Note 2 — Chapter II · An Awakening and a Summons

—page 11. The Mount of Corruption lay to the south of Jerusalem, across the Valley of Hinnom. Its summit looks down upon the spot in connection with which the Jewish ideas of the future life of the wicked were formed. The valley, named, according to Dean Stanley, from “some ancient hero, the son of Hinnom,” is first mentioned in Joshua (xv. 8; xviii. 16), in marking out the boundary-line between Judah and Benjamin. Solomon erected high places there for Moloch (1 Kings xi. 7), whose horrid rites were revived by later idolatrous kings. Ahaz and Manassah made their children “pass through the fire” in this valley (2 Kings xvi. 3; 2 Chron. xxviii. 3; xxxiii. 6); and the fiendish custom of sacrificing infants to the fire-gods seems to have been kept up for some time in Tophet, its southeastern extremity (Jer. vii. 31; 2 Kings xxiii. 10). To put an end to these abominations, Josiah polluted the place to render it ceremonially unclean (2 Kings xxiii. 10, 13, 14; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4, 5), and it became the common cesspool of the city, and the laystall where all the solid filth was collected.