Moloch

Abstract Moloch is a variant LXX transliteration for the BH mōlek. The latter occurs eight times in the MT and refers to an originally Canaanite god to whom children were burned in sacrifice especially during the Divided Kingdom, almost exclusively in a cultic structure called the “Tophet” in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Gehenna) south of Jerusalem. Since 1935, however, scholars beginning with O. Eissfeldt have argued from archeological, inscriptional, and ancient literary evidence that the biblical Moloch was originally not a god but a specific sort of cultic child sacrifice. Other scholars argue that Moloch was indeed a chthonic deity to whom children were offered for some divinatory purpose.