3 Ba‘al as a divine title in Israel and Judah

Since Ba‘al simply means 'Lord', there is no obvious reason why it could not be applied to Yahweh as well as other gods. Perhaps it was. The judge Gideon was also called Jerubaal, a name which seems to mean 'Ba‘al strives' though Judges 6.32 makes the claim that the name was given to mock the god Ba‘al whose shrine Gideon had destroyed, the intention being to imply: "Let Ba‘al strive as much as he can ... it will come to nothing." Many doubt this explanation.

After Gideon's death, according to Judges 8.33, the Israelites went astray and started to worship the Ba‘alîm (the Ba‘als) especially Ba‘al Berith 'Lord of the Covenant'. A few verses later (Judge 9.4) the story turns to all the citizens of Shechem – actually kol-ba‘^alê š^əkem another case of normal use of ba‘al not applied to a deity. These citizens of Shechem support Abimelech's attempt to become king by giving him 70 shekels from the House of Ba‘al Berith. It is hard to disassociate this Lord of the Covenant who is worshipped in Shechem from the covenant at Shechem described earlier in Joshua 24.25 in which the people agree to worship Yahweh. It is especially hard to do so when Judges 9.46 relates that all "the holders of the tower of Shechem" (kol-ba‘^alê midgal-š^əkem) enter bêt ’el b^ərît 'the House of El Berith', that is, 'the House of God of the Covenant'. Was Ba‘al then here just a title for El? Or did the covenant of Shechem perhaps originally not involve El at all but some some other god who bore the title Ba‘al? Or were there different viewpoints about Yahweh, some seeing him as an aspect of Hadad, some as an aspect of El, some with other theories? Again there is no clear answer.

We also find Eshbaal (one of Saul's sons) and Beeliada (a son of David). The last name also appears as Eliada. This might show that at some period Ba‘al and El were used interchangeably even in the same name applied to the same person. More likely a later hand has cleaned up the text. Editors did play around with some names, sometimes substuting the form bosheth 'abomination' for ba‘al in names, whence the forms Ishbosheth instead of Eshbaal and Mephibosheth which is rendered Meribaal in 1 Chronicles 9.40. 1 Chronicles 12:5 gives us the name Bealiah (more accurately b^ə‘’alyâ) meaning 'Yahweh is Ba‘al'.

It is difficult to determinine to what extent the false worship which the prophets stigmatize is the worship of Yahweh under a conception and with rites which treated him as a local nature god or whether particular features of gods more often given the title Ba‘al were consciously recognized to be distinct from Yahwism from the first. Certainly some of the Ugaritic texts and Sanchuniathon report hostility between El and Hadad, perhaps representing a cultic and religious differences reflected in Hebrew tradition also, in which Yahweh in the Tanach is firmly identified with El and might be expected to be somewhat hostile to Ba’al/Hadad and the deities of his circle. But for Jeremiah and the Deuteronomist it also appears to be monontheism against polytheism (Jeremiah 11.12):

Then shall the cities of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem go and cry to the gods to whom they offer incense: but they shall not save them at all in the time of their trouble. For according to the number of your cities are your gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars to the abominination, altars to burn incense to the Ba‘al.

Does this refer to other gods and one particular god, perhaps Hadad, who is especially "the Ba‘al"? Or does it refer to altars to burn incense to "the Ba‘al" to which each altar is raised, that is to as many different Ba‘al's as there were altars?

4 Multiple Ba‘als and ‘Ashtarts

One finds in the Tanach the plural forms b^ə‘ālîm 'Ba‘als' or 'Lords' and ‘aštārôt '‘Ashtarts', though such plurals do not appear in Phoenician or Canaanite or independent Aramaic sources.

One theory is that the folk of each territory or in each wandering clan worshipped their own Ba‘al, as the chief deity of each, the source of all the gifts of nature, the mysterious god of their fathers. As the god of fertility all the produce of the soil would be his, and his adherents would bring to him their tribute of first-fruits. He would be the patron of all growth and fertility, and, by the use of analogy characteristic of early thought, this Ba‘al would be the god of the productive element in its widest sense. Originating perhaps in the observation of the fertilizing effect of rains and streams upon the receptive and reproductive soil, Ba‘al worship became identical with nature-worship. Joined with the Ba‘als there would naturally be corresponding female figures which might be called ‘Ashtarts, embodiments of Ashtart.

