Yahweh Among the Baals: Israel and the Storm Gods

Chapter 9 Yahweh among the Baals: Israel and the Storm Gods

Daniel E. Fleming

What would Baal do without Mark Stratton Smith to preserve and respect his memory in a monotheistic world determined to exclude and excoriate him? The very name evokes idolatry, and an alternative to the true God aptly called pagan. Yet Baal is “The Lord,” a perfectly serviceable monotheistic title when rendered by the Hebrew ʾādôn or the Greek kurios. Biblical writers managed to let Yahweh and El “converge” into one, with Elohim (God) the common ex- pression, but Baal could not join the convergence, even if Psalm 29 could have Yahweh thunder as storm god. Mark has had much to say about the religion of Israel and its world, and we need not assume Baal to be his favorite, but perhaps Mark’s deep familiarity with Baal suits an analysis of Israel that embraces what the Bible treats as taboo. For this occasion, it is a privilege to contribute a reflection on God’s “early history” in his footsteps, to honor his work, in ap- preciation of our friendship. In the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, a text so familiar to Mark that visitors may perhaps need his letter of reference for entry, Baal is the special title of Hadad, the young warrior god of rain and tempest (Smith 1994; Smith and Pitard 2009). Although El could converge with Yahweh and Baal could never name him, gen- erations of scholars have identified Yahweh first of all with the storm (van der Toorn 1999; Müller 2008). Yahweh and Haddu, or Hadad, were never one, but where Yahweh could be understood to originate in the lands south of Israel, as in Seir and Edom of Judges 5:4–5, he could be a storm god nonetheless:

(4) Yahweh, when you went out from Seir, when you walked from the open country of Edom, the earth quivered, as the heavens dripped, as the clouds dripped water. (5) The mountains gushed from before Yahweh, he of Sinai, from before Yahweh, god of Israel.1

1 For meticulous consideration of the text at multiple levels, including translation and notes, see Smith 2014a. Note the important parallel to this text in Psalm 68:8–9.

A more recent, especially German, group proposes that Yahweh could have begun as a storm god without the southern associations.

The way God is depicted in the early psalms points to a type of deity that has been venerated not only in Ancient Israel but also in several neighboring cultures. In most areas of the Levant, of northern Mesopotamia, and of Asia Minor where rainfed cultivation was practiced, a storm-god played a dominant role in the local pantheon, and the oldest psalms de- pict the Ancient Hebrew deity YHWH as a storm-god. In the early days of YHWH worship, this deity seems to have been conceived in a similar way to storm-gods of neighboring cultures. Müller 2017, 208

Mark Smith’s own take on Yahweh and the storm introduces an attractive nu- ance within the hypothesis of southern origins. The water in Judges 5:4–5 is not from a storm, and we encounter no wind, no burst of light and sound. Could Yahweh be a storm god of distinct desert type? Mark thought particularly of Athtar, a god already present at Ugarit.

Judges 5:4–5 reflects a god that provide[s] rains, but does this rain neces- sarily reflect the standard repertoire of a coastal storm-god, or does the passage reflect the storm and flash floods of desert areas? And if the rain does reflect the natural rains associated with a coastal storm-god, then might the depiction in Judges 5 reflect a secondary adaptation of the god’s presentation to the coastal-highland religion? Battle and precipitation may have been features original to Yahweh’s profile, but perhaps Yahweh’s original character approximated the profile of Athtar, a warrior- and precipitation-producing god associated with mostly inland desert sites with less rainfall. Smith 2001, 146

Seen this way, Yahweh would begin as a young warrior like Baal, located gen- erationally in a second tier below El and Asherah, the divine parents. At the same time, the thundering storm god of Psalm 29 would be an overlay onto the older desert deity, from the time when Hadad was elevated by the power of Aramean Damascus.