In Hosea 2:14-25, God explains the process by which he will woo Israel and bring her back into a marriage relationship with Him at the beginning of the Millennium: “”Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope; she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. And it shall be, in that day,” says the Eternal, “That you will call me ‘Ishi [my husband]’ and no longer call me Baali [my master],’ for I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, and they shall be remembered by their names no more. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, to make them lie down safely. I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Eternal. It shall come to pass in that day that I will answer,” says the Eternal; “I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. The earth shall answer with grain, with new wine, and with oil; they shall answer Jezreel [my friend]. Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; then I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!'””
Without going into too much personal detail, this particular passage has a lot of personal relevance to me. Anyone who knows me personally realizes that my own efforts at courtship have been about as successful thus far as God’s attempts at courting either physical Israel or those who consider themselves Christians, which is to say not very successful at all. It is impossible to read this passage without seeing the passionate love that God has for His people, no matter what they may think about Him. It is a terribly unhappy thing to love those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to try to be friendly and kind to those who are hateful and vicious towards us, who slander us and insult us to others and even make fun of those who are nice to us. I suppose that’s one area where I would rather not understand the mind of God but understand all too well from painful experience.
I also find it somewhat intriguing that there will not only be a marriage covenant between God and His bride, the Israel of God, but also between Israel and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground. When we think of the blessings of following God’s ways, we may think of the wealth and agricultural blessings and the peace and absence of war, all of which are discussed in this passage. However, we are not used to thinking about harmonious action between mankind and the plant and animal world. While we may often think of the change of the nature of animals and their fear of and hostility towards mankind, we also need to think about the change of our own nature that will lead us to act in a loving and godly fashion towards the plant and animal world. If the nature of other beings needs to change towards us for the world to be safe and sound, so too does our nature need to change towards others, so that may love and tend for the outside world rather than to abuse it.
These are large and major concerns, and I write about these matters at least sometimes [1]. Today I would like to deal with a matter that scarcely receives any attention at all. Where is it that the people of Israel ever called God Baali? This question deals with a couple of larger concerns I would like to address. For one, besides the fact that the name of Baal suggests the false civic gods of the various Canaanite cultures around Israel that worshiped Baal (like the people of Tyre and Sidon and Ugarit), the word Baali suggests a relationship between God and Israel that implies slavery and domination, which is never how God wanted to govern Israel or wanted people to govern others at all. All godly relationships are about mutual self-sacrifice and concern for the well-being of others and not using one’s position and power to gratify lusts or dominate others. This is true of marriage, the relationship between parents and children, friendships, business relationships, and church and civil government. God’s ways for all of these institutions, and whatever other human institutions and relationships exist, is for there to be mutual love and respect and concern for others, rather than domination and control, the sort of rule by fear and terror and exploitation that is part of the larger meaning of the word ‘Baali’ or “my master.” God does not desire to be our slavemaster, but rather He desires to be a loving husband and father, just as any decent man wants to be.
Let us therefore clearly understand that God’s hostility to the term Baali is not merely a hostility to rival religious orders and false gods, but also to the entire system of control and domination that is involved in heathen religion. This control and domination, as opposed to love and service, is an aspect of fallen human nature that has corrupted all aspects of human existence, from our family relations to our businesses and churches and societies and even to our behavior to the creation that God designed to be cultivated and cared for by mankind as stewards, rather than crushed and dominated by a domineering and controlling mankind. It is not only the name of the false gods that God does not wish to be remembered but also the whole false system of thought and practice that those gods symbolized and endorsed.
The second question is a less philosophical one and a more practical one. Do we have any evidence at all from the Bible that Israel actually behaved in this way, ascribing to God the name and characteristics of baali, or master? The answer is that we have a surprising amount of evidence that believers in God (some of whom were loyal believers of God) did use the name of baal in association with the Eternal whom they worshiped. This evidence is striking, clear, and focused in one particular family, and it is also evidence that is seldom understood or recognized because it appears in a place where no one is looking for it, and because the common names from the Bible of the people who provide this evidence have had their name changed in antiquity by pious Jews (probably of the post-exilic period) who did not wish for the name of Baal to be remembered.
In 1 Chronicles 8:29-34, we read a few intriguing names from a family that had at least some loyal followers of the Eternal that prove that Israel called God by the attributes of Baal: “Now the father of Gibeon, whose wife’s name Maacah, dwelt at Gibeon. And his firstborn son was Abdon, then Zur, Kish, Baal, Nadab, Gedor, Ahio, Zecher, and Mikloth, who begot Shimeah. They also dwelt alongside their relatives in Jerusalem, with their brethren. Ner begot Kish, Kish begot Saul, and Saul begot Jonathan, Malchushua, Abinadab, and Esh-Baal. The son of Jonathan was Merib-Baal, and Merib-Baal begot Micah.” Here, in the genealogy of Saul’s family in 1 Chronicles in a single passage, we have three people, at least two of whom are named elsewhere, who have the name of Baal within their own name. At least one of these people (Merib-Baal) was the son of a loyal and godly man, Jonathan, who was David’s best friend. Why is this matter not better known?
The reasons have to do with textual criticism, both ancient and modern. As far as modern textual criticism goes, few people are extremely interested in the material of 1 Chronicles, since it involves a large amount of genealogies as well as a lot of discussion of the priests and Levites, which few people are interested in [2]. If evidence is contained in a book that no one really reads, that evidence might as well not exist as a practical matter. There is also ancient historical criticism involved as well. For example, Merib-Baal is a somewhat notable figure in the long story of the life of David (see, for example, 2 Samuel 9:1-13, 2 Samuel 16:1-4, 2 Samuel 19:24-30). Nevertheless, each of these times Merib-Baal is known as Mephibosheth. Likewise, Esh-Baal the son of Saul and for some years a rival king to David, is known in 2 Samuel as Ishbosheth (see 2 Samuel 2:8-11 and 2 Samuel 4:1-12, for example). In this case we have the striking example of a place where someone changed the name of the people in the historical account but where their original name is included somewhere else, so that we may clearly understand the purposes of the redactors.
The purpose is fairly plain and obvious, as some ancient scribe thought it was a shame (which is the meaning of the Hebrew word “bosheth”) that someone should have the name of Baal. Even if Saul himself did have a loyal heart to God, he was at least a nominal believer who at some points of his reign had a certain level of zeal for the laws of God and the people of God (witness his persecution of mediums, for example, within the land, in 1 Samuel 28:3). However, one of his sons and one of his ancestors had the name of Baal. Likewise, Jonathan was a loyal servant of God and a loyal friend to the very godly David, and his son also carried the name of Baal. This would lend a great deal of credence to the idea that it was understood early that it was a shame to have the name of Baal (with the meaning of Baali, or master) even among those who were not in any way worshipers of Baal themselves, and a sign that the name of Baal would cease to be remembered among the people of God, or among most of the people who read the Bible entirely unaware that some people had called the Eternal, the true God, by the name of Baal at all in the first place, simply because they did not know where to look. Let us not fail to look, nor fail to recognize the lessons of this passage as they apply to us today.
[1] I have dealt with the concerns listed above in these entries and others:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/nobody-wants-to-be-lonely/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/book-review-the-lonely-god/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/rebuilding-the-ruins/
[2] Happily, I happen to be such a person:
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