Baalites

97:3.4In gen­eral, the Ba­al­ites owned houses, lands, and slaves. They were the aris­to­cratic land­lords and lived in the cities. Each Baal had a sa­cred place, a priest­hood, and the “holy women,” the rit­ual pros­ti­tutes.

97:9.19New trou­ble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoeni­cian wife forged Ahab’s name to pa­pers di­rect­ing that Naboth’s land be con­fis­cated on the charge that he had blas­phemed the names of “Elo­him and the king.” He and his sons were promptly ex­e­cuted. The vig­or­ous Eli­jah ap­peared on the scene de­nounc­ing Ahab for the mur­der of the Naboths. Thus Eli­jah, one of the great­est of the proph­ets, be­gan his teach­ing as a de­fender of the old land mores as against the land-sell­ing at­ti­tude of the Baalim, against the at­tempt of the cities to dom­i­nate the coun­try. But the re­form did not suc­ceed un­til the coun­try land­lord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chief­tain Je­honadab to de­stroy the proph­ets (real es­tate agents) of Baal at Samaria.

97:3.3The north­ern and more set­tled Ca­naan­ites (the Ba­al­ites) freely bought, sold, and mort­gaged their lands. The word Baal means owner. The Baal cult was founded on two ma­jor doc­trines: First, the val­i­da­tion of prop­erty ex­change, con­tracts, and covenants—the right to buy and sell land. Sec­ond, Baal was sup­posed to send rain—he was a god of fer­til­ity of the soil. Good crops de­pended on the fa­vor of Baal. The cult was largely con­cerned with land, its own­er­ship and fer­til­ity.

97:9.24But this era came to a tragic end when Josiah pre­sumed to go out to in­ter­cept Ne­cho’s mighty army as it moved up the coast from Egypt for the aid of As­syria against Baby­lon. He was wiped out, and Ju­dah went un­der trib­ute to Egypt. The Baal po­lit­i­cal party re­turned to power in Je­ru­sa­lem, and thus be­gan the real Egyp­tian bond­age. Then en­sued a pe­riod in which the Baalim politi­cians con­trolled both the courts and the priest­hood. Baal wor­ship was an eco­nomic and so­cial sys­tem deal­ing with prop­erty rights as well as hav­ing to do with soil fer­til­ity.