Baal — the word simply means “lord” or “master” — is the Bible’s name for the chief god of the Canaanites and Phoenicians, and the great rival to the worship of Israel’s God through much of the Hebrew Bible.
There was rarely just one Baal. Each locality had its own, so Scripture often speaks of them in the plural, the Baalim (first at Judges 2:11; also 1 Kings 18:18; Jeremiah 2:23; Hosea 2:17). Baal worship recurs as Israel’s besetting temptation: it draws the people at Baal-peor (Numbers 25:3; Deuteronomy 4:3), persists until the days of Samuel (1 Samuel 7:4), and becomes the state religion of the northern kingdom under Ahab (1 Kings 16:31–33), setting up the great confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). It reached into Judah as well, and the prophets record its suppression (Zephaniah 1:4–6).
Baal is often named alongside the goddess Asherah and other deities such as Molech, and the Bible gathers all of it under a single charge: the worship of an idol in the place that belongs to the Lord.
Explore Baal and related terms in the full glossary → a.fortt.com/glossary-app
How this is made · A Fortt Media project, created & edited by Jon Fortt. Grounded in a curated Scripture database and carefully drafted and audited with the help of AI — described plainly, and written to assume no particular denomination or doctrine. Read the full approach → · Report a correction →
