The Old Testament and the Modern World

THE MODERN SIGNIFICANCE OF BAAL WORSHIP

    One of the surprisingly significant issues in the Old Testament is the constant competition between the worship of Yahweh and Baal. From the perspectives of God and His prophets, Yahweh worship and Baal worship were completely incompatible. They were opposite extremes both in beliefs and in practice. However, it is important to realize that from the perspective of people who lived in Palestine at the time, the two religious movements were not always seen as being incompatible. Baal worship was in many ways the mirror image of Yahweh worship. That was true because Baal worship may have been partly an apostasy away from a true believing tradition. That apostasy may have occurred while Israel sojourned in Egypt.

    The similarities between Baal worship and Yahweh worship were striking. The word baal was originally a common  noun that meant lord, master, or husband. Only later did it become the name of a god. There is certainly nothing wrong with calling Yahweh the "Lord." The Yahweh tradition called God Adonai which has a similar meaning. There is also some onomastic evidence that the word Baal was once used either as a proper name or an adjective to describe Yahweh. Baal was worshiped before a calf or bull. However, Baal's body was not shaped like a bull. His body was assumed to be shaped like a man, but he was understood to be invisible. The bull or calf was intended as a focus of worship for the unseen god. The bull or calf of Baal worship was the vehicle on which Baal traveled as he stood on its back. While this may sound foreign to Yahweh worship, it was not unlike the role played by Israel's Ark of the Covenant. According to I Chronicles 28:18, the Ark of the Covenant was a model of God's chariot, the cherubim throne seen in passages like Ezekiel 1. That's why it was covered by the mercy seat and cherubim were incorporated into it. Cherubim had a face like an ox and feet like a bull. So perhaps the calf or bull of Baal worship was a badly distorted memory of a vision of God's cherubim throne.

    Baal was not the high god of the Canaanite pantheon. Baal had to answer to the father god El who had created the world. The name El (or Il) was the most common Semitic word for god. It was used both as a common noun for god and a proper noun for the name of a specific deity. El was very often used in compounds like El Shaddai or El Elyon. These compounds were used both in Israel for Yahweh and across the ancient Near East for other deities. El Shaddai was stock West Semitic, and El Elyon was stock Canaanite. So Melchizedek worshiped El Elyon in Genesis 14. Moses assumed that Melchizedek worshiped Yahweh while the same name was used for a Canaanite deity. El in Canaanite religion originally lived in a tent on Mount Zaphon. When Baal took possession of Mount Zaphon, El moved northeast to Mount Amanus. Both Zaphon and Amanus were described with holy mountain imagery that was commonly used in the Old Testament to describe holy mountain worship places like Sinai, Bethel, Zion, and the New Jerusalem. El's tent on Zaphon was made from the same materials that were used to construct Israel's wilderness tabernacle, and its construction was described in somewhat similar terms. Both Yahweh and Baal were served by prophets and priests. Similar sacrifices were offered before them. Similar songs were sung in their worship. Similar claims were made about their power. For example, Baal defeated the sea by cleaving it to the ground with supernatural clubs. Moses lifted Yahweh's staff and the Red Sea was split open to the ground so that Israel could pass through the Yam Suph.

    The point of all this is not to equate Yahweh and Baal. Israel's prophets would have opposed that identification completely. The point is that the Israelites found it easy to merge the two religious traditions. The archaeological evidence suggests that Israel was usually highly syncretistic. Within Israel, there were some people who were faithful to Yahweh. Some people were committed to Baal. Some people merged the two religions. Some people listened to the false prophets who claimed to speak for Yahweh but actually lied in His name and told people what they wanted to hear. In the context of religious diversity, it is important to understand the cultural role that religions played. After the conquest, the worship of Yahweh was originally strongest among the poor and uneducated Israelites who lived as shepherds in the highlands of Palestine. Baal worship was found in the rich, well educated, sophisticated city states on the coastal plains. Baal worshipers had more advanced technology and better arts. They were part of a world culture with trade and diplomatic ties across the ancient Near East. Baal worshipers simply had a far more attractive and successful culture. During the United Monarchy, Yahweh worship was brought into Israel's mainstream. However, the perception always remained that it was the theology of the naive, poor, and foolish. Baal worship offered sophistication and success.

