by Brian Godawa
Who says there wasn’t female privilege in the ancient patriarchy?
Critical scholars interpret all this polytheistic polyamory as evidence that Asherah worship was a normal part of Israel’s religion, claiming Asherah as Yahweh’s wife, and that only later “fundamentalist” priests got rid of the other gods for the sake of their own religious bias. Confessional scholars agree with Yahweh and the prophets that it only showed God’s wife Israel was committing spiritual adultery for most of their spiritual marriage, thus deserving exile (Jeremiah 3:1-9).[95]
My interpretation then of asherim in the novel as large poles with stylized tree branches of gold on the top and carved Asherah stories on the bottom is based on these hints of ancient totemic imagery. And my depiction of the Watcher known as Asherah reflects her influence on Israelites as a fertility goddess and “Mother of the gods,” despite her subordination to Baal.
Astarte
Two other goddesses who show up in the novel of Jezebel are Astarte and Anat. They are depicted as being in competition for Baal’s favor. Astarte is sent to Jerusalem because of their worship of her, while Anat is Baal’s sister who journeys into Sheol to try to rescue him from Mot’s death grip. These elements are all present in the Bible and in Canaanite lore. I’ve integrated them into the novel’s storyline, giving them new meaning in a biblical context.
In Canaan, Astarte (“Ashtart” in Phoenician) was a goddess of fertility and war as well as a consort of Baal.[96] She had an astral identification with the planet Venus, thus earning her the epithet “Astarte of the Highest Heavens,” and “Queen of Heaven,”[97] linking her to the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. Jezebel’s father Ethbaal was originally a high priest of Astarte from Sidon who became king of Tyre.[98]
In the Bible, Astarte is referred to in Hebrew as Ashtaroth or Ashtoreth, goddess “of the Sidonians” (1 Kings 11:5; 1 Samuel 12:10). Like Jezebel’s name in the text, Ashtoreth is most likely a deliberate mockery of her name by using the vowels of the Hebrew word for shame, bosheth, with the consonants of Astarte.[99] The word “shame” was already used explicitly to refer to Baal in Jeremiah 11:13 and Hosea 9:10.
Jeremiah 11:13:
13 For your gods have become as many as your cities, O Judah, and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal.
Though the prophets and Deuteronomist authors of Kings may have had contempt for the goddess, the Hebrew populace at large surely did not. The Israelites had worshipped her along with Baal since the days of the judges hundreds of years earlier (Judges 2:13).[100] While she is absent in the text during the reign of David (1 Samuel 12:10-11), Astarte seems to have returned with a particularly strong hold on Judah when Solomon built high places for her in Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:5, 33).
Astarte appears to be the “Queen of Heaven” that Jeremiah condemns with much rigor in Judah long after Israel is gone into the Assyrian exile (Jeremiah 44:15-23). The rituals of Astarte worship described by Jeremiah involve the whole household, but are apparently led by the wives, who are depicted as making offerings to the Queen of Heaven proudly without their husband’s approval (44:19) and to whom they attribute their food and prosperity (v.17-18).
As biblical scholar Susan Ackerman conveys, Jeremiah reveals that the whole family was involved in the goddess worship, which included pouring libations, burning incense, and baking cakes.
The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18). Still, despite this depiction of the whole family’s involvement, I think that it is fair to say that the women’s contribution—the actual making of the offering cakes—is the most religiously significant, and thus it is reasonable to see these women as somehow especially involved in the goddess’s worship. Indeed, in the polemic against the Queen of Heaven cult in Jeremiah 44, Jeremiah seems to make exactly this point, since it is women who are specifically identified in Jeremiah 44:19 as those who have “burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out libations to her… and made for her cakes in her image,” and it is thus women, in the culmination of Jeremiah’s fulminations (44:25), who are singled out for the prophet’s special scorn.[101]
Perhaps Dever’s claim of female-led folk religion is not so anachronistic after all.
