Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Milcom
The god of Ammon, a different god from Molech though English Bibles have blurred them.
1 Kings 11:5, in every translation this tool compares.
Ammon's god, and not the same god as Molech, though English Bibles have blurred the two for centuries. Solomon builds shrines for both inside one passage, which is the plainest sign they are not one god with two spellings.
The god of Ammon, distinct from Molech in the Hebrew, though English versions have blurred them for centuries. Solomon builds for both in the same passage. The distinctness is itself argued. One line of evidence (2 Kings 23:10 against 23:13, where Topheth and Molech and the Mount of Olives high place and Milcom are different sites with different rites) points to two gods, while another treats Melech and Milcom as originally one Ammonite god's name, used differently at different sanctuaries, with translation flattening whatever distinction survived. DDD comes down on the two-gods side: it says there is no proof, biblical or from the Ammonite inscriptions, that Milcom is another form of Molek, and it notes that child sacrifice is never offered to Milcom anywhere in the text, only to Molech.
H4445, 7 occ
- 1 Kings 11:5,33
- 2 Kings 23:13
- Jeremiah 49:1,3
- Zephaniah 1:5
- William Henry Bennett, "Molech, Moloch," *A Dictionary of the Bible* (Hastings), 3:415
- DDD s.v. "Milcom," 575-576
