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| Today, we call these things REPTOIDS |
Baal was the name of the supreme god worshiped in ancient Canaan and
Phoenicia. The practice of Baal worship infiltrated Jewish religious
life during the time of the Judges (Judges 3:7), became widespread in
Israel during the reign of Ahab (1 Kings 16:31-33) and also affected
Judah (2 Chronicles 28:1-2). The word baal means “lord”; the plural is
baalim. In general, Baal was a fertility god who was believed to enable
the earth to produce crops and people to produce children. Different
regions worshiped Baal in different ways, and Baal proved to be a highly
adaptable god. Various locales emphasized one or another of his
attributes and developed special “denominations” of Baalism. Baal of
Peor (Numbers 25:3) and Baal-Berith (Judges 8:33) are two examples of
such localized deities.
According to Canaanite mythology, Baal was the son of El, the
chief god, and Asherah, the goddess of the sea. Baal was considered the
most powerful of all gods, eclipsing El, who was seen as rather weak and
ineffective. In various battles Baal defeated Yamm, the god of the sea,
and Mot, the god of death and the underworld. Baal’s sisters/consorts
were Ashtoreth, a fertility goddess associated with the stars, and
Anath, a goddess of love and war. The Canaanites worshiped Baal as the
sun god and as the storm god—he is usually depicted holding a lightning
bolt—who defeated enemies and produced crops. They also worshiped him as
a fertility god who provided children. Baal worship was rooted in
sensuality and involved ritualistic prostitution in the temples. At
times, appeasing Baal required human sacrifice, usually the firstborn of
the one making the sacrifice (Jeremiah 19:5). The priests of Baal
appealed to their god in rites of wild abandon which included loud,
ecstatic cries and self-inflicted injury (1 Kings 18:28).
Before the Hebrews entered the Promised Land, the Lord God
warned against worshiping Canaan’s gods (Deuteronomy 6:14-15), but
Israel turned to idolatry anyway. During the reign of Ahab and Jezebel,
at the height of Baal worship in Israel, God directly confronted the
paganism through His prophet Elijah. First, God showed that He, not
Baal, controlled the rain by sending a drought lasting
three-and-one-half years (1 Kings 17:1). Then Elijah called for a
showdown on Mt. Carmel to prove once and for all who the true God was.
All day long, 450 prophets of Baal called on their god to send fire from
heaven—surely an easy task for a god associated with lightning
bolts—but “there was no response, no one answered, no one paid
attention” (1 Kings 18:29). After Baal’s prophets gave up, Elijah prayed
a simple prayer, and God answered immediately with fire from heaven.
The evidence was overwhelming, and the people “fell prostrate and cried,
‘Yahuah–he is God! Yahuah–he is God!’” (verse 39).
In Matthew 12:27, Jesus calls Satan “Beelzebub,” linking the
devil to Baal-Zebub, a Philistine deity (2 Kings 1:2). The Baalim of the
Old Testament were nothing more than demons masquerading as gods, and
all idolatry is ultimately devil-worship (1 Corinthians 10:20).
Rick Matheson