The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets

by Eleazar Lord

In the same class of acts, in point of turpitude, and in respect to the apparent intention of the actors and the tendency of their acts, may be included that of Nadab and Abihu, in “offering strange fire before Jehovah, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from Jehovah and devoured them, and they died before Jehovah;” and that of Korah and his company, who usurped the priests’ office and burned incense, and were destroyed with their families and fourteen thousand of their adherents.

These illustrations show that the worship rendered to images did not terminate in them as its object, but referred to an unseen Intelligence beyond them, who was supposed to be cognizant of their circumstances and their acts, and to be able to protect them and grant their requests. It proceeded on the assumption that the visible emblem, the graven image, or whatever was selected by individuals or canonized by the priests, and worshipped as an idol—the proper signification of which is, a figure, likeness, or representation—was a medium of intercourse with the Being worshipped.

This was the case, not merely with the Israelites in their use of images in the real or pretended worship of Jehovah, but equally of the devoted worshippers of Baal. A few references out of many which might be made, will show that their prayers and offerings were directed to the unseen object of their homage. Thus, in the formal controversy between Elijah, as prophet of Jehovah, and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, to demonstrate by fire, to Ahab and the people, which was supreme, whether Jehovah or the Baal was the Elohim to be worshipped and obeyed; Elijah proposed that each party should offer a sacrifice of animals, and let it be seen which would be miraculously consumed, and said: “Call ye on the name of your Elohe,”—rendered here and elsewhere erroneously gods in the plural, as if there were more than one Baal,—“and I will call on the name of Jehovah; and the Elohim that answereth by fire, let him be the Elohim. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken. And Elijah said unto the prophets of the Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first, for ye are many, and call on your Elohe; but put no fire under. And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of the Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O the Baal, hear us! But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar that was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud, for he is an Elohim; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. And they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, and there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.” 1 Kings xviii.

In this case there does not appear to have been any intervening image or idol. The priests called on the name of the absent, invisible Baal, but he answered not. He could not assist them by working a real miracle, and under the circumstances they could not counterfeit one; and with the approbation of the people, who saw that they were impostors, they were all slain.

That the real object of their worship was distinct from their images, is implied in their selecting high places for their religious rites, and erecting lofty towers for that purpose, where the sun could be earliest seen at rising, and where the stars or host of heaven could be most advantageously observed; and in burning their children as sacrifices, making them pass through the fire to Baal or Moloch. Thus, in the reign of Ahaz, 2 Kings xvii., “They made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire.” Manasseh made his son pass through the fire; and in Josiah’s reformation he put down the idolatrous priests “that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun [literally, to Baal, the sun] and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.” 2 Kings xxiii. Jeremiah says: “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal.” Chap. xix. 5. Again: “And they built the high places of Baal, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Moloch.” Jer. xxxii. 35. And of Josiah it is said, that he defiled Tophet—“that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch.” 2 Kings xxiii. 10. Their idea evidently was, that by sacrificing in this way the most valued offering they could make, that of their children, they would pass in and through that element to Baal, whose residence was conceived to be in the solar orb.

The term Moloch—variously written Melech, Moloch, Malcom, Milcom—as a designation, refers to the same being as Baal; the literal import of the latter being the same as that of the Lord, as the sun is lord of the day; and that of the former, the same as the king, as the sun is king of the day. The molten images, representative of Moloch, in the heated chest or arms of which, children offered in sacrifice were burnt, are somewhat variously described, but generally as having the head of a calf and the body of a man, with an opening in the chest, into which, when heated from below, the victims were cast alive; and to drown their cries, as in the burning of widows in India, under the same general notion, drums were beaten.

It appears evident from the passages in which they occur in the Scriptures, that the terms Bel, Baal, and Baalim, are personal designations of the intelligence worshipped by the Chaldeans, and other idolaters, as their god, and by the Israelites in opposition to Jehovah. Thus, Jer. l. 2: “Declare ye among the nations, ... Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces;” and li. 44: “I will punish Bel in Babylon.... The nations shall not flow together any more to him.” That is, by the destruction of Babylon, Bel, the god of their idolatry, is confounded, punishment is inflicted on him; Merodach, the chief idol representative of Bel, is broken in pieces.

In most of the instances in which the same designation is rendered Baal, it has the article, making the personal reference emphatic.

“Throw down the altar of the Baal that thy father hath, and out down the grove [statue of wood, or pillar carved statue or image-like] that is by it: and build an altar unto Jehovah thy Elohe.... And when the men of the city arose in the morning, behold, the altar of the Baal was east down, &c.... If he be an Elohim, let him plead for himself.... Let the Baal plead against Gideon, because he hath thrown down his altar.” Judges vi. 25, 26, &c.

Ahab “went and served the Baal, and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of the Baal which he had built in Samaria.” 1 Kings xiv. 31, 32.