Baal-Peor

God vs. the lord of the underworld

During the Exodus, one of the more unusual confrontations between the Hebrews who were faithful to Yahweh and those who preferred a more, shall we say, tolerant view of the pagan religions they encountered occurred in the plains of Moab, the fertile area northeast of the Dead Sea, across the Jordan from Jericho.

While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.”

And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.
—Numbers 25:1–9, ESV

This requires some unpacking. To our twenty-first-century minds, the reaction of Phinehas seems excessive. Some in America today would call him out for his intolerance and accuse him of xenophobia, racism, or both. To them, this story makes God out to be a monster since He obviously approved of Phinehas’ violent act. But that’s because most Americans today, especially those most likely to throw around that kind of epithet, view the world through a naturalistic bias. There is a lot here that’s only obvious if you understand what was happening in the spirit realm.

The first clue that there’s more to this story than is obvious at first read is the description of Phinehas’ killing stroke. Did you notice that he killed both the Israelite prince and the Midianite princess with one thrust of his spear? Without getting too graphic, there are only a couple of physical positions in which Phinehas could have speared both of them with one jab.

There is other evidence in the text that suggests the sexual sin of Zimri and Cozbi, the young lovers who dared transgress “in the sight of all Israel.” The Hebrew word translated “belly,” qevah, means the lower abdomen and can refer to the womb or pubic region,^[i] emphasizing that Phinehas caught the young couple in the act. The word translated “chamber” in the ESV (other translations use “tent” or “pavilion”), qubbah, appears only here in the Old Testament. The passage is a little obscure, but the sense is that the couple were engaged in some rite to the Baal of Peor, possibly a fertility ritual. So, what do we know about this pagan deity?

The name Baal-Peor is actually a title, the “lord of Peor.” The location of Peor isn’t known exactly but it must be near Mount Nebo, from which Moses got his only look at the Holy Land. On a clear day, visitors to Nebo today can see the Dead Sea, Jericho, and the Mount of Olives, which is only about twenty-five miles away. Shittim, or Abel-Shittim, was the name given to the place of the Israelites’ camp in the plains of Moab, directly below the western slope of Mount Nebo. Shittim means “acacia,” the desert tree that provided the wood of the Ark of the Covenant. It’s a hardy plant, surviving where most other vegetation can’t because of its resistance to drought and tolerance for salt water.

A team led by Dr. Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University began excavating at a site in Jordan that overlooks the ancient plains of Moab in 2005. Dr. Collins is convinced that this site, called Tall el-Hammam, is the biblical Sodom. Based on its estimated population, it would have been the largest city in the Levant in the time of Abraham next to Hazor between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon.

This is an excerpt from our 2019 book Veneration. If you want to own a copy, it’s available in paperback, as a Kindle e-book, and as an audiobook at Amazon and Audible.

The evidence suggests that it was destroyed around 1700 BC by an air blast similar to the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia.^[ii] Soil samples taken from the lower city revealed a high concentration of salts and sulphates in the ash layer from the city’s destruction, and the chemical composition of the salts and sulphates was “virtually identical to the chemical composition of Dead Sea water.”^[iii] So, whatever exploded over the north end of the Dead Sea around the time of Abraham had enough force to kick up a small tsunami of superheated brine that swept over the lower part of the city. This was devastating—the lower city was built on a hill 75 to 150 feet above the surrounding plain!

Further investigation of the plain itself, the Kikkar, revealed that the salty water essentially poisoned the ground. It was at least six hundred years—about the time of Saul, David, and Solomon—before agriculture and civilization could resume.^[iv] So, when the Israelites arrived on the plains of Moab, it was well named Abel-Shittim, “meadow of acacias”^[v]—because virtually nothing would grow there besides acacia for another 250 years.

Now, why is all of that relevant? Because the area east of the Dead Sea, and especially near the ruined city of ancient Sodom,^[vi] was a place where it was believed that the dead intervened in the affairs of the living. In fact, two of the stops along the Exodus route refer to places where the veil between worlds was believed to be thin.

And the people of Israel set out and camped in Oboth. And they set out from Oboth and camped at Iye-abarim, in the wilderness that is opposite Moab, toward the sunrise.
—Numbers 21:10–11, ESV

The name of the first, Oboth, derives from ʾôb, which refers to necromancy, the practice of summoning and consulting with spirits of the dead.^[vii] This is the Hebrew behind the English word “medium,” as in the woman consulted by Saul to summon the spirit of Samuel.

This is a controversial topic among Christians. Those of us who take the Bible seriously are inclined to believe that there’s no such thing as ghosts. But there is nothing in the biblical account^[viii] to suggest that the spirit who delivered God’s message to Saul was anything but the ghost of Samuel—who, it’s important to note, was called an elohim as he emerged from the earth.

“Elohim” is not a proper name, and it doesn’t refer specifically to “gods.” It’s a designator of place, like “American” or “New Yorker.” Spirits live in the spirit realm, but not all spirits are equal. Some are archangels and others are demons, but all are spirits. In the same way, spirits are all elohim, even the spirits of dead humans, but there is only one capital-E Elohim—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Interestingly, this casts new light on the name of one of the giants who fell before the swords of David’s mighty men.

There was war again between the Philistines and Israel, and David went down together with his servants, and they fought against the Philistines. And David grew weary. And Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David. But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him.
—2 Samuel 21:15–17, ESV

Contrary to the most common definitions of the name, the giant wasn’t Ishbi-benob, he was Ishbi ben Ob—Ishbi, son of the medium! And remember, the “descendants of the giants” (yĕlîdê hārāpâ) were probably a Philistine warrior cult that venerated the “mighty men who were of old,”^[ix] a practice that had persisted for at least 1,500 years in the Levant by the time of David.

Not a surprise for this one, since his mother was apparently in contact with those same demon spirits. But wouldn’t it be interesting, as author Brian Godawa speculated in his novel, David Ascendant, if Ishbi was the son of the medium consulted by King Saul the night before he died in battle?^[x]

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[i]. Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D., Faithlife Study Bible [Nu 25:8] (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

[ii]. Dr. Phillip J. Silvia, “The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event: Catastrophic Termination of a Bronze Age Civilization.” American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting (Denver, November 17, 2018), p. 1.

[iii]. Ibid., p. 3.

[iv]. Ibid., p. 1.

[v]. Based on Strong’s Hebrew #58, meaning a “grassy meadow or plain.”

[vi]. Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott, Discovering the City of Sodom (New York: Howard Books, 2013).

[vii]. Joseph Tropper, “Spirit of the Dead.” In K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, & P. W. van der Horst (Eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (2nd extensively rev. ed.) (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), p. 806.

[viii]. 1 Samuel 28:3–25.

[ix]. l’Heureux, op. cit.

[x]. For a highly entertaining, biblically based account of the influence of the giants on human history, Brian Godawa’s Chronicles of the Nephilim series is highly recommended.