To’phet, (Heb. To'pheth, תֹּפֶת spittle, as in Job 17:6; i.e. abominable, or, perhaps, place of burning; Jeremiah 7:'32 second time]; 19:11, 12; with the art., 2 Kings 23:10 [“Topheth”]; Jeremiah 7:31-32; 19:6,13-14; once Tophteh’, תָּפַתֵּה, Isaiah 30:33; Sept. Τωφέθ, Ταθέθ, and θοφθά, Vulg, Tophet, Topheth), a place near Jerusalem, where the ancient Canaanites, and afterwards the apostate Israelites, made their children to pass through the fire to Moloch (comp. Psalms 106:38; Jeremiah 7:31). It is first mentioned, in the order of time, by Isaiah, who alludes to it as deep and large and having an abundance of fuel (Jeremiah 30:24). He here evidently calls the place where Sennacherib’s army was destroyed Tophet, by a metonymy; for it was probably overthrown at a greater distance from Jerusalem, and quite on the opposite side of it, since Nob is mentioned as the last station from which the king of Assyria should threaten Jerusalem (Jeremiah 10:25), where the prophet seems to have given a very exact chorographical description of his march in order to attack the city (Lowth’s Transl. notes on 30:33). In the reformation of religion by king Josiah, he caused Topheth to be defiled in order to suppress idolatry (2 Kings 23:10). The means he adopted for this purpose are not specified, whether by throwing all manner of filth into it, as well as by overthrowing the altars, etc., as the Syriac and Arabic versions seem to understand it. The prophet Jeremiah was ordered by God to announce from this spot (2 Kings 19:14) the approaching captivity, and the destruction, both by the siege of the city and by famine of so many of the people, whose carcasses should be here buried, as that it should “no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter” (2 Kings 7:20,20; 19:6,11-14). In all succeeding ages blood has flowed there in streams; corpses, buried and unburied, have filled up the hollows; and it may be that underneath the modern gardens aid terraces there lies not only the debris of the city, but the bones and dust of millions Romans, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Crusaders, Moslems. Once the royal music grove where Solomon’s singers, with voice and instrument, regaled the king, the court, and the city; then the Temple of Baal, the high- place of Moloch, resounding with the cries of burning infants; then (in symbol) the place where is the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Once prepared for Israel’s king as one of his choicest villas; then degraded and defiled till it becomes the place prepared for “the King,” at the sound of whose fall the nations are to shake (Ezekiel 31:16); and as Paradise and Eden passed into Babylon, so Tophet and Ben Hinnom pass into Gehenna and the lake of fire. These scenes seem to have taken hold of Milton’s mind; for three times over, within fifty lines, he refers to “the opprobrious hill,” “the hill of scandal,” the “offensive mountain,” and speaks of Solomon making his grove in “The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of hell.” SEE GEHENNA.
The name Tophet was commonly supposed to be derived from toph, or drum, from the drums used to drown the cries of the children when made to pass through the fire to Moloch. This was a received Jewish opinion. But there are other derivations; that, for example, of Jerome, who from the root to open (פָתָה) ascribes to it the sense of latitude; of Rosenmüller, who connects it with a different root (יָפָה), and takes it to mean pleasantness; of Gesenius, who, from a Persian root, finds the sense of inflaming, burning; of Rödiger (in Gesen. Thesaur. s.v.), who takes it in the sense of filth, a view substantially concurred in by Böttcher, Hitzig, and Thenius, though derived in a different manner. This is, perhaps, the most probable opinion, as it seems, also, the most directly applicable to the place. See Böttcher, De Inferis, 1, 80,85; Panecius, De Topheth (Viteb. 1694).
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Author: McClintock and Strong Cyclopedia
Keywords: Tophet, Topheth, Valley of Hinnom, Gehinnom, Gehenna, hell, valley of the sons of hinnom, Valley of slaughter, Moloch
Bible reference(s): 2 Kings 23:10, Psalms 106:38, Isaiah 30:33, Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah 7:32, Jeremiah 19:6, Jeremiah 19:11, Jeremiah 19:12, Jeremiah 19:13, Jeremiah 19:14
Source: John McClintock and James Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.