2 Kings 23:10

23:10 The king ¹  ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. ² 

2 Kings 23:12

23:12 The king tore down the altars the kings of Judah had set up on the roof of Ahaz’s upper room, as well as the altars Manasseh had set up in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. He crushed them up ³  and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.

2 Kings 23:14

23:14 He smashed the sacred pillars to bits, cut down the Asherah pole, and filled those shrines ⁴  with human bones.

Psalms 74:7

74:7 They set your sanctuary on fire;

they desecrate your dwelling place by knocking it to the ground. ⁵ 

Psalms 79:1

Psalm 79 ⁶ 

A psalm of Asaph.

79:1 O God, foreigners ⁷  have invaded your chosen land; ⁸ 

they have polluted your holy temple

and turned Jerusalem ⁹  into a heap of ruins.

Ezekiel 7:21-22

7:21 I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 7:22 I will turn my face away from them and they will desecrate my treasured place. ¹⁰  Vandals will enter it and desecrate it. ¹¹ 

¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² sn Attempts to identify this deity with a god known from the ancient Near East have not yet yielded a consensus. For brief discussions see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor II Kings (AB), 288 and HALOT 592 s.v. מֹלֶךְ. For more extensive studies see George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek, and John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament.

³ tc The MT reads, “he ran from there,” which makes little if any sense in this context. Some prefer to emend the verbal form (Qal of רוּץ [ruts], “run”) to a Hiphil of רוּץ with third plural suffix and translate, “he quickly removed them” (see BDB 930 s.v. רוּץ, and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings [AB], 289). The suffix could have been lost in MT by haplography (note the mem [מ] that immediately follows the verb on the form מִשֳׁם, misham, “from there”). Another option, the one reflected in the translation, is to emend the verb to a Piel of רָצַץ (ratsats), “crush,” with third plural suffix.

⁴ tn Heb “their places.”

⁵ tn Heb “to the ground they desecrate the dwelling place of your name.”

⁶ sn Psalm 79. The author laments how the invading nations have destroyed the temple and city of Jerusalem. He asks God to forgive his people and to pour out his vengeance on those who have mistreated them.

⁷ tn Or “nations.”

⁸ tn Heb “have come into your inheritance.”

⁹ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

¹⁰ sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT “my treasured land”).

¹¹ sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.