the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Molech
Morrish Bible Dictionary
or This is the Fire-god, 'the abomination of Ammon.' In the latter days of Solomon, when the heathen women whom he had married had turned away his heart after other gods, he built a high place in the hill before (that is, 'east of') Jerusalem for Molech. The Israelites sacrificed their children to this idol. Passing their children through the fire might seem to imply that they were dedicated to the idol by being rapidly passed through a fire without being burnt, and this may have been done, but some passages do not admit of this interpretation. Of the Canaanites it is said, "their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods," Deuteronomy 12:31; and of Israel it is recorded, they have "caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them, . . . . for when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it." Ezekiel 23:37,39; Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35 .
The expression 'the tabernacle of your Molech,' Amos 5:26 , is quoted in Acts 7:43,44 . The Israelites had not worshipped Jehovah for forty years in the wilderness; but they had carried symbols of Molech and Chiun (or Remphan) and worshipped them. The root of their idolatrous course was that they had never in heart made a clean break from Egypt.
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Morrish, George. Entry for 'Molech'. Morrish Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/mbd/m/molech.html. 1897.