    In that setting, it is not surprising that Yahweh worship almost always gave way to Baal worship. The younger generation in Israel often pursued Baal so that they could be seen as cultured and educated people. Baal was a fertility god. He offered sexual license and even incorporated temple prostitution into corporate worship. Baal also guaranteed fruitful harvests and material prosperity. He was a warrior god who offered his worshipers dominance and security. Baal offered most of what people wanted, and he asked only for enough of their money to run the religious structure. The only problem with Baal worship was that Baal was only a literary delusion. He did not actually exist, although a demonic force of some kind may have stood behind the religion. Only Yahweh was God. His ways were always right. Turning from Yahweh led to suffering, confusion, defeat, and death. In time, Yahweh brought His judgments against the nation and drove Israel back to Himself.

    Things have not really changed all that much through the millennia. The worship of the true God is still seen as naive, foolish, and unsophisticated in the modern world. Too many wealthy and well educated people assume that the Bible could not be historically true, and that God could not really be that kind of Being. Many people choose to worship the modern equivalent of Baal. You can visit two churches in the same denomination. Both will have buildings that have a similar structure. Both will sing from the same hymnal and will structure their services in the same way. Yet one congregation will worship the true God while the other worships the modern equivalent of Baal or a similar designer god made in their own image. From the perspective of the denomination, the two churches will be similar with only slight differences of emphasis. From the standpoint of eternity, they may be light and darkness, life and death, war and peace.

    The problem is that we are all blinded by Eve's revolt against God's world view. We see through a glass darkly. The distinctions that are clear to God are far less clear to us. God divides the world into those who are His children and those who do not belong to Him. It is much harder for us to make that distinction. Some people obviously are part of God's kingdom. Some people obviously do not know Him. Yet there is also a huge number of people in the church who live a grey life. Are they saved or lost? They know a lot about God, but do they really know and serve Him? Do they worship the true God, or do they worship a designer God of their own making? While they believe many things that are true, is Christ's Spirit really within them? Like the wheat and the tares, sometimes we simply can not know until God gives His final verdict. All that we can do is to see God as clearly as we can in His Word and His world, then serve Him as faithfully as He gives us the grace to know and serve Him.

ARE GOD'S WAYS RIGHT?

    The whole idea of God's judgment is one of the most widely misunderstood ideas in Christian theology. People tend to think of hell as the worst thing that God could invent to punish those who He really hates. That isn't what the Bible says. To understand the Bible's view of judgment, it is important to understand something about the nature of the spiritual world. The true character of the spiritual realm is something that no one in this life can understand. When the prophets tried to teach people about the heavenly realm, their hearers lacked a frame of reference that would make comprehension possible. It would be like a missionary visiting a tribal group in the deepest jungle that had no contact with the outside world. When the missionary tried to explain the culture in New York city, what could he say? He could say that the buildings were rather like their huts with a hundred huts stacked on top of each other. He could say that the boats in the harbor were so huge that they stretched from the bend in the river to the mountain. Nothing that the missionary could say would give the indigenous people very much understanding of a modern city. That's the kind of problem that God has when trying to get people to understand the spiritual realm. No one knows enough to understand. So the Bible pictures that realm in ways that resemble human experience and ancient underworld imagery. God says, "The spiritual realm is sort of like this and sort of like that." People can only catch a glimpse of the reality from what they read.

    When the Bible described the spiritual realm, it often used fire imagery as one of the closest things in human experience that can explain the spiritual reality. Heaven, hell, and the New Jerusalem are all often described with fire imagery because they all are composed of the same kind of spiritual "stuff." In Exodus 3:2, Moses encountered the Angel of the Lord (later identified with God) in a bush that burned with supernatural fire. Numbers 14:14 claimed that God Himself was present in the pillar of cloud and fire that led Israel out of Egypt. Later, Exodus 19:16-20 depicted God coming down onto Mount Sinai in smoke and fire. Exodus 24:16-17 claimed that God's glory on Sinai looked like a consuming fire. Deuteronomy 4:11 & 36 claimed that Mount Sinai burned with fire to the heart of the heavens. The fire was accompanied by darkness, cloud, and thick gloom, and Israel heard God's voice from the midst of the fire. In Deuteronomy 5:25, the Israelites feared for their lives. They feared that the fire on Sinai would consume them if they heard God speak any more. God said that they were right. When Moses completed the wilderness tabernacle, God's presence came down into the tabernacle in smoke and fire. Several times in the wilderness, God once more came down into the tabernacle filling it with spiritual fire (Exodus 40:34-35; Leviticus 9:23-24; 16:2; Numbers 14:10, and 16:19). When the prophets saw God, they described God Himself with such fire imagery. Both heaven and the New Jerusalem were described with fire imagery. Numbers 14:20-21 promised that all the world would be filled with God's glory. Isaiah 4:3-6 promised that God would put the pillar of cloud and fire over the New Jerusalem.  Isaiah 6:3-4 depicted God's presence in His temple. Isaiah said that the whole world was filled with God's glory while God's temple was filled with smoke. Isaiah 60:19-20 promised that God Himself would be the city's light. Zechariah 14:5 promised that God would be a wall of fire around Jerusalem. John's Revelation described the eschaton with similar fire imagery in Revelation 21:23.

