1. Table of the occurrences of Melech, etc., as divine names.—(a) Cases in which MT uses the pointing Molech to show that it regards Melech as the name of a false god. Ly 18% 202345 ἄρχων ; 1 Καὶ 117 A μελχό, B βασιλεύς, Luc. μελχόμ ; 2 K 23, Luc. μελχόμ ; Jer 32% τῷ Μολὸχ βασιλεῖ.
(δ) Cases in which Melech is pointed as a common noun ‘king’ by MT, but is regarded as a divine name by other authorities. Is 30% EV ‘the king,’ with LXX and Vulg.; Is 579 EV ‘ the king,’ with Vulg.; LXX has entirely different reading. In both, Cheyne, Duhm, Siegfried-Stade Πα Melech. In Am 7 EV ‘the king’s prone so LXX and Vulg., it has been sug- gested that ‘king’ should be Melech, but this is unprobable,
(c) Cases where MT points MLKM as the divine name, Milcom: 1 K 115%, τῷ βασιλεῖ αὐτῶν ; 2K 23 A ἀμελχόμ, B μολχόλ.
(d) Cases where MT points MLKM as Malcam, ‘their king’; but other authorities regard it as the divine name, Milcom: 2S 12% (=1 Ch 903) AV, RV ‘their king,’ so Vulg.; RVm Malcam, t.e. Milcom, so LXX; 1 Ch 20? AV, RV ‘their king,’ RVm Malcam, so LXX and Vulg.; Jer 49). " (cf. Am 15) AV, RVm ‘ their king,’ so Tear .; AVm Melcom, RV Malcam, so LXX μελχόλ, and Vulg. ; Am 1" (cf. Jer 49 #) EV ‘their king’ with LXX; but Aq., Symm., Vulg., and Syr. Melchom, etc. ;
Am 5* RV ‘your king,’ so Symm. and Theod.; AV ‘your Moloch,’ with LXX τοῦ Μολόχ ; Aq. and ΕΣ; Malchom; cf. ϑισοῦτη; Zeph 15 AV, RV Malc(h)am, so LXX MSS ap. Field, μολόχ, μελχόμ, Vulg. RVm ‘their king,’ LXX B, ete.
(6) Malean, in 2 S 12°, the reading of the Kethibh, 3250 MLKN, was probably intended to mean ‘he passed them through the fire to Melech’; but the reading }372 malbén, ‘ brick-kiln,’ of the Keré, i.e. as RVm ‘made them labour at the brick-kiln,’ is probably correct ; so Budde, H. P. Smith, LXX πλινθεῖον, Vulg. typo laterum.
li. Relation of the forms Melech, Milcom, etc., to one another.—Baethgen (Beitrdge, p. 15) maintains that though Milcom was originally only a dialectic variety of Molech, yet Molech and Milcom were re- garded as two distinct deities, and supports his contention by the statement in 2 K 231-8 that, at Topheth in the valley of the Béné Hinnom, ehil- dren were passed through the fire to Molech, while, opposite Jerusalem ‘on the right hand of the mount of corruption,’ the Mount of Olives, there was a high-place for Milcom. The argument im- plies that vy.'* 13 belong to the same source: thus
amphausen (Kautzsch’s 4 7) refers both to the Deuteronomic author of the pre-exilie Book of Kings. Benzinger (Kénige), however, refers them to different sources, and regards Melech (MT Molech) in 10 as a title of J” (cf. below). Melech and Milcom were originally variants of the name of the same deity, they are both applied to the god of Ammon; cf. 1 K 117 (Melech here may be a mistake), 2 Καὶ 23; but at different sanctuaries and among different peoples, one or other name may have been specially used, with the natural result that the Melech of one sanctuary or one people would be popularly distinguished from the Milcom of another. Malc(h)am and Malc(h)an (if read) are only mistaken pointings of Wilcom. The deity as worshipped by different peoples would be differentiated through various causes ; the sense of the special bond between the national god and the nation would encourage the view that this national god was not the same as any deity worshipped else- where ; this view would be supported by dialectic differences between the forms of the name, ¢.g. the Phenician Mi/k and the Ammonite Milcom, and by such expansions of the name as the Phoenician Melkart (=n7p 79> Milk of the City) and the Palmyrene Malachbel ; cf. below.
The references to Milcom (1 K 1158, 2 K 93:8. ef. Am 1156 above) and Molech (1 K 11’) as the ‘abomination’ or ‘god’ of the Ammonites, show that Milecom or Molech was the national god of Ammon, and stood to Ammon in the same special henotheistic relation in which Chemosh stood to Moab, and J” to Israel. The analogy suggests that in practice such a relation by no means ex- cluded the worship of other gods. But the ΕἾ in the name Padus, king of Ammon, on Senna- cherib’s ‘Taylor Prism’ inscription, is merely a general term for ‘ god,’ equivalent to Milcom ; and the same may be true of the baal in Baalis, king of Ammon, Jer 40. Baethgen, indeed ( Beitrage, Ρ. 16), suggests that Baalis is a compound of Baal and Jsis, either as a double name asserting the identity of the two, or with the meaning ‘Spouse of Isis,’ Isisgemahl. But Griitz explains Baalis as odyya ‘son of delight’ (Oxf. Heb. Lezx.). The reading o'Sy2 Baalim, of some MSS, and of Jos. (Ant. X. ix. 2), is clearly a mistake. No details of
the worship of Milcom are given; Jer 49 ‘his sriests and his princes’ implies that the priest- 100d was numerous and important. In 2S 12” the reference to Milcom’s crown weighing a talent implies the existence at Rabbah of a great statue