Judges 2:13

This verse repeats the substance of Judges 2:12; it continues Judges 2:10 and leads on to Judges 2:20. The repetition is explained if the verse belongs to E; for the expression forsook the Lordin E cf. Joshua 24:20; Deuteronomy 31:16.

served Baal and the Ashtaroth Once settled in Canaan, the Israelites could not resist the temptation to adopt the worship of the native deities, on whom the prosperity of flocks and fields was supposed to depend. The God of Israel came from the desert; in the early days of the settlement His home was believed to be in Sinai rather than in Canaan (Judges 5:4 f.); hence the popular religion, without ceasing to regard Jehovah as the God of Israel, felt it necessary to pay homage at the same time to the gods of the country. No doubt also the popular mind tended to identify Jehovah with the local Baals and Astartes, whose sanctuaries were scattered over the land. Such confusions gravely imperilled the distinctive character of Israel's religion; they produced a degradation of faith and morals which led the prophets, and writers of the schools of E and D, stirred by the painful evidence of a later age, to charge Israel with having fallen into Baal-worship from the very day they entered into Canaan; the popular religion could only be described as a -forsaking" of Jehovah.

Baal means lit. owner, possessor, e.g. of a house Judges 19:22, of a town (-citizens") Judges 9:2, of a wife (-husband") Exodus 21:3 etc.; applied to divine beings it is a title conveying the idea of ownership, or, less probably, of domination. There was no one god called Baal; each considerable town or district had its deity, the lordof that particular place. Hence the O.T. speaks of Baal (sing.) in a collective sense, as here and Hosea 13:1; Jeremiah 11:13 etc., or of Baâlim (plur.) Judges 2:11; Judges 3:7; Judges 8:33 etc., meaning the aggregate of local or special Baals. The local Baal is often designated by the name of his town or sanctuary, e.g. B. of Hermon Judges 3:3, B. of Tamar Judges 20:33, B. of Meon Numbers 32:38 and Moab. Stone ll. 9, 30; or of some special aspect under which he was worshipped, e.g. B. of the covenant Judges 8:33; Judges 9:4, B. of flies 2 Kings 1:2 ff.; at Baal-Gad under Mt Hermon he was worshipped as Gad, the god of fortune. These usages are abundantly illustrated by the Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions; e.g. we hear of the B. of Zidon, of Tyre, of Lebanon, of Tarsus; occasionally the actual name of the Baal is known the B. of Tyre was Melḳarth, the Baalath (fem.) of Gebal was -Ashtart, the B. of Ḥarran was Sin; we meet with Baal under various aspects, e.g. -glowing" (? ḥammân), -healing" (marpç), -dancing" (marḳôd), -of the heavens" (shâmçm). Baal was a title of the deity who owned the land, the god of the cultivated field and its produce (see Hosea 2:5), of fertilizing warmth, perhaps, but not a sun-god. As denoting owner, lord, the title could be applied in a harmless sense to Jehovah Himself; this is seen in the proper names Jerubbaal Judges 6:32 (note) Baal-yah 1 Chronicles 12:5, one of David's mighty men, and, in the families of Saul and David, Esh-baal, Merib-baal, Beel-yada, 1 Chronicles 8:33-34; 1 Chronicles 14:7, altered to Ish-bosheth, Mephi-bosheth, El-yada in 2 Samuel 2:8; 2 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 5:16. But the associations of the name were felt to be dangerous, as appears from the substitution of bôsheth-shame" in the latter names; and the time arrived when Baal could no longer be used safely of the God of Israel, Hosea 2:16 ff.

Ashtaroth plur. of -Ashtôreth, i.e. -Ashtart (LXX Ἀστάρτη) pronounced with the vowels of bôsheththe goddess worshipped throughout the Semitic world, not only by the Phoenicians (1 Kings 11:5; 1 Kings 11:33), but all over Palestine and on the E. of the Jordan, by the Philistines (1 Samuel 31:10), by the Moabites (Moab. St. l. 17 Ashtar), in Bashan (Deuteronomy 1:4) etc. In Babylonia and Assyria she was called Ishtar, in Syria -Attar, in S. Arabia -Athtar (a male deity); by the Greeks she was identified with Aphrodite. The meaning of the name is obscure; with regard to the form it will be noticed that the fem. ending in tis distinctively Canaanite. -Ashtart was the goddess of fertility and generation. In the O.T. Baal and -Ashtôreth together stand for the false gods and goddesses native to Palestine; and as Hebrew has no word for goddess, -Ashtôreth is practically used instead. Here the combination of Baal (sing.) with -Ashtârôth (plur., i.e. the many local forms of the goddess) is unusual, and we should probably read (-Ashtôreth, the sing., in a collective sense.