Anat
Another goddess who plays significantly into the plot of the novel Jezebel is Anat. In the Ugaritic texts, Anat is a fertility goddess, the sister of Baal as well as his consort. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons (DDD) describes her as a “volatile, independent, adolescent warrior and hunter.” Her epithet, Virgin Anat, is more a commentary on her age than her actual sexual status since she is considered sexually active with Baal. One passage in the Baal epic most likely describes her in the form of a heifer having sex with Baal eighty-eight times.[102] But her ability to remain active in the male realms of war and hunting is due to her failure to “grow up” to be a marriageable female.[103]
Susan Ackerman describes Anat’s lust for violence from the pages of the Baal epic:
The goddess adorns herself with a necklace of skulls and a girdle of hands (CTA 3.2.11-13). Her joy in battle is vividly described in this passage (CTA 3.2.23-28):
She fought hard and looked,
Anat battled and saw:
Her liver swelled with laughter,
Her heart was filled with joy,
The liver of Anat was exultant,
As she plunged knee-deep in the blood of the mighty,
Up to her hips in the gore of warriors.
Anat’s violent and ruthless behavior is further evident in the epic of Aqhat, where she schemes against Aqhat and eventually kills him in order to gain possession of his magnificent bow and arrows (CTA 17.6; 18.4).[104]
In the novel, Anat with her special bow of Aqhat in hand seeks Baal in the underworld. According to the Baal epic, when she finds him…
…She grabs Mot by the hem of his garment,
She seizes him by the edge of his cloak.
She raises her voice and cries:
“You, O Mot, give up my brother.”
And Divine Mot answers:
“What do you desire, [Virgin] Anat?…[105]
She seizes Divine Mot,
With a sword she splits him,
With a sieve she winnows him.
With a fire she burns him,
With millstones she grinds him,
In a field she sows him.
The birds eat his flesh,
Fowl devour his parts,
Flesh to flesh cries out.[106]
Baal returns to the earth above, is seated on his royal throne once again, and the father god El rejoices…
…For Mightiest Baal lives,
The Prince, Lord of the Earth is alive.[107]
Anat was not to be trifled with. And her pride is displayed not merely in her defeat of Mot but in her claim to have defeated Leviathan (Lotan) and Sea (Yam), “a conquest elsewhere attributed to Baal and a necessary step towards Baal’s acquisition of kingship.”[108] As the saying goes, behind every successful god there stands a supportive goddess—or in this case, a usurping one.
The depiction in the novel of Sheol, through which Anat travels to find Mot’s city, is based upon the Jewish cosmic geography mostly found in 1 Enoch. For details of that picture of the underworld, see below Chapter 4: Cosmic Geography, Sheol.
Though Anat is not referenced directly in the Old Testament, she is most likely alluded to in some passages relevant to her character as a patron of warriors.
The place-name of the city Beth-Anat (House of Anat) in the Bible indicates the presence of a temple of Anat in the city.[109] 1 Samuel 31:10 describes the Philistines as placing the slain King Saul’s armor in “the temple of Ashtaroth” in Beth Shan. Recent discoveries of a temple of Anat in Beth Shan, coupled with the possibility of the term “Ashtaroth” being used as a generic Akkadian language reference to a goddess without dignifying her name, point
to a strong possibility that this was the temple of Anat. As the DDD writes, “Given Anat’s clear portrayal as a warrior and a patron or guardian of warriors and royalty in extrabiblical sources, and given that we know she had a temple in Beth Shan, it makes good sense to suggest that the armor of a vanquished warrior-king would be brought to her temple by the grateful victors.”[110]
The other biblical allusion to Anat can be found in the name of Shamgar ben Anat, a warrior who had killed six hundred Philistines with an ox goad (Judges 3:31; 5:6). Keep in mind that names in the ancient world and the biblical text often reflected character, origins, or destinies. The word “ben” means “son of.” But since patronyms refer to male lineage, not females such as Anat, it is better seen as a metaphorical reference. Day argues it is most likely an honorific military title for a warrior, Shamgar, as a son of the goddess Anat, a not uncommon title in Canaan.[111] Is it a coincidence this mighty warrior of mass slaughter carries the name of a mighty deity of mass slaughter?
