CHAMOS (Hebrew Kēmōf). — National and principal god of the Moabites (Deut. 2:24; 1 Kings 11:7, 33; 2 Kings 23:13), hence called the “people of Ch.” (Num. 21:29; Jer. 48:46). King Mesha styles himself “son of Ch.”, and to him, as war-god, he offers his own son upon the city wall to be delivered from the enemy’s grip (2 Kings 3:27). His cult was introduced into Jerusalem by Solomon (1 Kings 11:7, 33), who erected an altar to him on the Mount of Olives and on the Mount of Scandal; it persisted, with a brief interruption under Josiah who destroyed its shrines (2 Kings 23:13), until the end of the kingdom of Judah.
Chamos has been identified with Baal-Peor, Beelzebub, or regarded as a kind of Mars, a war-god. Today he is generally seen as one of the manifold forms of the Canaanite deity Baal, the great nature- and sun-god. His symbol appears to have been the winged solar disk, and as a solar deity he was worshipped alongside the Ammonite god Milcom, who bore the same name as Chamos (Deut. 2:24). Among the Moabites, as Jahweh among the Hebrews, the name enters into the composition of several proper names, e.g., Chemosh-melech, father of Mesha (Moabite Stone).