or MOLECH, or MILCHÔM, the national god of the Ammonites, who dedicated their children to him, by making them "pass through the fire." There are various opinions concerning this method of consecration. Some think that the children leaped over a fire sacred to Moloch; others are of opinion that they passed between two fires; and others conceive that they were really burned in the fire by way of sacrifice to this god. That the latter opinion is the only tenable one may be shown from such passages as Ps. cvi. 38; Jer. vii. 31; Ezek. xvi.20, xxiii.37. It cannot be precisely ascertained at what period the Israelites became acquainted with this idolatry, but it is highly probable that it was before the time of Solomon, the date usually assigned for its introduction.

Moses in several places forbids the Israelites to dedicate their children to this god, as the Ammonites did, and threatens death and utter extirpation to such persons as should commit this abominable idolatry. (Lev. xx. 1-5.) There is great probability that the Hebrews were much addicted to the worship of this deity; since Amos (v. 26), and after him Stephen (Acts vii. 43), reproaches them with having carried along with them into the wilderness the tabernacle of their god Moloch.

Solomon built a temple to Moloch upon Mount Olivet (1 Kings xi. 7); and Manasseh, long afterwards, imitated his impiety by making his son pass through the fire in honour of Moloch. It was chiefly in the valley of Tophet and Hinnom, to the east of Jerusalem, that the Israelites paid their idolatrous worship to this false god of the Ammonites. After the restoration all traces of this idolatry disappear.

The accounts of this idol and his worship found in the Old Testament are very scanty. Münter has collected the testimonies of the classical writers on this point with great completeness, in his Religion der Karthagener. Many of these notices, however, only describe late developments of the primitive rites; the description, e.g., of the image of Moloch 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 furnace beneath. This account, which is first found in Diodorus Siculus as referring to the Carthaginian Kpôvov, was subsequently adopted by Jarchi and others, but is not admitted by Movers, to apply to the Moloch of the Old Testament.

The names of Moloch ("king") and Baal ("lord") are almost synonymous. Their connection is seen by comparing Jer. xxxiii. 35 with xix. 5; where both names are used as if they were interchangeable, and where human sacrifices are ascribed to both deities. Baal is the chief name by which the principal god of the Phoenicians is known in the Old Testament; but only the two above-cited passages ascribe to him the sacrifice of human victims. The Greek, and Latin authors, however, give abundant testimony to the human sacrifices which the Phoenicians and their colonies offered to their principal god, in whom these classical writers have almost always recognised their own Kpôvov and Saturn. Thus we are brought to the difficulty of reconciling Moloch, 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, Moloch 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.