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Ba'al

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

a dreamer; a "ba'al of anger" is an angry man; a wings " is a bird a " ba'al of edges " is twoedged; "ba'alimof a covenant" are allies; "ba'als of an oath " are conspirators. Further, a " ba'al may be the owner of animals (Isa. i. 3; Ex. xxi. 28 et seq.), but not of men

is

" ba'al of



as slaves or subjects, for the phrase in Isa. xvi.

8,

the "ba'alim"

of the nations, implies

dominion over regions rather than over peo"Ba'al " in Heple. brew is therefore essentially different from "adon," which implies personal sway and control. When any divinity is called " ba'al " or

"a ba'al," the designamust be understood to imply not a

tion

ruler of

men,

but a

possessor or controller of certain things. On the other hand, the

Assyrian (Babylonian) "bel,"

originally

same word, implies Ba'al as a Sim-Ood. (From a Pheuician

the es-

pecially lordship over

Btele in the Louvre.)

men, though it is also, as in all north-Semitic languages, used as a mere noun of relation. In Arabic "ba'al," as applied to persons, is confined to the meaning of " husband.

The question as to the origin of the Worship of Ba'al among the Hebrews can only be settled by tracing it among the Semites in general and especially among the Babylonians. Here the name (Bel) is that of one of the earliest and most honored of national Bel was the special god of Nippur, perhaps deities. the oldest of Babylonian cities. Nippur was in the earliest known times a Bel in Babylonia, religious center, and the prestige of Bel was so great that when the city of Babylon became supreme his name was imposed upon that of Merodach, the patron deity of the capital, who was thenceforth known as Bel-Merodach There is, howor simply Bel (compare Isa. xlvi. 1). ever, nothing to show that Bel was a universal object of Semitic worship before he became the god of Nippur. Moreover, Nippur, like other Babylonian cities, had its own local deity under whose auspices the city itself and its temple were founded, and who seems to have received the name Bel, "lordly, dominant, " by reason of the renown and influence of this central shrine. This, however, will hardly account for the place held by Bel in the Babylonian pantheon, where he appears as the god of the earth, distinguished from Ami, the god of the heavens, and Ea, the god of the

lower world. Bel seems to have been honored on similar grounds in Lagash in southern Babylonia, and it is reasonable to suppose that it was a combination of the several leading cults of such Bels that led to the unification indicated in the position of the great Babylonian Bel. It appears probable that it

was the gradual

Ba'al-Worship assimilation of cities

and petty

states that raised the leading local deities to national

prominence. theological,

Thereafter other influences, sacerdotal,

and administrative, cooperated

to

make

a favorite cult predominant. Bel, accordingly, became a distinct national god, with a proper name, at an early date, though at a comparatively late stage of religious development. In Palestine such a degree of syncretism in BaalWorship was never attained. There were several reasons for this, the chief of which was Jews that political combination of any sort Advanced was difficult in that singularly diverDevelop- sified region, so that each city-state ment in among the Canaanites retained its own Palestine, special divinity with its separate and

Yet when any wide influence, as did the city of Tyre, the worship of its deity extended among the dependent cities and might even be adopted elsewhere by virtue of alliances, political or matrimonial, on the part of the rulers of the reindependent shrine.

community came

to exert a

Such, for example, was the occaspective states. sion of the degradation of worship in Israel in the time of Solomon (I Kings xi. 1 et seq.) and of Ahab (I Kings xvi. 31 et seq.). The passage last cited is suggestive. There it is stated that Ahab " took as a wife Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and he went and served the Baal and worshiped him and he set up an altar to the Baal in the house of Baal which he had built in Samaria." It is hardly likely that the passage embodies a reference to a god Ba'al whose worship was common throughout Palestine, for " the Baal," according to the contest, does not necessarily mean anything more than Melkart, the deity specially honored by the Phenicians ( Sidonians), and in fact it appears that there were many Ba'als in Palestine, each of whom stood on an independent footing (compare

Baal-bekith, Ba'alBut Ahab im, etc.). had no occasion to aggrandize any one of these minor Ba'alim, since he did not regard them as at all serviceable.

To account for the worship of these Ba'alim we may refer to the usage of the word noun. ural

as

a

common

The supernat-

powers most ob-

Ba'al Hamuli. (From

s Phenictan terrn-uotta in the Louvre.)

vious to the imagination of primitive Semites were those which were supposed to supply their most pressing wants, such Gatherings and as the need of food and drink. settlements were made where the soil was most inviting; that is, where it was perennially productive. Such districts were regarded as being fertilized by