For works that explore human sacrifice and ancient Israel, see John Day,
Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Alberto Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975); George C.
a series of essays that I wrote a few years ago, The
Molech Paradigm,
For example, no one, to my knowledge, demands our adherence to the ruling in Leviticus 18.21: "do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to
Molech." (11) Yet, the very next verse (18.22), "do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman," is in contemporary political discourse frequently cited in all earnestness as a prohibition whose violation is perceived as eroding the cultural identity of the country and, above all, as seriously immoral.
(36) The modern administrative state has become our altar to
Molech, demanding constant sacrifice.
What's more, Leviticus insists that anyone who knowingly permits child sacrifice ("giving offspring to
Molech") is as guilty as one who actually does it.
Yet somehow supernatural and demigodic "angels" and "demons" are presented as independent segments of metaphysical realm--as well as the 40 or so named gods in the Bible: Ashtoreth, Tammuz, Diana, Jupiter, Nehushtan, Remphan, Chemosh, Nisroch,
Molech, Rahab, and so on.
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for
Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah, the last of the pre-exilic prophets, bitterly complains: They placed their abominations in the House which bears My name and defiled it; and they built the shrines of Baal which are in the Valley of Benhinnom, where they offered up their sons and daughters to
Molech ...
Molech - god of the Canaanites and Phoenicians to whom parents sacrificed their children