Baal - The Gods of the Bible

Judges 2:11

Judges 2:11, in every translation this tool compares.

First, in plain English

The contest on Mount Carmel is not an argument about whether Baal exists. It is a contest over which god answers by fire, held on a mountain, in the weather, on Baal's own ground. He was the storm god of Canaan and the rival Israel kept going back to for centuries.

What the text says

The storm god, and Israel's most persistent rival. The Carmel contest isn't a dispute over whether Baal exists. It is a contest over which god answers by fire, staged on a mountain and in the weather, Baal's home ground. Jehu's purge (2 Kings 10:18-28) and Josiah's reforms after it show the cult never died out between Elijah and the exile, and Elijah's "seven thousand who have not bowed" (1 Kings 19:18) is an admission of how badly Yahweh's loyalists were outnumbered.

The word

H1168 (בַּעַל), 81 occ

Ancient Near Eastern background

The Baal Cycle from Ras Shamra has Baal defeat Yam and then Mot, build a palace, and hold kingship, the same portfolio Israel's prophets keep taking away from him. After Yam falls, Baal gets El's permission for a palace (Anat pressures El, and Asherah consents too), and Kothar-wa-Hasis builds it on the heights of Sapanu; Kothar is the same craftsman god who forged the clubs Baal used on Yam. Carmel (1 Kings 18) hits that portfolio directly. Baal is lord of fire, pictured with lightning in his hand, and Elijah calls for fire because fire is Baal's own ground. DDD traces the name back to a proper divine name in the Abu Salabikh god list of the third millennium BC, older than any Ugaritic text. Ugaritic epithets call him bn dgn, "son of Dagan," even though he is also counted among El's sons, and he is repeatedly titled b'l spn, "Baal of Zaphon," after the mountain where his palace stood. Whether Baal and Hadad were originally one god, or whether Baal was a Canaanite deity distinct from the Syrian storm god, is argued both ways; by the Iron Age the two names had split by region, Hadad for the Arameans and Baal for the Phoenicians and Canaanites.

Where scholars disagree

DDD's Baal article (W. Herrmann) handles the two charges against the cult differently. On child sacrifice (Jeremiah 19:5; 32:35) it is blunt: the two texts are late and evidently biased in their polemic, and without confirmation from an unsuspected source their information "should be dismissed." On cultic prostitution (Jeremiah 2:23; Hosea 2:15) it is more measured, saying the idea "should not be taken for a fact," an unproven assumption resting on two texts that are both ambiguous. Both verdicts concern the Palestinian Baal cult as history. Neither disputes that this is how Israel's prophets described it.

Where it appears

Judges 2:11,13
Judges 6:25-32
1 Kings 16:31-33
1 Kings 18:19-40
Jeremiah 19:5
Hosea 2:8
1 Kings 19:18
2 Kings 10:18-28
2 Kings 11:18

Sources

W. Herrmann, DDD s.v. "Baal," 132-138
Brueggemann, "Baal, Critical Issues," *Lexham Bible Dictionary*
Curtis, "Canaanite Gods and Religion," DOT:Historical Books, 136
IVP Bible Background Commentary: OT
Gibson, *Canaanite Myths and Legends*
Parker, *Ugaritic Narrative Poetry*, note-to-build: currently `kind: person`, uncurated, with a study-bible dictNote