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MILCOM

(Heb. milkōm)

The national god of the Ammonites. Milcom was among the foreign deities whose worship in Israel was given sanction by Solomon and whose sanctuaries just outside Jerusalem were later dismantled by Josiah (1 Kgs. 11:5, 33; 2 Kgs. 23:13).

Six times in the OT the Hebrew consonants mlkm are most likely to be read milkōm, Milcom, rather than the MT rendering malkām, “their king.” Amos 1:15 (“Milcom shall go into exile . . .”) alludes to the well-known ancient Near Eastern practice of plundering the cult statues of defeated enemies. Later Jer. 49:3 takes up this same threat (as does 48:7 in reference to Chemosh, unambiguously the name of the Moabite deity), adding that “his priests” shall accompany him. The question of Jer. 49:1 (“Why has Milcom dispossessed Gad?”) is phrased in accordance with the Iron Age notion of the national deity as achieving the military and territorial gains of the state. Zeph. 1:5 counts among Judah’s religious offenders “those who take oaths by Milcom.” In 2 Sam. 12:30 = 1 Chr. 20:2 the crown taken by David upon the capture of the Ammonite capital Rabbah most likely belonged to and rested on the head of Milcom (i.e., his cult statue); the crown would have been too heavy (“a talent of gold,” ca. 34 kg. [75 lbs.]) for the head of “their king,” and it would have been the “precious stone,” and not the crown itself, that later rested on David’s head. (In 1 Kgs. 11:7 the divine name mōleḵ, Molech, is probably a mistake for Milcom.)

Milcom is attested in Ammonite inscriptions from the OT period, including the Amman citadel inscription (9th century), a 7th-century seal, and theophoric personal names from a 5th-century ostracon and from 6th-century seals and bullae.

Bibliography. W. E. Aufrecht, A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions (Lewiston, 1989); P. K. McCarter, II Samuel. AB 9 (Garden City, 1984).

Joel Burnett

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MILCOM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)