Who was Baal?

The name signifies 'master, possessor;' and whether singular or plural it always has the article. The chief male god of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites, as ASHTORETH was the chief female goddess. The Israelites in coming into the land doubtless found temples, groves, altars and high places set apart to Baal: incense was offered and offerings burnt, and children were sacrificed to him, whilst a great retinue of prophets and priests was maintained in his service, as is manifest by its revival afterwards. Num. 22:41 ; 1 Kings 18:22; Jer. 11:13; Jer. 19:5; Jer. 32:29.

The children of Israel were soon led away to the worship of Baal, Judges 2:11, 13; Judges 3:7; Judges 6:31-32; Judges 8:33; Judges 10:6, 10; and though under Samuel they relinquished it, 1 Sam. 7:4; 1 Sam. 12:10, yet after the division of the kingdom it was by Ahab fully established in Israel. 1 Kings 16:32. Elijah however stood for Jehovah, and raised the question with Israel whether Jehovah was God, or whether Baal, and established the rights of Jehovah by fire from heaven. This led to the destruction of all the prophets of Baal, 1 Kings 18:17-40; but his idolatrous worship continued until the days of Jehu, who slew his worshippers and destroyed his house and images. 2 Kings 10:18-28. It however revived again in Israel, and under Ahaziah and Athaliah extended also to Judah, and during the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh worshippers of Baal are found there. 2 Kings 11:18; 2 Kings 16:3-4; 2 Kings 17:16-17; 2 Kings 21:3. Thus did Satan succeed in leading aside to idolatry God's favoured people for whom He had done so much. Balaam's advice was only too successful, the women of Canaan being the snare that led to idolatry.

The word Baal is used in several compounds, at times referring to the god and in other cases to persons or places.

On the following day the real business commenced. "Balak took Balaam, and brought him up into the high places of Baal, that thence he might see the utmost part of the people." This is the first mention of Baal in the Word of God. It was the chief male deity of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites, Ashtoreth being the chief female deity. (Sorrowful words to write!) This form of idolatry obtained a footing in Israel in the days of the judges, it was cast out in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 7:3-6); it became firmly established in the kingdom of the ten tribes in the reign of Ahab; and Jezebel's daughter Athaliah introduced it into the Kingdom of Judah. This great evil was one of the causes of the expulsion of the whole twelve tribes from the land of promise.

And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria." Ahab was not the first to introduce Baal-worship in Israel: it had been known among them since their entrance into the land, but under his rule and the powerful influence of Jezebel, his wife, it became the established form of idolatry, as calf-worship was made under Jeroboam. Baal was the sun-god of the ancient inhabitants of the land (as of the Phenicians), and his worship was accompanied by the most obscene rites and impurities.

Dius and Menander, Tyrian historians, mention an Eithobalus of Ahab's time, who was priest of Ashtoreth (female consort of Baal), who having murdered Pheles, became king of Tyre. See Josephus, c. apion, i. 18. This was, in all probability, Jezebel's father. Her zeal for the spread and maintenance of the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, or Astarte, is therefore easily accounted for; hence, also, her inveterate hatred of the holy worship of Jehovah, and her murderous designs against His prophets. Her name means chaste — Satan's counterfeit or ridicule, as it were, of purity. Was it the hope of strengthening his kingdom, or her seductions, with the attractions of her painted face, that led Ahab into this alliance? Behind it all, we may be sure, Satan was seeking by this new move to utterly corrupt and destroy God's people and His truth from the earth. "And Ahab made a grove" — Asherah — an image, or pavilion, to Astarte" and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

The hand of the Lord will be stretched out upon Judah and Jerusalem. The remnant of Baal will be cut off and the Chemarim, with the priests. Idolatry, whatever remains of it, should then be completely abolished. "Baal" was the idol of god of the Phoenicians and Canaanites; the word means "lord" or "possessor." With the worship of this god licentious practices were connected. Chemarim is the name of the idolatrous priests which conducted the high places, appointed for this service by the kings of Judah (2 Kings 23:5). In verses 5 and 6 other forms of idolatry are mentioned. They worshipped the hosts of the heavens from housetops. They worshipped the stars, and studied their movements as if they could give them help and a revelation. Astrology, so widely practiced among civilized nations today, is an old cult (2 Kings 21:3, 5; Jer. 8:2; 19:13). Others used the Holy Name of Jehovah, and at the same time they used the name of Malcham. All was a turning back from Jehovah and dishonoring His Name.

Such was the devilish system to which Israel, with their back on God, now turned. "The children of Israel did the evil thing" — what was emphatically that — "in Jehovah's eyes, and served the Baals." "They forsook Jehovah, and served Baal and the Ashtoreths."

