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The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Bel / Marduk
The chief god of Babylon, named in the prophets as a god about to be humiliated.
Isaiah 46:1, in every translation this tool compares.
Bel is a title meaning lord, and it sticks to Marduk, the chief god of Babylon. Jeremiah names both in a single line, a small sign that the prophets knew the foreign pantheon by name rather than waving at it from a distance.
Bel is a title, "lord," that attaches to Marduk. Jeremiah 50:2 names both in one line, and a reader can see there that biblical polemic knows the pantheon by name. DDD notes that the public humiliation of Bel and Marduk also stands behind two works outside the Hebrew canon, the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6) and the addition to Daniel called Bel and the Dragon, both long satirical demolitions of the same god.
H1078 (Bel), 3 occ; H4781 (Merodach), 1 occ
Enuma Elish narrates Marduk's rise. He nets Tiamat, drives a wind into her open mouth, shoots an arrow through her swollen belly to split her heart, then slices the corpse lengthwise, using half for the roof of the sky and penning her waters so they can't escape, building order out of the chaos goddess's own body. The Babylonian Akitu festival re-enacted the myth each spring, with the king ritually humbled before Marduk's statue and the gods gathered into the city in procession, the civic pageant Isaiah 46:1-2 mocks by reducing the gods to baggage.
- Isaiah 46:1
- Jeremiah 50:2
- Jeremiah 51:44
- John D. Currid, *Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament*, 39
- K. A. Mathews, *Genesis 1-11:26*, NAC, 1a:93
- DDD s.v. "Bel," 165-168 s.v. "Marduk"
- Dalley, *Myths from Mesopotamia*
