moz'-em, mots'-em (ma`uzzim, "places of strength," "fortress"): Many conjectures as to the meaning of this word and its context (Da 11:38; compare Da 11:19,39) have been made. The Septuagint (uncertainly), Theodotion, and the Geneva Version render it as a proper name. Theodoret adopted Theodotion's reading and explained it as "Antichrist"! Grotius thought it a corruption of "Azizos, the Phoenician war-god, while Calvin saw in it the "god of wealth"! Perhaps the buzz of conjectures about the phrase is owing to the fact that in the first passage cited the word is preceded by 'Eloah, meaning God. The context of the passage seems clearly to make the words refer to Antiochus Epiphanes, and on this account some have thought that the god Mars--whose figure appears on a coin of Antiochus--is here referred to. All this is, however, little better than guesswork, and the Revised Version (British and American) translation, by setting the mind upon the general idea that the monarch referred to would trust in mere force, gives us, at any rate, the general sense, though it does not exclude the possibility of a reference to a particular deity. In Da 11:19 and 39, the word "Mauzzim" is simply translated "fortresses," and the idea conveyed is that the mental obsession of fortresses is equivalent to deifying them. A conjecture of Layard's (Nineveh, II, 456, note), is, at any rate, worth referring to.
⇒See also the McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia.
Henry Wallace