In the Ugaritic texts, Anat is a consort of Baal as is Astarte, thus placing them somewhat at odds, as portrayed in the novel. Though Astarte is more prominent in the Old Testament than her competitor Anat.[112]
Mot
Mot (“Death”) is considered the supreme god of the underworld in Canaanite mythology. The Bible draws on imagery and language that echoes that narrative and subverts it into the biblical worldview, a subversion that the novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel continues in like manner.
The story of Mot and Baal in the Baal epic shows Mot addressing Baal, the one who “killed Litan [Leviathan], the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent with seven heads.”[113] Mot does this as a way of building up Baal in order to show Mot’s greater power when he captures him.
Surely [Baal] will descend into Divine Mot’s throat,
Into the gullet of El’s Beloved, the Hero. [114]
Mot’s (Death’s) boundless appetite is described as a gaping jaw that swallows his victims into the underworld. His mouth is:
One lip to Earth, one lip to Heaven,
a tongue to the Stars.[115]
In the novel, Baal is captured by being swallowed up into “Mot’s jaws” in the Hinnom Valley outside Jerusalem, which leads down to Sheol.
In the Ugaritic literature, Baal is brought to Mot’s underworld city, translated alternatively the Swamp, the Pit, his royal house, Filth, or the land of his inheritance.[116]
Hearing that Baal is dead, Anat journeys into the underworld to hunt down Mot. When she finds him, as described earlier, she cuts him into pieces, winnows him, burns him, grinds him, and sows him in the field for the birds to eat his flesh.[117] Baal returns to life on the earth above and is seated once again on his royal throne.[118] Later, Mot returns to argue with Baal and fight him, but he eventually acknowledges the storm god’s rule on his throne.[119]
Sheol was the Hebrew word for the underworld of the dead.[120] I will discuss the geography of Sheol as a location in Chapter 4 on Cosmic Geography. For now, I will focus on the biblical use of the term as a metaphor for death and as an analogy of the Canaanite Mot.
The Old Testament uses personified descriptions of Sheol that are very similar to those of Mot. But the Hebrew writers don’t treat Sheol as a personal god like Mot. In this way, the biblical text demythologizes and subverts the pagan god of death into a demonic phenomenon with real spiritual impact.
The Canaanite language of Death’s (Sheol’s) ravishing appetite and wide throat swallowing up life shows up in Old Testament texts:
Isaiah 5:14:
Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down…
Habakkuk 2:5 (NASB95):
[The haughty man] enlarges his appetite like Sheol, And he is like death, never satisfied. He also gathers to himself all nations And collects to himself all peoples.
Proverbs 1:12:
Like Sheol let us swallow them alive,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit.
Bible scholar John Day writes about these parallels of Sheol and Mot.
Sheol is also referred to as swallowing people up in Proverbs 1.12, and its insatiable appetite is alluded to in Proverbs 27.20 and 30.15b-16. In Psalm. 49.15 (ET 14) death is a shepherd and those who go to Sheol are like sheep, “Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; Death shall be their shepherd…” Although this is only poetic language, it recalls what is said of the god Mot in the Baal text, KTU 1.6.II.21-23, “I myself came upon the victor Baal, I myself made him as lamb in my mouth; he himself like a kid in my jaws was carried away.” The same word “mouth” (pi) is used of Sheol in Psalm 141.7.
It seems clear that the Hebrews used the same kind of terminology for Sheol that Canaanites used of Mot. But in some cases, they go out of their way to seemingly subvert the pagan deity like this passage in Isaiah’s “little apocalypse.”
Isaiah 25:8:
He will swallow up death [Mot] forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth.
As Day points out, in this case, Isaiah is positing an ironic power of Yahweh over Death (Mot). Whereas it is usually Death or Mot who does the swallowing, in this case it is the swallower that is to be swallowed up.[121] There are no gods who compare to Yahweh, the creator and sustainer of all things, Death included.
