Who Is the Baal of Peor?

Chapter 10 Who Is the Baal of Peor?

Susan Ackerman

Who is the Baal of Peor, the god whom the Israelites are said to encounter in Moab during the final stages of their journey out of Egypt and into the “prom- ised land”? This question is not often addressed in the scholarly literature, and when it is raised, it tends to elicit answers that are either cursory or oblique (or both). Joseph Blenkinsopp (2012, 86) and Randall W. Younker (2000, 1028), for example, identify the Baal of Peor as a local (northern Moabite) manifestation of Baal,1 by which they presumably mean (although they do not un- equivocally say) Canaanite Baal-Hadad. Baruch A. Levine (2000, 284) similarly writes that the Baal of Peor may be “the deity Baal as he was worshipped at a site named Peor,” but also notes that baʿal may be “the title of the local (or national) deity, whoever he was.” Gerald R. Mattingly concludes likewise that the name Baal may refer to Canaanite Baal or to “a local manifestation of this god (i.e., Kemosh)” (1989, 225), although elsewhere (1992, 691), Mattingly more definitively declares that the Baal of Peor is a local manifestation of Canaanite Baal.2 Joel C. Slayton describes the Baal of Peor as “akin to Canaanite Baal,” but akin also to the purported god of child sacrifice, Molech (1992, 553), apparently following Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman (1980, 537–38, cited by Slayton), who propose that the zibḥê mētîm said to be consumed in conjunction with the Baal of Peor cult in Psalm 106:28 may be human sacrifices; Andersen and Freedman then go on to speak of the denunciation of child sacrifice found in verses 34–39 of the same psalm. Yet they unambiguously state that “there is no evidence that child sacrifice was performed at Peor” (1980, 538) and also that the Baal of Peor “is not simply to be equated with the great Canaanite Baal” (1980, 540–41). Moreover, Slayton himself turns immediately from sug- gesting a kinship between Canaanite Baal, Molech, and the Baal of Peor to sug- gest that “the sensual rites of worship” associated with the Baal of Peor—that is, the description in Numbers 25:1, 3 of the Israelite ʿam engaging in sexual relations (z-n-h) with the women of Moab and subsequently becoming “yoked” (ṣ-m-d) to the Baal of Peor—“indicate a connection with the Phoenician Baal and the Moabite Chemosh” (1992, 553). The basis for this claim, however, goes

1 By far the most thorough discussion of gods’ local manifestations is M. S. Smith 2012. 2 Jacob Milgrom (1990, 212–13, 476–80) also assumes that the Baal of Peor is Canaanite Baal.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004437678_012 176 Ackerman unarticulated, as does the basis for Andersen and Freedman’s claim that “this Baal must be the god of the Midianites, Yahweh of Midian” (1980, 541). For a more substantive discussion, there is only the proposal put forward by Klaas Spronk in his 1986 monograph Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East and in a related article “Baal of Peor” (originally published 1995; rev. ed. published 1999). Like many of the scholars cited above, Spronk ar- gues that the Baal of Peor is a local manifestation of Canaanite Baal-Hadad, yet for Spronk, the Baal of Peor is specifically to be understood as representing the “chthonic aspect of the Canaanite god of fertility” (1999, 147; emphasis mine). Evidence Spronk advances in support includes the name Peor, which Spronk, following P. Xella (1982, 664–66), takes to be “related to Heb[rew] PʿR, ‘open wide,’ which in Isa 5:14 is said of the ‘mouth’ of the netherworld” (1999, 147). This “clear association to (the mouth of) the netherworld,” Spronk writes (1999, 148), indicates “the nature of this cult as a way to seek contact with divine pow- ers residing there” (including, presumably, chthonic Baal). Spronk in addition notes the Psalm 106:28 reference to the zibḥê mētîm cited above, which he translates as eating “sacrifices with the dead” and takes as a further reference to the chthonic aspects of the Baal of Peor cult (1986, 232; similarly 1999, 147). In Spronk’s interpretation, moreover, “the sexual rites connected with the cult of the Baal of Peor” in Numbers 25:1 are a part of the cult’s chthonic aspects. This is “based on the idea of new life coming forth out of death” (Spronk 1986, 232), as in (according to Spronk) KTU 1.5 V 18–21, where “(the bull) Baal during his stay in the netherworld makes love to a heifer, mounting her up to eighty- eight times” (1999, 147–48). Yet as Mark S. Smith and Elizabeth M. Bloch-Smith point out in a lengthy review of Spronk’s monograph (1988), it is difficult to accept the underlying as- sumptions that guide Spronk’s reconstruction: that Moabite/Israelite tradition as reflected in the Bible’s Baal of Peor texts (Spronk 1986, 231, cites Num 25:1–5; 31:16; Deut 4:3; Josh 22:17; Hos 9:10; and Ps 106:28) derives from Canaanite (and specifically Ugaritic) conceptions about the annual revivification of the god Baal and the concurrent revivification of what Spronk calls the “privileged dead,” known in Ugaritic tradition as the Rephaim. As Smith and Bloch-Smith write, Spronk’s view “that ʿBaal has to descend every year into the Netherworld, but he always returns’ ” (citing Spronk 1986, 152–53) is “based on interpreting the Baal cycle as a single annual cycle, a view presently in disrepute” (1988, 279). Likewise, “Baal’s return to life in the Baal cycle [KTU 1.1 VI 3] … is never connected explicitly with the post-mortem activity of the Rephaim [KTU 1.20– 22, 1.161]” (1988, 278). Moreover, even if one were to accept Spronk’s arguments regarding the Baal Cycle and its relationship to the Rephaim texts, it is meth- odologically unsound to posit a direct correlation between these mythological