    The prophets described God with fire imagery. Ezekiel 1:27-28 claimed that God's body resembled fire and metal heated red hot in the fire. In Ezekiel 10:2, supernatural fire from God's cherubim throne was poured out in judgment. The prophets also associated supernatural fire with believers in the eschaton. In Exodus 33:18-23 and 34:29-35, Moses saw God as clearly as anyone could in this life. He walked down from Mount Sinai with his face shining like the sun. The Israelite were terrified by the fire like radiance of his face. In passages like II Corinthians 3:18 and Philippians 3:21, Paul used this passage to promise that all believers would reflect God's glory completely in the eschaton. Simply standing in God's presence and seeing Him as He was would transform them into His radiance. Daniel 12:2-3 promised that believers in the eschaton would shine like stars forever. Christ Himself promised in Matthew 13:41-43 that the righteous would shine as the sun in the kingdom of their father, and I Peter 5:1 promised that Christians would be partakers of the glory that was to be revealed.

    Glory fire was associated both with blessing and judgment. In Genesis 19:24, God rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. The fire of God's presence in the tabernacle flashed from the tent and lit the fire on the altar. Later in Leviticus 10:2, God's fire consumed Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu in judgment. Then in Numbers 16:35, God's fire destroyed 250 of Korah's followers. Centuries later, I Kings 18:30-38 noted that God's fire fell on Elijah's sacrifice on Mount Carmel. Then II Kings 1:10-12 noted that God's fire from heaven killed two groups of 50 soldiers who tried to capture Elijah. Ezekiel 10 depicted fire from between the cherubim being cast to earth in God's judgment. Even in the New Testament, Luke 9:54 recorded Jesus' disciples request to call down fire from heaven on a town that rejected Him.

    What does all of this have to do with heaven and hell? People survive in a sinful world by keeping some kind of shield between themselves and God. Even the high priest in the Holy of Holies had to be shielded by the incense smoke. God told Moses on Sinai that if Moses saw His face, he would die. When people do die, they stand before God's throne and see Him as He is. They encounter His awesome holiness and His rage against the long tradition of sin and rebellion that has harmed His people so deeply. As they stand before His glory fire, they reflect that glory within themselves. That is a terrible thing for rebels against His holiness. They can not stand the burning glory of God's reality. At the same time, God's fire like glory is a natural and blessed thing for those who have Christ's Spirit within them. Being united with Christ, they can stand to share His glory fire while those who do not have His Spirit can not tolerate the fire of His presence. So God has given rebels a place where they can get away from Him. Hell is not a lake of fire because that is the worst thing that God could create. Heaven is equally a place of fire, and it might be the same kind of fire. The thing that determines the character of hell is the absence of God. That is terrible because God's presence brings love, joy, patience, tolerance, and peace. Life  without God's righteousness is only pain, rage, grief, and sorrow. God is righteous because He gives people what they have chosen for themselves. People who reject Christ's salvation also reject His presence within themselves. Without that presence, they have chosen and will choose to exist away from God's presence for all eternity. The flight from God's presence cuts people off from life, peace, and joy forever. Instead, they grind their teeth in rage against God, a rage that echoes God's own rage against sin.

    The fundamental questions of eternity have always been simply these. Who is God? Must He be served? Must He be loved? Does He have a right to command? Do angels and people have a right to rebel against Him and to try to replace Him? Does He have a right to condemn? Does He have a right to remove all sin and rebellion from His creation so that it can finally become His eternal kingdom? As vassals who seek to be faithful, believers affirm God's right to rule. Rebels share Satan's primal revolt and declare that God has no right to judge. They choose the autonomy of hell instead of the blessings of faithful service in the new Eden.

    When thinking about a Christian view of knowledge and salvation, it is important to remember that no one is saved by what they understand. Salvation comes from Christ's presence within His people. Jesus can be present in the hearts of severely retarded children who understand almost nothing. Jesus' presence may be completely missing from the hearts pastors or even seminary professors with two doctorates and a life of study. The most important issue in life is not what you understand; it is Who you know and Who you serve. That makes all of the difference. The fear of Yahweh is indeed the beginning of wisdom, and the eternal state for the saved and the lost is simply an extension of the choices that they have made about God in this life.

Copyright © 2009 Dr. Rodger Dalman
Last modified: 08/11/09