In Isaiah 28, the phrase “covenant with death” is used of Jerusalem’s intermixing with foreign peoples and their gods (v. 11; 27:9). Spiritual apostasy is likened to a covenant with Mot.
Isaiah 28:15:
Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death [Mot], and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip [scourge] passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter.”
The first thing to notice in this passage is that covenants were only made with persons, usually a tribe or nation with a ruler or god. Making a covenant with Mot was not merely a metaphorical covenant with death as an abstraction. The covenantal language represented the spiritual unfaithfulness that Judah displayed toward Yahweh in going after other gods. Isaiah was saying that they thought they were covenanting with the gods Baal, Asherah, Astarte, Molech, and Chemosh, but they were actually covenanting with the god Mot, which represented their spiritual Death.
God’s judgment is described as a strong wind like a scourge upon them. As scholar Mark Smith argues, “Biblical descriptions of the east wind as an instrument of divine destruction may have derived from the imagery of Mot in Canaanite tradition...The juxtaposition of the east wind and personified Death in Hosea 13:14-15 may presuppose the mythological background of Mot as manifest in the sirocco.”[122]
Speaking of Hosea 13, let’s look closer at that passage. It addresses more than one deity in its reference.
Hosea 13:14-15 (NRSV):
Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?
Shall I redeem them from Death [Mot]?
O Death [Mot], where are your plagues [Deber]?
O Sheol, where is your destruction [Qeteb]?
Compassion is hidden from my eyes…
the east wind shall come, a blast from the Lord,
rising from the wilderness; and his fountain shall dry up,
his spring shall be parched.
It shall strip his treasury of every precious thing.
Death here is a strong allusion to the Canaanite Mot because of the reference to the east wind and the other two Hebrew words used of Death’s power: “plagues” (deber) and “destruction” (qeteb). These two words are considered literary references to two Canaanite underworld deities as demons.[123]
In the Ugaritic Baal epic, the plague god Qeteb appears to be a kinsman of Mot. In the four places qeteb occurs in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 32:24; Psalm 91:5-6; Hosea 13:14; Isaiah 28:2), it is translated in English as “pestilence” or “destruction,” and is parall
eled with Mot, Deber, or Resheph (another Canaanite underworld deity of plague[124]). The DDD concludes, “Qeṭeb is more than a literary figure, living as a spiritual and highly dangerous reality in the minds of poets and readers.”[125] Deber “seems to be used a number of times in a personified sense as a demon or evil deity (Hab 3:5; Ps 91:3, 6; cf. Hos 13:14),”[126] and Resheph “is a demonized version of an ancient Canaanite god, now submitted to Yahweh.”[127]
In the Bible, Qeteb (destruction), Deber (plague), Resheph (pestilence), and Mot (death) are all demonic realities.
Molech
Molech is a Canaanite god of the underworld. Though he only appears briefly in Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel, he is certainly significant in the big picture of the spiritual world of Judah at this time, as well as a prominent player in the storyline of my other series Chronicles of the Nephilim.
Until 1935, all scholars believed that the name Molech in the Old Testament referred to a god. Then new views came out of the academic community that the Hebrew word translated “Molech” or “Moloch,” (mlk) was a kind of sacrifice rather than the name of a divinity. They argued that it was linguistically influenced by the Phoenician term molk, found in many sacrificial inscriptions in the Mediterranean world.[128]
But this problem has been put to rest in a way that reveals just who this Molech really is. John Day provides the answers in his excellent primer, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. Leviticus 20:5 declares Israel as “whoring after Molech.” This phrase of “whoring after” a god is used throughout the Bible in reference to many different deities of Canaan.[129] It is never used of people “whoring after a sacrifice.” And all the verbs employed in connection with the Molech cult, “offering to,” “giving to,” “burning as an offering to,” are actions toward a diving being, not toward a cultic ritual itself.[130]