Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 2:13
And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.
13. This verse repeats the substance of Jdg 2:12; it continues Jdg 2:10 and leads on to Jdg 2:20. The repetition is explained if the verse belongs to E; for the expression forsook the Lord in E cf. Jos 24:20, Deu 31:16.
served Baal and the Ashtaroth ] Once settled in Canaan, the Israelites could not resist the temptation to adopt the worship of the native deities, on whom the prosperity of flocks and fields was supposed to depend. The God of Israel came from the desert; in the early days of the settlement His home was believed to be in Sinai rather than in Canaan (Jdg 5:4 f.); hence the popular religion, without ceasing to regard Jehovah as the God of Israel, felt it necessary to pay homage at the same time to the gods of the country. No doubt also the popular mind tended to identify Jehovah with the local Baals and Astartes, whose sanctuaries were scattered over the land. Such confusions gravely imperilled the distinctive character of Israel’s religion; they produced a degradation of faith and morals which led the prophets, and writers of the schools of E and D, stirred by the painful evidence of a later age, to charge Israel with having fallen into Baal-worship from the very day they entered into Canaan; the popular religion could only be described as a ‘forsaking’ of Jehovah.
Baal ] means lit. owner, possessor, e.g. of a house Jdg 19:22, of a town (‘citizens’) Jdg 9:2, of a wife (‘husband’) Exo 21:3 etc.; applied to divine beings it is a title conveying the idea of ownership, or, less probably, of domination. There was no one god called Baal; each considerable town or district had its deity, the lord of that particular place. Hence the O.T. speaks of Baal (sing.) in a collective sense, as here and Hos 13:1, Jer 11:13 etc., or of Balim (plur.) Jdg 2:11, Jdg 3:7, Jdg 8:33 etc., meaning the aggregate of local or special Baals. The local Baal is often designated by the name of his town or sanctuary, e.g. B. of Hermon Jdg 3:3, B. of Tamar Jdg 20:33, B. of Meon Num 32:38 and Moab. Stone ll. 9, 30; or of some special aspect under which he was worshipped, e.g. B. of the covenant Jdg 8:33, Jdg 9:4, B. of flies 2Ki 1:2 ff.; at Baal-Gad under Mt Hermon he was worshipped as Gad, the god of fortune. These usages are abundantly illustrated by the Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions; e.g. we hear of the B. of Zidon, of Tyre, of Lebanon, of Tarsus; occasionally the actual name of the Baal is known the B. of Tyre was Melarth, the Baalath (fem.) of Gebal was ‘Ashtart, the B. of arran was Sin; we meet with Baal under various aspects, e.g. ‘glowing’ (? ammn), ‘healing’ ( marp), ‘dancing’ ( mard), ‘of the heavens’ ( shmm). Baal was a title of the deity who owned the land, the god of the cultivated field and its produce (see Hos 2:5), of fertilizing warmth, perhaps, but not a sun-god. As denoting owner, lord, the title could be applied in a harmless sense to Jehovah Himself; this is seen in the proper names Jerubbaal Jdg 6:32 (note) Baal-yah 1Ch 12:5, one of David’s mighty men, and, in the families of Saul and David, Esh-baal, Merib-baal, Beel-yada, 1Ch 8:33-34; 1Ch 14:7, altered to Ish-bosheth, Mephi-bosheth, El-yada in 2Sa 2:8; 2Sa 4:4; 2Sa 5:16. But the associations of the name were felt to be dangerous, as appears from the substitution of bsheth ‘shame’ in the latter names; and the time arrived when Baal could no longer be used safely of the God of Israel, Hos 2:16 ff.
