Jeremiah 7:31

The people had also built a shrine at a site called "Topheth," in the Valley of Hinnom just south of Jerusalem. The name "Topheth" may come from the Aramaic tephath, meaning "fireplace," "oven," or "hearth." The Hebrews made a play on its name by adding the vowels of bosheth, "shame," a name for Baal, to this word. Hinnom may have been a former owner of the valley. The idol worshipped there was Molech, a fire god. [Note: See also Dyer, in The Old . . ., p. 598.] The Israelites had offered their children as human sacrifices at this shrine during the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Kings 21:6), something that Yahweh neither commanded nor even entertained in His thinking (cf. Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2-5; 2 Kings 23:10; Micah 6:7). King Josiah had attempted to wipe out this horrible practice (2 Kings 23:10), but the people revived it after he died in 609 B.C. (Ezekiel 20:25-26). [Note: Yahweh’s test of Abraham’s faith involved obeying a command that apparently involved child sacrifice, but it did not (Genesis 22). For more information about child-sacrifice, see A. R. W. Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, pp. 173-87.] What the Judahites were doing in the Valley of Hinnom was not fundamentally different from some of the forms of abortion that characterize modern life.