Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] )BYMLK vs. Abimelech vs. Abi-Molech
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:43:28 -0700
I'm not engaging the main argument here, but it made me curious... Is it
possible to read Abimelech simply as "(my) father king", a title more
than a proper name? What I'm thinking is that the "me" in "my father" is
the person addressing the king, not the king's name. So it would be like
"your majesty" or "my lord".
(While this is possibility might seem strange to those who regard the
text as a chronicle, it wouldn't seem so to those who read the text as
legend or outright fiction.)
Regarding Molech, my study has inclined me to the view that the word
really just means king, used as an appellation for a deity; but that
there was a special usage (whether or not it involved an alternate vowel
pattern), usually involving the preposition (LMLK), that referred
specifically to a type of ritual involving passing through or over fire,
and symbolic sacrifice (the Talmud and Assyrian sources tell us that the
sacrifice didn't involve real killing, but maybe on some rare occasions
it did). Since the ritual is found in widely disparate settings, I don't
think you can tie MLK to any specific location, even if it is being used
in a way (i.e., as an implicit deity-name) that is analogous to the way
MLK is used in "(passing through fire) to king (Adad)".
(On the other hand, the god "Adramelech" -- probably a resh-daleth
mistranscription for Adad-melech -- is said in 2Kings 17 to come from
Sepharvaim in Mesopotamia.)