That the real object of their worship was distinct from their images, is implied in their selecting high places for their religious rites, and erecting lofty towers for that purpose, where the sun could be earliest seen at rising, and where the stars or host of heaven could be most advantageously observed; and in burning their children as sacrifices, making them pass through the fire to Baal or Moloch. Thus, in the reign of Ahaz, 2 Kings xvii., "They made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire." Manasseh made his son pass through the fire; and in Josiah's reformation he put down the idolatrous priests "that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun [literally, to Baal, the sun] and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven." 2 Kings xxiii. Jeremiah says: "They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal." Chap. xix. 5. Again: "And they built the high places of Baal, to cause their sons and their daughters _to pass through the fire_ unto Moloch." Jer. xxxii. 35. And of Josiah it is said, that he defiled Tophet--"that no man might make his son or his daughter _to pass through the fire_ to Moloch." 2 Kings xxiii. 10. Their idea evidently was, that by sacrificing in this way the most valued offering they could make, that of their children, they would pass in and through that element to Baal, whose residence was conceived to be in the solar orb. The term Moloch--variously written Melech, Moloch, Malcom, Milcom--as a designation, refers to the same being as Baal; the literal import of the latter being the same as that of _the Lord_, as the sun is lord of the day; and that of the former, the same as _the king_, as the sun is king of the day. The molten images, representative of Moloch, in the heated chest or arms of which, children offered in sacrifice were burnt, are somewhat variously described, but generally as having the head of a calf and the body of a man, with an opening in the chest, into which, when heated from below, the victims were cast alive; and to drown their cries, as in the burning of widows in India, under the same general notion, drums were beaten. It appears evident from the passages in which they occur in the Scriptures, that the terms Bel, Baal, and Baalim, are personal designations of the intelligence worshipped by the Chaldeans, and other idolaters, as their god, and by the Israelites in opposition to Jehovah. Thus, Jer. l. 2: "Declare ye among the nations, ... Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces;" and li. 44: "I will punish Bel in Babylon.... The nations shall not flow together any more to him." That is, by the destruction of Babylon, Bel, the god of their idolatry, is confounded, punishment is inflicted on him; Merodach, the chief idol representative of Bel, is broken in pieces.