Baal worship

“ It was always possible, therefore, for usurpers to make popular appeal by reviving ancient and persistent forms of worship. As we have seen, Jehu of Israel, after stamping out Phoenician Baal worship, secured a strong following by giving official recognition to the cult of the golden calf. ”

“ Here, of course, revealed religion comes nearest to the circle of ideas of paganism. Baal, no less than Jehovah, is supposed to give to his servants the produce of the soil. But what a principle difference between the attitude in which paganism entertains this idea and the spirit in which the prophet expects Israel to cherish it! The pagan cult cleaves to the sod, and buries itself in the heaps of grain and the rivers of oil, and remembers not, except in the most external way, the god who gave. The worship sits loosely upon the life ”

“ Commentators have been puzzled to account for this evident relic of serpent worship in a religion so abhorrent of idolatry as that of the Jews. These gentry usually shut their eyes very close to the many evidences that the god-guided people were always falling into the idolatries of the surrounding nations. Now we know that the Babylonians, in common with all the great nations of antiquity, worshipped the serpent. It has been thought, indeed, that the name Baal is an abbreviation of Ob-el, "the serpent god." ”

“ There was another god called Baal, to whom they set up great images, and feasted in his honor; and a goddess, whom they called the queen of heaven, of Ashtoreth. Women used to offer cakes to her, and dance in honor of her, for they thought she sent the moon to shine on them.
Now, the Israelites were not to worship any of these false gods. They were to remember how they heard the Only True God speaking to them out of the cloud upon the mountain, and telling them, "I am the Lord thy God: thou shalt have no other gods but Me." ”

“ And Jehu gathered together all the people, and said to them: Achab worshipped Baal a little, but I will worship him more.
I will worship him more... Jehu sinned in thus pretending to worship Baal, and causing sacrifice to be offered to him: because evil is not to be done, that good may come of it. Rom. 3.8.
10:19. Now therefore call to me all the prophets of Baal, and all his servants, and all his priests: let none be wanting, for I have a great sacrifice to offer to Baal: whosoever shall be wanting, shall not live. Now Jehu did this craftily, that he might destroy the worshippers of Baal. ”

“ The Deity, which they originally worshipped, was the Sun. But they soon conferred his titles upon some of their ancestors: whence arose a mixed worship. They particularly deified the great Patriarch, who was the head of their line; and worshipped him as the fountain of light: making the Sun only an emblem of his influence and power. They called him Bal, and Baal: and there were others of their ancestry joined with him, whom they styled the Baalim. Chus was one of these: and this idolatry began among his sons. ”

“ The gods of the surrounding nations were gods of pleasure and of pain; and in their worship the stern practices of fanatic asceticism alternated with the wildest orgies of sensual enjoyment. The worship of Baal Moloch demanded the sacrifice of children; that of the lascivious Baaltis insulted the modesty of woman. The nobler spirits among the Hebrews rebelled against both these demands. And, as they were put forth in the name of the dominant religion, the inevitable conclusion followed that that religion itself must be radically wrong. ”

“ Religion, especially in the ancient world, was inextricably bound up with its culture; it was impossible to adopt the one without adopting a good deal of the other at the same time. Moreover, the Semites of Babylonia and of Canaan belonged to the same race, and that meant a community of inherited religious ideas. With both the supreme object of {253} worship was Baal or Bel, "the lord," who was but the Sun-god under a variety of names. ”

“ Baal, written sometimes Bar, was, like Sutekh, a god borrowed from the Phœnician mythology. The worship of Baal seems to have been introduced into Egypt during the nineteenth dynasty. The other god here mentioned, Mentu or Month, was a solar deity adored in the Thebaid, and especially worshiped at Hermonthis, now Erment; a modern town of some importance, the name of which is still almost identical with the Per-Mentu of ancient days. Mentu was the Egyptian, and Baal the Phœnician, god of war. ”

“ Men who are worthy to do such work as his are never forward to begin it, nor backward in it when they are sure that it is God's will. He began his war against Midian by warring against Baal, whose worship had brought the oppressor. If any thorough deliverance from the misery which departure from God has wrought is to be effected, we must destroy the idols before we attack the spoilers. Cast out sin, and you cast out sorrow. So he first earns his new name of Jerubbaal ('Let Baal plead') , and is known as Baal's antagonist, before he blows the trumpet of revolt. The name is an omen of victory. ”

“ The god they worship is no more like the person of Christ or the person of man than Baal was. Their order of church authorities and church gifts and ordinances of healing and anointing are probably about as remote from the apostolic pattern as the worship of Mohamet or Vishnu is."—Spencer's letters, pages 119 and 120. ”

“ Verse 33
A whoring after Baalim - This term has probably a different meaning here from what it has [170] ; for it is very likely that in most parts of the pagan worship there were many impure rites, so that going a whoring after Baalim may be taken in a literal sense.
Baal-berith - Literally, the lord of the covenant; the same as Jupiter faederis, or Mercury, among the Romans; the deity whose business it was to preside over compacts, leagues, treaties, covenants, etc. Some of the versions understand it as if the Israelites had made a covenant or agreement to have Baal for their god ”

“ Those who neglect God's ordinances, and let fall their communion with him, do really forsake his covenant, and break their league with him. (2.) With having thrown down his altars, not only deserted them and suffered them to go to decay, but, in their zeal for the worship of Baal, wilfully demolished them. This alludes to the private altars which the prophets of the Lord had, and which good people attended, who could not go up to Jerusalem and would not worship the calves nor Baal. ”

“ Through their agency the emotional nature of the Semitic race now found expression in a form of religious worship loftier by far than any that had ever arisen among men. If Baal was the embodiment of Semitic asceticism and Baaltis the type of sensual orgiastic passion, the national God of Israel now became the type of a nobler emotion, the guardian of domestic purity, the source of sanctity, the ideal Father. ”

