Malcam

Malcam (meaning their king) appears in several passages as an alternative name or title for Milcom, the god of the Ammonites (also called Molech). In 2 Samuel 12:30, after David's capture of Rabbah, he took the crown from the head of Malcam — translated in some versions as the crown of the Ammonite king and in others as the crown of their god — a crown of gold weighing a talent with a precious stone. The Revised Version reads "their king" in several passages where the KJV reads Malcam, indicating the ambiguity between the proper name of the deity and a title for the Ammonite king.

Jeremiah 49:1, 3 uses Malcam in the oracle against Ammon: "Has Israel no sons?... Why then has Malcam dispossessed Gad?" — where the god of Ammon is used metonymically for the nation itself. Zephaniah 1:5 condemns those who swear by the LORD and also swear by Malcam, identifying him as a rival deity worshipped alongside God in Judah. The term thus functions both as a divine name and as a royal title in the biblical text, reflecting the close identification of Ammonite national identity with their patron deity.