2 Kings 23:10

10. Defiled Topheth Probably by burning the bones of the priests who had offered human sacrifices there. Compare 2 Chronicles 34:5. The word Topheth (usually with the article התפת ,) occurs only in the Old Testament at the passages named in the margin, and designates the place in the valley of Hinnom, where human sacrifices were offered to Molech. Its derivation is uncertain. The rabbies say it is the same as toph, ( ת Š) a drum, and is applied to the place where human sacrifices were offered, because drums were beaten there to drown the cries of the victims. Furst and others derive it from a root, תו Š , to burn, and understand it as an altar-place for the burning of dead bodies. It is translated tabret in Job 17:7, but most interpreters agree that it there means spittle, or abhorrence, and is also, as a proper name, to be explained in a similar sense, and applied to the spot where human sacrifices were offered, because it was a place of abhorrence a thing to be spit at.

The valley of the children of Hinnom This has been usually identified with the valley on the west and south sides of Jerusalem; but Jeremiah says (Jeremiah 19:2) it was “by the entry of the east gate, (Hebrews potter’s gate;) and Dr. Bonar ( Smith’s Bib. Dict.) says, “Hinnom, by old writers, western and eastern, is always placed east of the city, and corresponds to what we call the mouth of the Tyropoeon, along the southern bed and banks of the Kedron, and was reckoned to be somewhere between the potter’s field and the fuller’s pool.” And Captain Wilson and M. Ganneau have concluded, from minute examinations, that the Kedron and Hinnom valleys are identical. But see note on Joshua 15:8.