Their gods, being the product of their own minds, were necessarily many as their minds were. The plural in both cases, it is allowed, stands not for the multiplicity of images, but for different modifications of the deity himself. Baal was in no wise one, as Jehovah was; nor was even Ashtoreth the same goddess everywhere, although the general idea was one. Baal means "husband" and "lord," with the primary idea of ownership. A bird even is a "baal of wing"; and a hairy man a "baal of hair." It does not stand so much for the idea of one who rules therefore, which is rather adon, from din, to "discern," to "judge." Yet it has no necessary bad sense either: in that of "husband," God uses it of His own relation to the people: "thy Maker is thy baal;" "though I was a baal unto them." (Isa. 54:5; Jer.31:32.) Nevertheless, God finally repudiates the word. By Hosea He says, "Thou shalt call me Ishi [my husband], and thou shalt no more call me Baali: for I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name." (Hosea 2:16-17.)

Baal stands thus for the power implied in possession, apart from any thought of how it may be used, as Ashtoreth speaks (comp. Joshua 21:27) of fruitfulness here in the nature-sense. Both might be used (and were) in the vilest applications and unitedly they reveal the mystery of iniquity that is native in the heart of man. Power he seeks, — to have things in his hand: that, without question of how he will use it, — irresponsible power; while, underneath, the lusts that war in his members" hold him as a poor slave to their will. Baal and Ashtoreth are twin worships, the natural complements of each other: both meaning independence of God, and together self-bondage; in which is found the awful tyranny of a more malignant despotism, that of the adversary of God and man alike, the "spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience." (Eph. 2:2.)

Idolatry was no new evil amongst God's favoured but faithless people Israel. Their whole course in this respect is traced with much detail in Ezek. 20. In Egypt, before the deliverance, they worshipped the gods around them (ver. 8); they worshipped idols in the wilderness, although perhaps covertly (ver. 13), and they worshipped idols in the land (ver. 28). The worship of Baal in particular is noted in Judges 2:11-13; Gideon was instructed by God to throw down the altar of Baal which his father had erected, and also to cut down the Asherah which stood by it (Judges 6:25): just before Jephthah was raised up for the people's deliverance, they confessed that they had forsaken God, and served Baalim (Judges 10:10).

The "Groves" so frequently referred to in the history of Ahab and Elijah were really statues of Ashtoreth. Baal seems to have represented the sun, and Ashtoreth the moon. In the divine indictment of the Northern Kingdom, when the people were carried captive into Assyria, we read: "they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images, two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal" (2 Kings 17:16). Note how "all the host of heaven" is here linked with Baal. In Jer. 7:18 Ashtoreth is called "the queen of heaven." From Job 31:26-27 we gather that homage to the Sun and moon was the earliest form of idolatry.

The prophets of Baal call upon their false god. No fire leaps from a cloudless sky. They become frenzied in their call upon Baal. But Baal responded not. He was only an imagination of the devil.

Nimrod was the Belus of the ancient Assyrians, who established the despotism of Babylonia, and founded the great cities of Babylon and Nineveh. He was regarded as being deified and placed in the heavens, with his sword and leash of hounds — the brightest and largest constellation. In truth the vague and gigantic outline of the colossal figure of Orion, spreading athwart the whole eastern horizon, is no unfit representation of the huge personality of the mighty hunter and warrior, whose dim and vast form looms, from the starlit past, over the Asian plains. Apparently he was the original Baal, or lord; not so much a god as a demigod; not so much like Zeus on the Olympic heights, waving his ambrosial locks, as like the stupendous figure of Thor, grasping his ponderous hammer, and stalking amongst his companion Jotuns on the Norse mountains. [Gen. 10:11. Margin is generally accepted.]

A second judgement falls upon the king himself. "Ahaziah fell down through the lattice in his upper chamber which was in Samaria, and was sick." But repentance was foreign to the heart of the king of Israel, and Jehovah had no place either in his thoughts or in his life. He was indifferent to the judgment of God; he saw but an ordinary accident in the blow that had struck him. "He sent messengers and said to them, Go, inquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this disease." His own Baal, before whom he bowed (1 Kings 22:54), was not enough for him; he sends to the Baal of the Philistines to learn his fate. Baal-zebub, the lord of flies, was much more valuable in his eyes than Jehovah. This god was doubtless invoked by this idolatrous nation to secure themselves from this plague of the lands of the East, flies. He was a powerful god to his votaries, for bowing down before him in their blindness they were worshipping or supplicating Satan himself, the Beelzebub so often mentioned in the New Testament.