“ There never was a people that survived the gift and blessing of immediate revelation any considerable length of time, except they fell into idolatry and worshipped strange gods; and their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after strange gods. All Israel fell into the worship of Baal, and hundreds of them became prophets to Baal. They, indeed, were the descendants of the mightiest Saints that ever lived, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, &c. ”

“ Human sacrifice (Jer. xix. 5) , the burning of incense (Jer. vii. 9) , violent and ecstatic exercises, ceremonial acts of bowing and kissing, the preparing of sacred mystic cakes, appear among the offences denounced by the Israelite prophets, and show that the cult of Baal (and Astarte) included the characteristic features of heathen worship which recur in various parts of the Semitic world, although attached to other names. ”

“ Peor, to which Balak took Balaam, was the most famous high place in Moab; and it was called Baalpeor, because there was a temple there dedicated to the worship of Baal.”
I asked my uncle why they selected hills for places of worship?
“Some learned men,” said he, “have fancied that it was in commemoration of the resting of the ark on the mountain of Ararat, where{220} Noah himself, immediately after the deluge, erected an altar and offered burnt offerings as testimonies of praise and gratitude. ”

“ Whoever draws the black bit is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favor they mean to implore in rendering the year productive. The devoted person is compelled to leap three times over the flames. Here the reference to the worship of a deity is [272] too plain to be mistaken; we see by the leaping over the flame, that the main point was, to select a human being to propitiate the god, and make him merciful; that afterwards an animal sacrifice was substituted for him, and finally nothing remained of the bodily immolation but a leap through the fire, for man and beast. ”

“ The practices of unspiritual and immoral ritualism were associated specially with the names of Baal and Moloch and with the adoration of the host of heaven; and the departure from the true worship became obvious when the deities of foreign nations were openly worshipped. ”

“ With this higher development of religion, the names of the Supreme Being, Baal and Molech, originally common to the whole race, came more and more into contempt, and were regarded as the expression of abominable idolatry, [37] while even the worship of Jahveh under the form of a calf, originally permitted, was later branded by the prophets as heresy. ”

“ The religion of the Babylonians rested on the basis of the old Sumerian worship. There was homage to demons, powerful for good or for evil, who were brought together into groups, and were figured now as human beings, now as lions or other wild animals, or as dragons and that sort of monsters. Of the great gods, Anu, the god of the sky, was the father and king of all. Sin, the moon-god, a Sumerian divinity, at the outset had the highest rank. Bel, or Baal, however, a Semitic divinity, was the god of the earth, and particularly of mankind. ”

“ In the inscription of Tiglath Pilesar I, Baal is called “the King of Constellations,” and the fact that he was thus worshipped is a peculiar explanation of the frequent condemnation in the book of Kings of the worship of “the host of Heaven,” which is repeatedly spoken of in connection with the altars of Baal. [93]
TAMMUZ. This is another form of the sun-god, who is represented as being slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. June is the month of Tammuz, and his festival began with the cutting of the sacred fir tree in which the god had hidden himself. ”

“ He is the patron of all growth and fertility, and, by the "uncontrolled use of analogy characteristic of early thought," the Baal is the god of the productive element in its widest sense. Originating probably, in the observation of the fertilizing effect of rains and streams upon the receptive and reproductive soil, baalism becomes identical with the grossest nature-worship. ”

“ A woman once seated must remain until she has been selected by a piece of silver being cast into her lap, and the rite performed outside the temple.”
Similar customs existed in Armenia, Phrygia, and even in Palestine, and were a feature of the worship of Baal Peor. The Hebrew prophets described and denounced these excesses which had the same characteristics as the rites of the Babylonian priesthood. The identical custom is referred to in 1 Sam. ”

“ The masses are not moved by conviction, but by convenience; their God is not Jehovah, the Invisible, the Eternal, whose law is unyielding truth, whose service is uncompromising devotjon to duty, whose nature is unchanging love, justice and holiness; but Baal, the visible deity, whose symbol is the sun, now smiling in friendly rays, now hidden behind obscuring clouds, to-day kissing the flowers out of their sleep, to-morrow parching up field and meadow, that all creatures languish for thirst a type of that idol worshiped at all times by the masses, the idol called: Public Opinion. ”

“ It is natural to find the uncertainty of the weather reflected in the character of the Baalim, with the result that we get a religion alternating between intoxicating joy and the deepest gloom. To appease the fickle god or to win his favour sacrifices, even of human lives, are presented, and if Baal continues unheeding, scenes of the most94 unrestrained fanaticism prevail. ”

“ The idea which has long prevailed that Baal was properly a sky-god affords no explanation of the local character of the many baals; on the other hand, on the theory of a higher development where the gods become heavenly or astral beings, the fact that ruder conceptions of nature were still retained (often in the unofficial but more popular forms of cult) is more intelligible. ”

“ The Baal priests were caught as in a snare. Their hearts must have sunk within them; his did not. Perhaps some of them believed sufficiently in their idol to hope that, were he demon or deity, he might save himself and his votaries from humiliation and defeat; but most of them [Pg 390] must have been seized with terrible misgiving, as they saw the assembled people prepared to wait with Oriental patience, seated on their abbas on the sides of that natural amphitheatre, till the descending flame should prove that Baal had heard the weird invocation of his worshippers. ”

“ The pretenders to prophecy prophesied by Baal, in his name, to his honour, being backed and supported by the wicked kings to confront the Lord's prophets. Baal's prophets joined with Baal's priests, and walked after the things which do not profit, that is, after the idols which can be no way helpful to their worshippers. See how the best characters are usurped, and the best offices liable to corruption; and wonder not at the sin and ruin of a people when the blind are leaders of the blind. ”