Ashtaroth ] plur. of ‘Ashtreth, i.e. ‘Ashtart (LXX ) pronounced with the vowels of bsheth the goddess worshipped throughout the Semitic world, not only by the Phoenicians (1Ki 11:5; 1Ki 11:33), but all over Palestine and on the E. of the Jordan, by the Philistines (1Sa 31:10), by the Moabites (Moab. St. l. 17 Ashtar), in Bashan (Deu 1:4) etc. In Babylonia and Assyria she was called Ishtar, in Syria ‘Attar, in S. Arabia ‘Athtar (a male deity); by the Greeks she was identified with Aphrodite. The meaning of the name is obscure; with regard to the form it will be noticed that the fem. ending in t is distinctively Canaanite. ‘Ashtart was the goddess of fertility and generation. In the O.T. Baal and ‘Ashtreth together stand for the false gods and goddesses native to Palestine; and as Hebrew has no word for goddess, ‘Ashtreth is practically used instead. Here the combination of Baal (sing.) with ‘Ashtrth (plur., i.e. the many local forms of the goddess) is unusual, and we should probably read ( ‘Ashtreth, the sing., in a collective sense.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 13. Served Baal and Ashtaroth.] In a general way, probably, Baal and Ashtaroth mean the sun and moon; but in many cases Ashtaroth seems to have been the same among the Canaanites as Venus was among the Greeks and Romans, and to have been worshipped with the same obscene rites.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
i.e. The sun and the moon, whom many heathens worshipped, though under divers names; and so they ran into that error which God had so expressly warned them against, Deu 4:19.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
13. AshtarothAlso a pluralword, denoting all the female divinities, whose rites were celebratedby the most gross and revolting impurities.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And they forsook the Lord,…. The worship of the Lord, as the Targum; this is repeated to observe the heinous sin they were guilty of, and how displeasing it was to God:
and served Baal and Ashtaroth; two images, as the Arabic version adds; Baal, from whence Baalim, may signify the he deities of the Gentiles, as Jupiter, Hercules, c. and Ashtaroth their female deities, as Juno, Venus, Diana, c. the word is plural, and used for flocks of sheep, so called because they make the owners of them rich and Kimchi and Ben Melech say these were images in the form of female sheep. Perhaps, as Baal may signify the sun, so Ashtaroth the moon, and the stars like flocks of sheep about her. Ashtaroth was the goddess of the Zidonians,
1Ki 11:5 the same with Astarte, the wife of Cronus or Ham, said to be the Phoenician or Syrian Venus. So Lucian says r there was a temple in Phoenicia, belonging to the Sidonians, which they say is the temple of Astarte; and, says he, I think that Astarte is the moon; and Astarte is both by the Phoenicians s and Grecians t said to be Venus, and was worshipped by the Syrians also, as Minutius Felix u and Tertullian w affirm; the same with Eostre, or Aestar, the Saxon goddess; hence to this day we call the passover Easter x, being in Eoster-month; and with Andraste, a goddess of the ancient Britains y. There were four of them, and therefore the Septuagint here uses the plural number Astartes; so called either from Asher, being reckoned “blessed” ones, or from Asheroth, the groves they were worshipped in; or from , “Ash”, and , “Tor”, the constellation Taurus or the bull; so Astarte by Sanchoniatho is said to put upon her head the head of a bull, as the token of her sovereignty; [See comments on Ge 14:5].
r De Dea Syria. s Sanchoniatho apud Euseb. Evangel. Praepar. l. 1. p. 38. t Suidas in voce . u In Octavio, p. 6. w Apolog. c. 24. x Vid. Owen. Theologoumen, l. 3. c. 4. p. 192. y lb. c. 11. p. 244.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Thus they forsook Jehovah, and served Baal and the Asthartes. In this case the singular Baal is connected with the plural Ashtaroth, because the male deities of all the Canaanitish nations, and those that bordered upon Canaan, were in their nature one and the same deity, viz., Baal, a sun-god, and as such the vehicle and source of physical life, and of the generative and reproductive power of nature, which was regarded as an effluence from its own being (see Movers, Relig. der Phnizier, pp. 184ff., and J. G. Mller in Herzog’s Cyclopaedia). “ Ashtaroth, from the singular Ashtoreth, which only occurs again in 1Ki 11:5, 1Ki 11:33, and 2Ki 23:13, in connection with the Sidonian Astharte, was the general name used to denote the leading female deity of the Canaanitish tribes, a moon-goddess, who was worshipped as the feminine principle of nature embodied in the pure moon-light, and its influence upon terrestrial life. It corresponded to the Greek Aphrodite, whose celebrated temple at Askalon is described in Herod. i. 105. In Jdg 3:7, Asheroth is used as equivalent to Ashtaroth, which is used here, Jdg 10:6; 1Sa 7:4; 1Sa 12:10. The name Asheroth
(Note: Rendered groves in the English version. – Tr.)
was transferred to the deity itself from the idols of this goddess, which generally consisted of wooden columns, and are called Asherim in Exo 34:13; Deu 7:5; Deu 12:3; