of Carthage, how the arms of the image were moved by the pulling of chains by the priests (apparently Flaubert's own invention), and then describes the sacrifices made to Moloch.
The brazen arms were working more quickly. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!"
Director Giovanni Pastrone's very popular silent film Cabiria released in 1914 was largely based on Salammbo and included an enormous image of Moloch modeled on Flaubert's description.
Eissfeldt's theory: a type of sacrifice
In 1921 Otto Eissfeldt, excavating in Carthage, discovered inscriptions with the word mlk which in the context meant neither 'king' nor the name of any god.
Eissfeldt further concluded that the Hebrew writings were not talking about a god Moloch at all, but about the molk or mulk sacrifice, that the abomination was not in worshipping a god Molech who demanded children be sacrificed to him, but in the practice of sacrificing human children as a molk.
Similar "tophets" have since been found at Carthage and other places in North Africa, and in Sardinia, Malta, Sicily .
Further discussion of Eissfeldt's theories unfolded.
Discussion of Eissfeldt's theory
From the beginning there were some who doubted Eissfeldt's theory but opposition was only sporadic until 1970.
The arguments were that classical accounts of the sacrifices of children at Carthage were not numerous and were only particularly described as occurring in times of peril, not necessarily a regular occurrence.
Texts referring to the molk sacrifice mentioned animals more than they mentioned humans. And the Biblical decrying of the sacrificing of one's children as a molk sacrifice doesn't indicate one way or the other that all molk sacrifices must involve human child sacrifice or even that a molk usually involved human sacrifice.
It was pointed out the phrase whoring after was elsewhere only used about seeking other gods, not about particular religious practices.
Eissfeldt's use of the Biblical word tophet was criticized as arbitrary.
John Day, in his book Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (Cambridge, 1989; ISBN 0-521-36474-4), again put forth the argument that there was indeed a particular god named Molech, citing a god mlk from two Ugaritic serpent charms, and an obscure god Malik/Malku from some god lists who in two texts was equated with Nergal, the Mesopotamian god of the underworld. A god of the underworld is just the kind of god one might worship in the valley of Ben-Hinnom rather than on a hill top.
The debate remains hung, waiting for more evidence, some still strongly supporting Eissfeldt's theory and others decrying it as an erroneous interpretation of what has been found.
Moloch in popular culture and art
In an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a demon called Moloch The Corruptor is accidentally released on to the internet; It is possible, though not definite, that this Moloch is the same creature as the biblical Moloch.
Also see Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," where 'Moloch' is alluded to during (a better part of) the end of the long poem.
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