IDOLATRY IN ISRAEL

Specifics about other gods and results of idolatry

Anita Good
GEDU4302 Ancient World History
March 8, 2024
 Introduction

The reader of the Bible may be amused while reading the Old Testament by what the

early fathers of the nation of Israel knew about God even though the Bible does not record

God giving them specific guidelines or a special revelation to explain specifics about Himself.

For example, Abel understood that God desires blood offerings not having directly received

such information from God, but only an example of atonement made to cover Adam and

Eve’s nakedness through the killing of an animal. A similar occurrence is found in Genesis

35:2-4 where Jacob understands that the proper worship of the God of his father involves the

putting away of other gods to worship Him only. Many years later, when the children of Israel

exited the land of Egypt, after manifesting His great power which succeeded all the gods of

Egypt, and revealing Himself by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, the

people stood under Mt. Sinai awaiting the return of Moses, who went up to receive the word

of the Lord. The story of the events to follow is well known- the Israelites set up for

themselves a golden calf made by Aaron and worshiped it. When Moses saw what they did,

he was so furious he threw the Ten Commandments on the ground and broke them. He also

crushed the golden calf and made the people drink the water mixed with its bitter ashes.

Shortly after this incident, the nation of Israel heard the words: "Thou shalt have no other

gods before me." (Exo 20:3, ASV) Regardless of receiving this command, forty years later

Joshua has to repeat this command: " and put away the gods which your fathers served

beyond the River, and in Egypt; and serve ye Jehovah." (Jos 24:14, ASV) So we see the Jews

form a sinful, idolatrous pattern that would continue throughout the Old Testament in which

they constantly chose to worship other gods above the One True God, JHWH. Lets take a look

at the other gods that Israel worshiped in the Old Testament times.

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 Baal

The first mention of Baal is in Numbers, where Balak, the king of Moab, sends an

invitation to Baalam, a pagan prophet, to curse Israel in return for riches. He takes him into

the high places of Baal, to get a better view of the nation in tents. Although the book of

Numbers does not mention this, the book of Revelation reveals the tactic Balaam used to

curse Israel: "Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel,

to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication." (Rev 2:14, ASV) The nation of

Israel committed fornication with the Midianite women and received God’s wrath in the form

of a plague as a result of which 24, 000 men died (Numbers 25:1–9; Deuteronomy 23:3–6).

This was the Israelites first encounter with the foreign god called Baal-Peor.

The word “Baal” means “lord”. Baal was a god worshiped in Canaan. He was believed to

be the most powerful god, the son of El, the creator god and Asherah, the goddess of the sea.

He was the god of fertility, responsible for giving rain to produce crops and people to produce

children. Since Baal worship was so widespread among Canaanites, various regions had their

own “version” of Baal, such as Baal-Peor, mentioned before or Baal-Berith (Judges 8:33).

There were many denominations of Baalism, which we may not even know of. Popular rituals

of the worship of this god involved temple prostitution, human sacrifice, and self-inflicted

physical injury. Israel was involved in Baal worship throughout the period of the judges

(Judges 2:12-13) and during the reign of Omri and his family. This was a result of defying

God’s command about marrying foreign women. King Omri arranged the marriage of his son,

Ahab, with the daughter of the Phoenician king, Jezebel. Under her influence Ahab allowed

for the building of worship places for Baal and Asherah as well as the killing of the prophets

of YHWH. God showed Ahab that He, not Baal, was in charge of the rain by sending a three-

and-a-half-year drought on the land. Later Elijah called all the prophets of Baal to Mt. Carmel

for a competition to decide which god is the true God. The god who was able to send down

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fire from heaven to burn the offering set on the altar, would be considered the true God. After

a long attempt of the prophets of Baal to call on their god, God showed Himself to be the True

God by consuming not only Elijah’s sacrifice with fire but also the stones on which it layed.

However, even this did not convince Jezebel and her daughter Athaliah. As long as they lived

the nation of Israel was involved in worship of their gods. God punished them severely by the

way they were killed- Jezebel was thrown out of her window by her own eunuchs and all her

sons were murdered by the inhabitants of her kingdom, while Athaliah was killed after being

dragged out of the vicinity of the Lord’s temple in the sight of her subjects.

