Leviticus 18:21

21. Seed pass through the fire Those Semitic nations that burned their children upon the funeral pyre, when they would spare their lives let them pass through the fire. The word fire is supplied from Deuteronomy 18:10. This prohibits the burning of children in honour of Molech, or Moloch, the fire-god, called in Deuteronomy 12:31, simply elohim, gods. He was a Canaanitish god, easily identified by the philologist with Melkarth, Malcham, Baal-melech, and other such names as appear in Carthagenian and Phenician mythology. He was propitiated by the sacrifice of children. The service of this fire-god had spread in the lands bounding Egypt on the east. We infer from this rigid prohibition that this cultus had even at this time penetrated into the camp of Israel. Since idolatry is regarded as whoredom, it is appropriately mentioned in this connexion. See chap. xvii, note. Properly speaking, this worship symbolized the purification of the soul after destroying its earthly dross, and consequently its immortality. To sustain this horrid and unnatural practice the idolatrous Hebrews quoted Numbers 31:23. The children were first slain (Ezekiel 16:20-21) and then burned on a mound, built up in the valley of Hinnom, called, in Jeremiah 19:5, “the high places of Baal,” with whom Moloch is once identified. He is commonly identified with the Moabitish Chemosh. The name Moloch, written without the points, is the same as Melek, king, and is translated by the Seventy as a common noun, αρχων . This confusion of terms is supposed to cover up a widespread worship of this grim divinity. Thus Isaiah 30:33 may be read, “For Tophet is ordained of old, yea, for Moloch it is prepared.” Most of the Jewish interpreters have endeavoured to soften this worship by saying that the children were not burned, but made to pass between two burning pyres, as a purifying rite. But the slaughter of the innocents is evident from 2 Chronicles 28:3; Psalms 106:37-38; Jeremiah 7:31. Kimchi describes the image of Moloch as set within seven chapels, the outer ones being opened to those who brought annual sacrifices, but the inner one, enshrining the idol, was opened only to him who offered his son. This may explain the tabernacle of Moloch in Acts 7:43. According to Diodorus Siculus the hands of the image of the Carthagenian Kronos stretched forth like a man about to receive something of his neighbour. When it was heated with fire the priests took the babe and put it into the hands of their Moloch, and the babe gave up the ghost, while the priests drowned its screams by beating drums. The Israelite who became a votary of Moloch was to be stoned. Leviticus 20:3.

Neither… profane the name of thy God This forbids the irreverent use of the divine name. The Hebrews understood it as prohibiting the pronunciation of Jehovah, the sacred tetragrammaton, יהוה , the correct pronunciation of which was lost in consequence. See Leviticus 24:10-14, notes.