Baalim

Boyd’s Bible Dictionary:

[BAAL.]

Concise Bible Dictionary:

SEE BAAL.

Jackson’s Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names:

the lords (idols)

From Manners and Customs of the Bible:

Judges 3:7. The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves.
Baalim is the plural of Baal. Gesenius defines it “images of Baal.” Against this, however, it has been said that the verbs which are associated in the Bible with the word Baalim are not verbs which are used in connection with images, such as “set up,” “cast down,” “adorn,” or “break in pieces”; but rather verbs which are used in connection with heathen deities, for example, “to serve,” “worship,” “seek to,” “go after,” “put away.” See Fairbairn’s Imp. Bib. Dict., vol.1, pp. 137,167. Some of these latter terms, however, can be used as properly in reference to images as to deities.
Some writers explain the word as indicating or including the various modifications of Baal, such as Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith, Baal-Zebub. This might find illustration in Hosea 2:17: “For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.”
Others suppose Baalim to be what the old grammarians called the pluralis excellentioe; a form of speech designed to describe the god in the wide extent of his influence and the various modes of his manifestation. The word is of frequent occurrence in the Old Testament. See Judges 2:11; 8:33; 10:10; 1 Samuel 7:4; 12:10; 2 Chronicles 24:7; Jeremiah 2:23; 9:14.
2. The word asheroth, here rendered “groves,” is often found either in singular or plural form. In most places where it is used, the word “groves” is evidently inappropriate, though in this our English translation is like the Septuagint and the Vulgate. Belden, the eminent lawyer and antiquarian, in his work De Diis Syris Syntagmata Duo, published in 1617, was the first to suggest that the word must be understood to mean, at least in some places, not groves, but images of Ashtoreth, the companion deity to Baal. This is the view now entertained by some of the best critics. It is certainly more correct to speak of making images than to say that groves were made. If the words “image of Ashtoreth” or “images of Ashtoreth” are substituted for the word “grove” or “groves” in the following passages the sense will be much clearer: 1 Kings 16:33; 2 Kings 17:16; 21:3; 2 Chronicles 33:3. So in 2 Kings 17:10 and in 2 Chronicles 33:19 it is said that asheroth wore set up; that is, these wooden figures of Ashtoreth, in addition to the graven images also mentioned. In the days of Josiah there was an asherah in God’s house. We are told in 2 Kings 23:6, what the good king did with it; “And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.” All this Is much more appropriately said of an image than of a grove. This asherah likewise had over it a canopy or tent, woven by the women (2 Kings 23:7). It was doubtless the same image which Manasseh had put into the house of the Lord (2 Kings 21:7). From Judges 6:25-30, and from other passages which speak of the asheroth as cut or burnt, it appears that they were made of wood. Some suppose that the expression “stamped it small to powder,” in the text above quoted, indicates that the asherah in that instance was made of metal, since otherwise there would have been no need or stamping it after burning; but the king may have pulverized the burnt wood in order more deeply to express his detestation of the idolatry which had occasioned its erection.
The asherah of the Phoenicians is thought by some writers to be connected with the “sacred tree” of the Assyrians, an object which appears very frequently on the Assyrian monuments. If this conjecture be based on fact we may find in the representations of the sacred tree which have come down to us a picture of the asherah which the idolatrous Jews worshiped.
Another opinion, which has found favor in some quarters, is, that Asherah was the name of a goddess worshiped by the Canaanites, either Ashtoreth or some other. The word “served” in the text, and in 2 Chronicles 24:18, seems at first to sanction this view; but as the passages previously quoted evidently speak of wooden images, it is probable that in these two texts the symbol is put, by metonymy, for the divinity.
A learned English writer, some years ago, advanced a very singular idea in reference to the asherah. He suggested that it was “an armillary and astronomical machine or instrument, erected long, very long ago—quite in the primitive ages”; that it was used for purposes of divination in connection with idolatrous worship; that it was probably about the height of a man, and had small balls branching off curvedly from the sustaining rod or axis; and that this axis was made of iron and brass, the bottom being set in a socket of stone, in which it turned as a pivot, requiring oil for lubrication. In proof of this last assertion he refers to the blessing which Moses pronounced on Asher (Deut. 33:24-25). He assumes that the word Asher in that text has reference to the asherah; that the shoes of iron and brass refer to the axis of the armillary machine, the foot of which is dipped in oil, that it may revolve more easily! The reasoning of his lengthy dissertation is more curious than conclusive. See Sabaean Researches, by John Landseer, Essay VIII.

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