Moloch

9 Episodes

Moloch, also spelled Molech or Molek across translations, is a term from the Hebrew Bible commonly interpreted as the name of a Canaanite or Ammonite deity associated with child sacrifice, but understood by scholars as almost certainly a mistranslation of the consonantal root MLK, which referred to a specific category of votive offering rather than a proper divine name. The noun-reading was first systematically argued in 1935 by Otto Eissfeldt, who connected Hebrew MLK to the term mulk in Carthaginian inscriptions, where it clearly denotes a type of sacrifice rather than a god. The popular image of Moloch as a bronze bovine idol with a furnace for burning children derives from later literary imagination rather than ancient Near Eastern religious evidence.

Redirected from: Molech, Molek

Why this topic matters

The political right’s invocations of ‘Moloch’ as shorthand for abortion-as-child-sacrifice describe a deity that, by scholarly consensus, never existed — the term in the Hebrew Bible almost certainly denoted a category of votive offering rather than a proper divine name. The god-reading arose from a chain of ancient translation errors: Septuagint translators encountered the consonants MLK, lacked the Carthaginian epigraphic context to recognize a genre term, and inserted a proper name. A scribal slip in 1 Kings 11 compounded the confusion — when the final letter dropped from ‘Milcom’ (the actual Ammonite deity), the remaining MLK was read as yet another reference to the same non-existent figure.

The polemical problem runs deeper than a mistranslated noun. Scholarship following Eissfeldt’s 1935 thesis holds that if mulk sacrifice was practiced in ancient Israel, the recipient named in the biblical text was Adonai, not a foreign god. Exodus 22 commands the sacrifice of the firstborn alongside oxen and sheep; Ezekiel 20 has God acknowledge giving Israel commandments ’that were not good’ that caused them to pass their children over fire; Jephthah sacrifices his daughter with no divine rebuke. The entity deployed to condemn child sacrifice was, on the very texts invoked to condemn it, the recipient of the practice.

Where to start

Start here for the best in-depth listening on Moloch: featured segments, featured episodes, and the episode with the most mentions.

Quotes from the Data

“There was never any deity named Moloch that was worshiped in the ancient world, at least as near as we can tell. And the references in the Hebrew Bible to Moloch as a deity are actually just references to a word that refers to a specific type of sacrifice, a mulk sacrifice.”

Dan McClellan Episode 168

“Eissfeldt argued that no, it's the same term. And so this is really a type of sacrifice, not the name of a foreign monstrous god to whom the children are being sacrificed. And if that's the case, well then which deity is associated with the burning of babies in these biblical texts? It's Adonai.”

Francesca Stavrakopoulou Episode 2

“And so instead of 'Sakut your king,' you change the name of the deity to tent, and you change the word king to Moloch, because king in Hebrew is melek. And Moloch is just different vowels.”

Dan McClellan Episode 150

“Instead of saying this is an offering to Moloch, these passages should all be read as this is a molech offering. It is an offering as a molech or mulk or whatever.”

Dan McClellan Episode 168

Top episodes

Ranked by mentions of Moloch across the transcript. Start with the top mention above, then keep going here.

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Moloch.