The sacrifices were to be consumed by fire; the life given by the Fire God he should also take back again by the flames which destroy being.

The rabbis describe the image of Moloch as a human figure with a bull's head and outstretched arms;[11123] and the account which they give is confirmed by what Diodorus relates of the Carthaginian Kronos.

His image, Diodorus says,[11124] was of metal, and was made hot by a fire kindled within it; the victims were placed in its arms and thence rolled into the fiery lap below.

The most usual form of the rite was the sacrifice of their children--especially of their eldest sons[11125]--by parents.

"This custom was grounded in part on the notion that children were the dearest possession of their parents, and, in part, that as pure and innocent beings they were the offerings of atonement most certain to pacify the anger of the deity; and further, that the god of whose essence the generative power of nature was had a just title of that which was begotten of man, and to the surrender of their children's lives.