The Molok

• Leviticus 18:21 "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD."

• Leviticus 20:2: "Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones."

• Leviticus 20:3: "And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name."

• Leviticus 20:4: "And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not"

• Leviticus 20:5: "Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people."

• 2 Kings 23:10: "And he (King Josiah of Judah) defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech."

• Jeremiah 32:35: "And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin."

The Phoenicians were a Caananite people who were masters of the sea and conquered the world with trade. 

Their civilization was arranged in city states and it is unclear whether they considered themselves a single nation or not but, there name is a Greek word meaning purple, which was how they were referred to in various ports because of the purple dye that they made and traded. It was popular among royalty and hence became the color of royalty.

Some of there most famous cities were Tyre, where the dye came from, Byblos, which is what the bible is named after because of papyrus from Egypt which was made into paper, and then their was Carthage.

The Phoenicians may or may not have been the first to utilize colonization but they were certainly early pioneers of it for most likely the purpose of expanding trade. Carthage was one of those colonies and was established on the northern coast of Africa.

As I said before, the Phoenicians civilization was arranged in city states, self governing with their own kings in place. 

The spiritual beliefs of the Canaanite people are for the most part lost to history, eradicated by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but one that stands out in biblical text is the Molok. 

Molok was a term passed around through much of the ancient civilizations of the region and was sometime a proper name and other times it meant king. Phoenician religion was generally cognate to their neighbors and it is believed the Molok was derived from a Phoenician God derived from the Greek God Chronos which was the youngest of the titans and overthrown by his son Zeus. 

Phoenicia itself was located in modern day Lebanon and Carthage, in modern day Lybia. Carthage is most notable in Roman history. The Roman’s at one time were slaves to the Carthaginians until the Roman’s mastered seafaring and defeated them where they had been the stronger. 

A common motif in the verses mentioned before was concerning letting children pass through the fires of the Molok. A Roman historian once described the Molok as a furnace shaped like a horned God with arms outstretched. Children’s throats would be cut, then they would be laid into the outstretched hands of the deity to be consumed by the flames in the belly of the furnace. 

In regards to the scriptures from Leviticus I have to ask myself, how did the children of Israel, alone in the wilderness of the Sinai, come across a Canaanite God? The best answer I could come up with was ultimately quite a simple one, the Molok was already there.

As mentioned before, the Phoenicians conquered the world through trade. The Egyptians capitalized on slave labor to build their empire and we know from the story of Joseph, a slave who became a king, that the children of Israel, once revered by Egypt by the grace of Joseph became slaves themselves led into the Exodus by Moses. 

My theory, the children of Israel in Moses time encompasses all the slaves of Egypt descended from Jacob and incorporated through slaves traded into Egypt or taken by Egypt in conquest, serfdom, from many lands, or by any other means that someone would find themselves a slave.

In closing, I find myself looking through the eyes of these ancient Canaanite people and wondering what went through their minds to find a horde of nomadic slaves come from the wilderness to subjugate and overthrow a thriving civilization. 

Salutation pending 

Johnny R Draper