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lit. crit. says that Moloch is a symbol for the anti-otherness in 50’s American society. I wrote that Moloch was more like the refining fire seen in Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” and present in many other poems by minority poets, etc. It’s almost a Jungian symbol for poets.

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From Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

Moloch (representing Semitic מלך m-l-k, a Semitic root meaning "king") – also rendered as Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Molock, Moloc, Melech, Milcom or Molcom – is the name of an ancient Ammonite god.[1] Moloch worship was practiced by the Canaanites, Phoenician and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.

As a god worshipped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus as a form of idolatry (Leviticus 18:21: "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch"). In the Old Testament, Gehenna was a valley by Jerusalem, where apostate Israelites and followers of various Baalim and Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6).

Moloch has been used figuratively in English literature from John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1955), to refer to a person or thing demanding or requiring a very costly sacrifice.

Biblical texts

The word here translated literally as 'seed' very often means offspring. The forms containing mlk have been left untranslated. The reader may substitute either "to Moloch" or "as a molk".

According to Biblical texts, the laws given to Moses by God expressly forbade the Israelites to do what was done in Egypt or in Canaan.

Leviticus 18:21:

‘Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.

Leviticus 20:2–5:

Again, you shall say to the Sons of Israel: Whoever he be of the Sons of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that gives any of his seed l'Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people; because he has given of his seed l'Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he gives of his seed l'Molech, and do not kill him, then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go astray after him, whoring l'Molech from among the people.

Jeremiah 32:35:

And they built the high places of the Ba‘al, which are in the valley of Ben-hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire l'Molech; which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.