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Fact Book
The same name traced across the biblical canon and the Second Temple texts, side by side.
Belial (An angel in the Old Testament)
Not a person. Belial is a Hebrew word for worthlessness or wickedness, and the Old Testament uses it in phrases like sons of Belial for scoundrels and troublemakers.
Not a person. Belial is a Hebrew word for worthlessness or wickedness, and the Old Testament uses it in phrases like sons of Belial for scoundrels and troublemakers.
Belial is not the name of an individual but a Hebrew word meaning 'worthlessness' or 'wickedness,' used throughout the Old Testament in phrases like 'sons of Belial' for scoundrels and troublemakers (Judges 19:22; 1 Samuel 2:12). By the New Testament era it had become a proper name for Satan or a chief evil power, as reflected in Paul's rhetorical question in 2 Corinthians 6:15, 'what concord hath Christ with Belial?' The term appears often in this personified sense in Second Temple Jewish writings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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- 2 Corinthians 6:15
