2 Kings 17:31

The Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak— It is uncertain who these Avites were. The most probable opinion seems to be that which Grotius has suggested, by observing that there are a people in Bactriana mentioned by Ptolemy under the name of Avadia, who possibly might be those transported at this time into Palestine by Shalmaneser. Nibhaz according to the Rabbis had the shape of a dog, much like the Anubis of the Egyptians. In Pierius's Hieroglyphics, p. 53 is the figure of a cynocephalus, a kind of ape, with a head like a dog, standing upon his hinder feet, and looking earnestly at the moon. Pierius there teaches us, that the cynocephalus was an animal eminently sacred among the Egyptians, hieroglyphical of the moon. See Johnston. Nat. Hist. de Quadruped. p. 100. This being observed, the נבחז nibchaz, (which may well be derived from נבח nabach, to bark, and חזה chazah, to see,) gives us reason to conclude that this idol was in the shape of a cynocephalus, or a dog looking, barking, or howling at the moon. It is obvious to common observation, that dogs in general have this property; and an idol of the form just mentioned, seems to have been originally designed to represent the power or influence of the moon, on all sublunary bodies, with which the cynocephaluses and dogs are so eminently affected. So, as we have observed upon Nergal, the influence of the returning solar light was reprerented by a cock, and the generative power of the heavens by Dagon, a fishy idol. See Parkhurst on נבחז, who is of opinion that Tartak תרתק is compounded of תר tor, to turn, go round, and רתק ratak, to chain, tether, and plainly denotes the heavens, considered as confining the planets in their respective orbits, as if they were tethered. The Jews have a tradition, that the emblem of this idol was an ass; which, considering the propriety of that animal when tethered to represent this idol, is not improbable; and from this idolatrous worship of the Samaritans, joined perhaps with some confused account of the cherubim, seems to have sprung that stupid story of the heathens, that the Jews had an ass's head in their Holy of Holies, to which they paid religious worship. See Bochart, vol. 2: p. 221. Jurieu is of opinion, that as the word Nibhaz, both in the Hebrew and Chaldee, with a small variation, denotes quick, swift, rapid, and tartak in the same languages signifies a chariot, these two idols may both together denominate the sun mounted on his car, as the fictions of the poets and the notions of the mythologists were wont to represent that luminary.

The Sepharvites burned their children—to Adrammelech, and Anammelech— As the Sepharvites, probably, came from the cities of the Medes, whither the Israelites were carried captive, and as Herodotus tells us that between Colchis and Media are found a people called Saspires; in all likelihood they were the same with those here named Sepharvites. Moloch, Milcom, and Melech, in the language of different nations, all signify a king, and imply the sun, which was called the king of heaven; and therefore the addition of אדר adar, which signifies powerful, illustrious, to the one, and of ענם anem, which implies to return, to answer, to the other, means no more than the mighty, or the oracular Moloch. And as the children were offered to him, it appears that he was the same with the Moloch of the Ammonites. See Univ. Hist. and Calmet.