Asherah

Asherah was a female, fertility goddess widely worshiped in Palestine. The Bible

mentions Judah as well as Israel involved in worshiping her (1 Kings 14:23; 16:33). Images of

Asherah along with other gods were even placed in the Lord’s temple built by Solomon (2

Kings 23:4). Asherah was often associated with poles placed in Israel (2 Kings 18:4, 2 Chron.

31:1). The children of Israel apparently tried to create a compromise between the worship of

God and the worship of Baal and Asherah by combining the two. The Holman Bible Atlas

says: “How far this popular religion went in syncretizing the worship of Yahweh and Baal

may be suggested by inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud near Kadesh-barnea. The inscriptions

mention Yahweh, Baal, El, and Asherah. One inscription uses the phrase ‘Yahweh of Samaria

and his Asherah.’ Although the interpretation of this inscription is controversial, the phrase

"his Asherah" could refer either to the goddess herself or to a wooden carved pole

representing Asherah. We cannot determine who wrote these inscriptions-Phoenicians,

Judeans, Israelites, or some other group-but they clearly reflect the syncretistic religious
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environment of southern Palestine between 900 and 700 c.” YHWH is a jealous God who

does not intend to share His glory with any other god. The prophets often declared God’s
1
Thomas Brisco, Holman Bible Atlas (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998).

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words saying: " I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me;" (Isa

46:9b)

Golden Calves

After the division of the kingdom of Israel, the northern tribes, called Israel were ruled

by Jeroboam, whom God announced king by Ahijah the Shilonite (1 Kings 11:29). Instead of

trusting in God’s promise of establishing his kingdom, Jeroboam worried that if his subjects

traveled to Jerusalem three times a year according to God’s command, they would turn their

backs on him and turn toward the king of Judah, Rehabeam. To solve this problem he set up

substitute places of worship in Bethel, which was a few miles before Jerusalem and in Dan. In

these places of worship, he set golden calves. In the later years of his reign, he received

another prophecy from Ahijiah, who said: "… thou hast not been as my servant David, who

kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was

right in mine eyes, but hast done evil above all that were before thee, and hast gone and made

thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy

back:" (1Ki 14:8-9, ASV) Jeroboam’s sin had an enormous influence on the Northern Tribes

of Israel. The worship of his golden calves became the “default” worship practice for most of

the kings of Israel. Thirteen of them are mentioned as followers of the “sins of Jeroboam”:

Asa (1 Kings 15:33-34), Baasha (1 Kings 16:2), Omri (1 Kings 16:25-26), Ahaziah the son of

Ahab (1 Kings 22:51-52), Jehoram the son of Ahab (2 Kings 3:1-3), Jehu (2 Kings 10:29),

Jehoahaz the son of Jehu (2 Kings 13:1-2), Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz (2 Kings 13:11),

Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23-24), Zechariah (2 Kings 15:8-9), Menahem (2 Kings 15:17-18),

Pekahiah (2 Kings 15:23-24), Pekah (2 Kings 15:27-28). Moreover, when the author of 2

Kings wrote a summary of the history of northern Israel he named Jeroboam’s sin as the

leading reason for the fall of the nation: “When he had torn Israel from the house of David,

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they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the

LORD and made them commit great sin. The people of Israel walked in all the sins that

Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them” (2 Kings 17:21-22, ESV).

Other

The Bible mentions other gods that we do not know much about except the places they

originated from. In the book of Judges, the Israelites worshiped the gods of Syria, and the

gods of Sidon, and the gods of Moab, the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the

Philistines (Judges 10:6). The result was God’s wrath. Since they wanted to serve their gods,

God made them also serve the rulers of those lands by making them slaves. This idolatry

seemed to be cleansed during the time of Samuel, the well-known prophet and judge. Israel’s

faithfulness to only YHWH continued into the reign of the first and second king of Israel but

came to end with a king who was blessed by God more than anyone before him and more than

anyone after him would be blessed. Solomon was given God so much that he forgot His God

and disobeyed Him by honoring the gods of the many wives he married. 1 Kings 11:5-7 lists

all of them: "For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after

Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And Solomon did that which was evil in the sight

of Jehovah, and went not fully after Jehovah, as did David his father. Then did Solomon build

a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem,

and for Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon." (ASV)

The Queen of heaven is another god worshiped by Israel but only mentioned in two

places in the Old Testament, both of which are in the book of Jeremiah. The prophet was with

the Jews in Egypt when he spoke a prophecy against the worship of this goddess. The website

gotquestions.org says: “This title referred to Ishtar, an Assyrian and Babylonian goddess also

called Ashtoreth and Astarte by various other groups. She was thought to be the wife of the

