Elijah vs. Ba'al

In the book of Kings, in the Old Testament, we encounter one of the greatest of God’s prophets, Elijah (in Hebrew Eliyahu, meaning “the Lord is God.”) His story is contained in the following passages: 1 Kings 16:29 to 2 Kings 2:12. There we find Elijah’s struggle against Israel’s sinful worship of a native god of Canaan named Ba’al (which meant “lord.”)

Who was Ba’al? Basically, he was a deity who brought the rain and its resulting fertility to the land. In ancient Canaan, human survival was precarious and depended on the cycle of dry and rainy seasons. If the rain did not come, children, crops and livestock were at risk. A drought meant famine and death.

Clay tablets from the city of Ugarit have revealed the mythological story of Ba’al. Here is a summary of it: El was the chief god of Canaanite mythology; he was like a father, a judge, and a creator. Together, El and his female consort Asherah sired the other gods and goddesses. Among their children were Astarte, goddess of earth and fertility, Yamm, god of the sea, Shapash, god of the sun, and Dagon, god of corn. Dagon had a son, Ba’al, the warlike god of thunderstorms and rain, and a daughter Anath, bloody goddess of love and war. Anath was Ba’al’s consort as well as his sister, and together they sired Mot, god of death and the underworld. Desiring power, Ba’al treacherously attacked and displaced El, who called on his children to avenge him. Yamm fought Ba’al, but Ba’al was victorious over Yamm with the help of Astarte and his sister Anath. Then Mot successfully challenged his father Ba’al, sending him in death to the underworld. Rain ceased on the earth. Anath demanded that her son Mot bring Ba’al back to life, but Mot refused. The angry Anath then dismembered Mot, fertilizing the earth with his body. Anath and Shapash found Ba’al in the underworld and brought him back to life. The rain returned. Baal, revived, went to war against all the other gods, and defeated them. But Mot was also revived, and he once again challenged Baal to fight. Shapash stopped the fight on behalf of El, who decided the conflict by ruling that Ba’al would be in charge during wet, fertile seasons, and Mot would be in charge during dry seasons.

Perhaps you can see that this myth is a personification of the cycle of dry and rainy seasons mentioned above. Life in Canaan absolutely depended upon Ba’al bringing autumn rains after the hot dry summer. For this reason, Ba’al had to be even more important than El, the father of the gods, so Ba’al defeated El. The water the people needed was not the salt water of the sea, but instead the life-giving rain. Thus Ba’al defeated Yamm. In the dry season, Ba’al was defeated by Mot, but Ba’al’s resurrection meant the return of the rainy season. The story of the fight between the gods symbolized the human struggle for life. It explained the annual renewal of the earth. The fight was not an event of the past, but happened again each year and was reenacted by the people in worship. That worship included religious prostitution, which supposedly aroused Ba’al and encouraged him to bring rain. The sex act was connected, through imitative magic, with the rain watering the land to grow crops. Golden bull idols were used to represent Ba’al’s throne. Asherah, the consort of El, and her daughter Astarte, were worshipped alongside Ba’al, using sacred wooden poles carved with their female images.

That was the religion that the Israelites of the Exodus found when they arrived in Canaan, bringing with them the Law of their God, YHWH. The problem that the Israelites faced for the next several centuries was not that they abandoned the worship of YHWH for Ba’al, but that they simply blended them together and worshipped both. And so Ba’al was worshipped in Israel as the god of rain, crops, and livestock. If you read the first two of the Ten Commandments, you can see the problem with this. “And God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Exodus 20:1-4) The prophets had to condemn Ba’al worship as being unfaithful to the Covenant. If YHWH alone was God, then Ba’al could not be worshipped by God’s people.

Around 870 BCE, the problem of Ba’al worship in the Northern Kingdom of Israel reached a crisis point. King Ahab of Israel married Jezebel, the Phoenician daughter of the Priest-King Ethbaal of nearby Sidon. Ahab allowed Jezebel’s worship of Ba’al and Asherah, and joined in it himself. He built a sacred pole for Asherah, and a temple and an altar for Ba’al in Samaria. Jezebel proceeded to spread her idolatry around Israel. Ba’al worship became like a state religion, with prophets of Ba’al and Asherah on the payroll, and God decided to send his own prophet to put a stop to it.

Enter Elijah, a rustic settler from the rough hill country of Gilead, east of the river Jordan. Elijah wore only a leather girdle around his loins and a cape of sheep skin. He had a head of long shaggy hair hanging down his back. Imagine this wild figure stepping before King Ahab of the prosperous, civilized city of Samaria, and declaring, “As the LORD the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” (1 Kings 17:1) This was a direct challenge to the “power” of Ba’al, the supposed “god” who could bring the rain. YHWH meant to prove to the people of Israel that Ba’al was a mere idol, a powerless and imaginary being. Indeed, a drought began that lasted for about three years, and prayers to Ba’al were impotent to stop it. Elijah spent the time hiding in the Phoenician territory where Jezebel once lived, performing various miracles to sustain a widow who sheltered him.

Elijah returned to Israel after the three barren years of famine were finished and issued the following dramatic challenge to Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 18:19-45): ““Now therefore have all Israel assemble for me at Mount Carmel, with the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table.”[…]Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. […] I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets number four hundred fifty. Let two bulls be given to us; let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it; I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the LORD; the god who answers by fire is indeed God.” […] Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; then call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” Then they cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them. As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come closer to me”; and all the people came closer to him. First he repaired the altar of the LORD that had been thrown down; Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob […] with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD. Then he made a trench around the altar […] Next he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. He said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” […] so that the water ran all around the altar, and filled the trench also with water. At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The LORD indeed is God; the LORD indeed is God.” Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” Then they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon, and killed them there. Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of rushing rain.” […] Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; there he bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees. […] In a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind; there was a heavy rain.”

After this victory, Jezebel wanted Elijah dead, and he was again forced to go into hiding, this time on Mt. Sinai. There God instructed him to choose a successor, the prophet Elisha. The two prophets continued the struggle against Ba’al worship, but ultimately, their efforts could not save Israel from God’s punishment. Ahab’s dynasty died out but Ba’al worship did not. Some of Israel’s subsequent kings supported Ba’al worship, and some tried to eradicate it. About 150 years later, Israel fell to Assyria and the hope of God’s people came to rest on the Southern Kingdom of Judah. After the Babylonian exile, Ba’al worship finally faded away for good.

Elijah continued to serve God as a prophet until the end of his life on earth, but he did not die. As we learn in 2 Kings 2:11-12, he was mysteriously taken directly to Heaven. “As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.” This ascension gave rise to later expectations about Elijah’s return that appear throughout the Gospels. Next month, we will explore “Elijah and the New Testament”.