Through analogy and through the belief that one can control or aid the powers of nature by the practice of magic, particularly sympathetic magic, sexuality might characterize part of the cult of the Ba‘als and ‘Ashtarts. Post-Exilic allusions to the cult of Ba‘al Pe‘or suggest that orgies prevailed. On the summits of hills and mountains flourished the cult of the givers of increase, and "under every green tree" was practised the licentiousness which was held to secure abundance of crops. Human sacrifice, the burning of incense, violent and ecstatic exercises, ceremonial acts of bowing and kissing, the preparing of sacred mystic cakes (see also Asherah), appear among the offences denounced by the post-Exilic prophets; and show that the cult of Ba‘al (and ‘Ashtart) included characteristic features of worship which recur in various parts of the Semitic (and non-Semitic) world, although attached to other names. But it is also possible that such rites were performed to a local Ba‘al 'Lord' and a local ‘Ashtart without much concern as to whether or not they were the same as that of a nearby community or how they fitted into the national theology of Yahweh who had become a ruling high god of the heavens, increasingly disassociated from such things, at least in the minds of some worshippers.

Another theory is that the references to Ba‘als and ‘Ashtarts (and Asherahs) are to images or other standard symbols of these deities, that is statues and icons of Ba‘al Hadad, ‘Ashtart, and Asherah set up in various high places as well as those of other gods, the author listing the most prominent as types for all. The Deuteronomistic editor is as angered and sadened by worshipping of images as by worshipping other deities than Yahweh and wishes to emphasize the plurality of false deities as opposed to true worship of Yahweh at his single temple in Jerusalem as called for in the reforms of Josiah.

A reminiscence of Ba‘al as a title of a local fertility god (or referring to a particular god of subterraneous water) may occur in the Talmudic Hebrew prhases field of the ba‘al and place of the ba‘al and Arabic ba‘l used of land fertilised by subterraneous waters rather than by rain.

5 There is no single Semitic sun-god named Ba‘al

The hypothesis that there was a common Semitic sun-god named Ba‘al fell from favor in the 19th century as new archaelogical evidence indicated multiple gods bearing the title Ba‘al and little about them that connected them to the sun. A certain exasperation on that matter appears even in 1899 in the Encyclopædia Biblica article Baal by W. Robertson Smith and George F. Moore:

That Baal was primarily a sun-god was for a long time almost a dogma among scholars and is still often repeated.  This doctrine is connected with theories of the origin of religion which are now almost universally abandoned. The worship of the heavenly bodies is not the beginning of religion.  Moreover, there was not, as this theory assumes, one god Baal, worshipped under different forms and names by the Semitic peoples, but a multitude of local Baals, each the inhabitant of his own place, the protector and benefactor of those who worshipped him there.  Even in the astro-theology of the Babylonians the star of Bel was not the sun : it was the planet Jupiter. There is no intimation in the OT that any of the Canaanite Baals were sun-gods, or that the worship of the sun (Shemesh), of which we have ample evidence, both early and late, was connected with that of the Baals ; in 2 K. 2₃₅ cp ₁₁ the cults are treated as distinct.

The findings and scholarship of the following century have further confirmed these statements but the meta-myth of the single Semitic sun-god Ba‘al still appears.

See also Baal Hammon, Baal Peor, Baal Shamîm, Beelzebub, Bel, Hadad, Melqart, Moloch

6 External links

• article Baal by W. Robertson Smith and George F. Moore in Encyclopædia Biblica, edited T. K. Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black, MacMillan: London, 1899) (PDF format. Still quite accurate.)
• Bartleby: American Heritage Dictionary: Semitic roots: b^cl.

Canaanite gods Phoenician gods Sky and weather gods Torah events Hebrew Bible/Tanakh events

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