“And Elijah said, If Jehovah be the Elohim, follow him: but if the Baal, then follow him.” 1 Kings xviii. 21.
So in the narrative of the destruction of the house, and the prophets, priests, and worshippers of the Baal, by Jehu, 2 Kings x. 18-28, the article occurs with the name in the successive verses. And chap. xi. 18: “All the people of the land went into the house of the Baal and brake it down; his altars and his images brake they in pieces.”
It is manifest from these and other like passages, that while the statues and images of Baal were many and various, in all countries and places, the Baal, the real object of worship, represented by them, was one. To him, under another of his designations, that of Moloch, human victims offered in sacrifice were supposed to pass through the element of fire.
Nor does this conclusion appear to be invalidated by the occurrence of the designation in a plural form, rendered Baalim. The usage in this respect seems analogous to that of the word Elohim. In both cases the article is often prefixed; and the reference is to one agent only. Thus, Judges viii. 33: “The children of Israel turned again ... after the Baalim, and made Baal-berith their Elohim.” Again, chap. x. 10-16, the children of Israel said: “We have forsaken our Elohe, and also served the Baalim. And Jehovah said, ... Ye have forsaken me, and served other Elohim.... Go and cry unto the Elohim which ye have chosen.... And they put away the strange Elohe from among them, and served Jehovah.”
The terms, Baal-berith, signify the god of the covenant, i. e., of the covenant between Baal and his worshippers; as Melach Berith, Mal. iii. 2, signifies the Messenger of the Covenant of grace.
It is thus presumed to be evident beyond a doubt, that the whole system was based upon a theory and a sense of the necessity of mediation; and whether the earlier or later idolaters, the instructed or the ignorant, referred in their worship to a being beyond or superior to Baal, regarding him as created by that superior being, and yet himself as creator of the world, or whether their homage terminated in him, does not affect the question under consideration.
Mosheim, in his Commentaries on the three first centuries of the Christian era, observes, with respect to the costly and sumptuous buildings of the pagans, called temples, fanes, &c., and dedicated to the worship of their gods, that internally “they were ornamented with images of the gods, and furnished with altars,” &c. “The statues were supposed to be animated by the deities whom they represented; for though the worshippers of gods like those above described must, in a great measure, have turned their backs upon every dictate of reason, they were yet by no means willing to appear so wholly destitute of common sense as to pay their adoration to a mere idol of metal, wood, or stone; but always maintained that the statues, when properly consecrated, were filled with the presence of those divinities whose forms they bore.” Vol. i. 16.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
Idolatry an imposing and delusive Counterfeit of the Revealed System, in respect to the leading features of its Ritual, and the prerogatives ascribed to the Arch-deceiver—Reference to the Symbols of the Apocalypse.