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false god Baal, also known as Molech. The motivation of women to worship Ashtoreth

stemmed from her reputation as a fertility goddess, and, as the bearing of children was greatly

desired among women of that era, worship of this ‘queen of heaven’ was rampant among

pagan civilizations. Sadly, it became popular among the Israelites as well.” 2 After Jeremiah

prophesied against their idolatry, the people answered: "As for the word that thou hast spoken

unto us in the name of Jehovah, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly perform

every word that is gone forth out of our mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and

to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our

princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of

victuals, and were well, and saw no evil." (Jeremiah 44:16-17, ASV) God did not save a

remnant of His people out the group of Jews that Jeremiah had contact with. They also

received God’s judgement as their idolatrous fathers. However, God did fulfill His promise to

Israel by leaving himself a remnant among the exiles in Babylon. The book of Daniel

provides us with a beautiful example of standing strong in obedience to God in the midst of

idol worshipers in Babylon. The king ordered the building of a statue which he commanded

everyone in Babylon to bow down to. When three Jews were spotted among the people not

bowing down, they were brought before the king, who gave them one more chance to comply

to his orders. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered saying: “[…] be it known unto

thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast

set up." (Daniel 3:18, ASV) In anger, the king commanded for them to be thrown in the fiery

furnace but witnessed how God wonderfully delivered them. God had no trouble proving who

is the real God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego believed and obeyed. Chapter 6 of Daniel

tells a similar story of how the king was tricked into making a law for people to worship only

him for a certain period. Daniel, a Jewish exile, did not allow the fear of the consequence of

2
"Who is the Queen of Heaven?" GotQuestions.org, accessed March 8, 2024,
https://www.gotquestions.org/Queen-of-Heaven.html.

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his disobedience to influence the way he honored and worshiped God. In this case God

delivered him from the lion’s den. The events surrounding the faithfulness of these Jews in

Babylon and later Persia brought pagan kings to acknowledge that YHWH is the most

powerful God and quite possibly were z big reason for which Israel in the time of the exile

was cleansed from the desire to follow other gods. After Israel’s return to Palestine, they

would not return to the practice of idolatry anymore.

Conclusion

Israel was unique among the ancient religions of the world in that it believed in one

God, who is jealous when anyone else is worshiped besides Him or even next to Him.

Moreover, this God is spirit and forbade His people to make images intended to depict Him so

that He would not be compared to anything he created. The Israelites were supposed to be an

example to other nations that would bring Gentiles to belief in God, like Rahab and Ruth.

Instead they turned to other gods who could not hear or speak as a result, the nation that God

chose to tell others about Him, themself needed salvation and knowledge of the God of Israel.

Although as Christians today, we do not live in a society known for bowing down to idols and

believing false, demonic gods, we are not free from temptations to worship something other

than God. In relation to Colossians 3:5-6, John Piper explains what idolatry is: “It is the thing

loved or the person loved more than God, wanted more than God, desired more than God,

treasured more than God, enjoyed more than God. It could be a girlfriend. It could be good

grades. It could be the approval of other people. It could be success in business. It could be

sexual stimulation. It could be a hobby or a musical group that you are following or a sport or

your immaculate yard.”3 In the letter of 1 Peter 2:11-12, believers are told to lead a pure life

so that they would be an example to the Gentiles. Christians must strive to put God first in

3
John Piper, "What Is Idolatry?" interview by Alex Chechan, Desiring God, March 19, 2010,
https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-idolatry.

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everything for as John MacArthur says: “The most effective tool of evangelism we possess is

the power of a righteous life.” 4

BIBLIOGRAPHY

4
John MacArthur, "Godly Living," Grace to You, March 19, 1989, https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-
library/60-23/godly-living. Accessed March 8, 2024

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Brisco, Thomas. Holman Bible Atlas. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998.

MacArthur, John. "Godly Living." Grace to You, March 19, 1989. Accessed March 8, 2024.

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/60-23/godly-living.

Piper, John. "What Is Idolatry?" Interview by Alex Chechan. Desiring God, March 19, 2010.

https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-idolatry.

The Holy Bible, American Standard Version

"Who is the Queen of Heaven?" GotQuestions.org, accessed March 8, 2024,

https://www.gotquestions.org/Queen-of-Heaven.html.

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