A Series on the Book of Judges - Part 3

Part 3 - Israel and Baal

Sunday School pupils might have long enjoyed Elijah’s triumph over the prophets of Baal but given the somewhat salacious background to this false god, it’s perhaps not too surprising that a “theo-biography” has not traditionally featured on their curriculum!  But no understanding of the Old Testament is complete without knowing the prominent role that Baal played in Israelite life.

The Israelites seem to have managed to avoid falling into idolatry while captive in Egypt, despite the polytheistic society. Post-exodus, apart from the golden calf and the Balaam crisis (Num.25), the Israelites largely stayed loyal to God with some notable exceptions (Amos 5:26). But it didn’t seem to take long for them to fall headlong into idolatry when they entered Canaan.  Judges 2:12-13 records “They forsook the LORD…who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them.”

 What was behind this sudden departure after generations of faithfulness?  The key factor was social co-habitation, including marriage, amongst the Canaanites.  As reviled slaves in Egypt and then pilgrim wanderers in the desert, there was simply limited opportunity for this to happen before then.

Judges 10:6 lists the false gods that the Israelites worshipped. It’s no shock that Baal, a God of the Caananites, is first on the list:  “They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines”. Who was he?

Baal means master, and thus to worship Baal usurped the position of the Lord.  We learn from ancient Syrian texts that he was known as the storm god, the bringer of rain, and therefore fertility, to the land. His nickname was "Rider of the Clouds," and often described using meteorological terms like clouds, thunder, lightning, hail and, most importantly, water.

 It’s easy to imagine how he might appeal to people living in an arid and agriculturally marginal area, where the fertility of land was so vital to preserving life. The Israelites experienced God as a powerful desert warrior God, who they counted on to march in with his heavenly armies when needed. But as they settled into the land, they perhaps became convinced that Baal was in charge of the more mundane aspects of everyday life, like rain, crops and livestock.   But the Israelites never completely abandoned the worship of the true God. To put it bluntly, they had one God for crises and another god for everyday life (this is called syncretism - we can be guilty of that too!)

Baal worship involved prostitution, designed in part to encourage this fertility to continue (read Hosea and Jeremiah for the graphic details). It seems particularly apt, then, that the metaphor of prostitution was used in Judges 8, and of adultery many times elsewhere, to describe Israel’s unfaithfulness.

There was no prospect of Israel’s God just letting all this happen though. It’s no accident that various scriptures portray God using images consistent with the Baal myth. God speaks from the mighty waters, His voice lightning and His words thunder (Psalm 29; 104:7). God is described as shooting flashing arrows from the heavens as He rides in a chariot in the clouds (Psalm 76:3-9; 77:16-20; 97:1-5; 104:1-4; Hab 3:4-9). It is God alone who rules over the waters of the deep and controls the raging of the sea (Psalm 77:16; 89:5-13; 93:3-4).

 God is showing himself to be the real deal, not just in words but in actions as well.  Judge Deborah’s song of victory has an unmistakably watery motif, “When you, LORD, went out from Seir, when you marched from the land of Edom, the earth shook, the heavens poured, the clouds poured down water.  The river Kishon swept them away, the age-old river, the river Kishon.” Judges 5: 4,21. She knew that it is God who is in control of the elements, not Baal.  The famous Carmel contest was further proof of this, giving strong meaning to Elijah's prayer that rain would be withheld, as a direct challenge to the rain-god!  And Elijah even added insult to the priests’ injuries by soaking his sacrifice to God with water to show that this was no barrier to His almighty power.

 Outlasting the Judges by centuries Baal worship thrived until the time of the exile, even as a quasi state religion under Ahab and Jezebel. Although the problem largely faded after the return from exile thanks to Ezra and Nehemiah’s reforms, Israel has been so passionately monotheistic ever since that most Jews incorrectly view accepting Jesus as the Son of God as a forbidden return to polytheistic syncretism.