https://allthatsinteresting.com/moloch
An illustration from Charles Foster’s 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, depicting an offering to Moloch.
“Topheth is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”
Condemned by biblical prophets and Roman senators alike, few pagan deities were as reviled as Moloch, a god whose bronze body was a furnace used for sacrificing children.
Open child sacrifice is non-existent today — hopefully — but that hasn’t always been the case. In ancient times, it was commonly associated with people hoping for greater fertility for either a person or the land but one cult stands out from the rest: the cult of Moloch, the Canaanite god of child sacrifice.
The cult of Moloch — who is also called Molech — is said to have boiled children alive in the bowels of a big, bronze statue with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Offerings, at least according to the Hebrew Bible, were to be reaped through either fire or war — and devotees can still be found today.
Leviticus chapter 20:1-9
Eating Children
Blood_libel.pdf 23 Pages
