Table of Contents
The Ammonites appear on this site as Lot’s descendants, as the people of Milcom and Molech, and as the enemy in the stories of Jephthah, Saul and David. They lived east of the Jordan, next to their kin the Moabites. These are the pages where I wrote about them.
Children of Lot
Genesis 19:30-38 makes Lot, through his daughters, the father of both Moab and Ammon. On The origins of two great nations through Ishmael and Isaac, both blessed by the divine I read Lot’s rescue from Sodom as the start of new lineages, and the Moabites and Ammonites, later rivals of Israel, as part of the same shared human story.
The Oahspe tells the story differently. In the First Book of God, the two nations come from tribes who went with Lot:
When Lot departed out of Zoar, there went with him two tribes, and there were born of the house of Lot, offspring to the two tribes who accompanied him, and these became the nations in after years known as Moabites and Ammonites, who were of the Foneceans, as their names show, and they followed the doctrines of Zarathustra.
Oahspe, First Book of God
Chronological Nations and Tribes places them east of the Jordan River, at the same time as the Israelites. “Sons of …” in the Old and New Testament lists “sons of Ammon”, benei Ammon in Hebrew, as the biblical name for the Ammonites, with about 30 appearances.
The land of the giants
Before the Ammonites, their land belonged to giants. Rephaites notes that the Moabites called the Rephaim “Emim” and the Ammonites called them “Zamzummim”. Zuzites mentions the view that the Zuzim of Genesis 14 are the same people as the Zamzummim, a tribe of the Rephaim in the region the Ammonites later occupied.
Milcom and Molech
The chief god of the Ammonites was Milcom. King Hezekiah reigned from approximately 715 to 686 BCE, remembered for his religious reforms says he was sometimes known as Molech, and that his worship was infamous for child sacrifice. On Who Was Moloch? I am more careful: 1 Kings 11:7 places Solomon’s high place for Molech of Ammon beside the one for Chemosh of Moab, but the exact overlap of the names Molech and Milcom is debated. King David compares the worship of Chemosh, Milcom and Baal, with high places, vows and sacrifices.
In the video The Laws for Humans, Mauro Biglino argues that a group of Elohim gave Moabites, Ammonites, Amalekites, Edomites and Israelites their own rules.
Wars with Israel
Israel’s judges and kings fought Ammon again and again. On Judges I discuss Jephthah’s vow before he went out against them:
And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.
Judges 11:30-31 (KJV)
Goliath points out that Saul’s first battle was against Nahash, a name that means “serpent” in Hebrew, king of the Ammonites. Just as Saul faced his serpent, David later faced Goliath in his scale armor.
Related pages
- Moabites: Children of Lot, Chemosh and the Land of the Emim
- Who Was Moloch?
- Judges
- Goliath
- Saul: The First King of Israel
- Rephaites
- Zuzites
- King David
- First Book of God
For every page I tagged with Ammonites, see the Ammonites tag archive.
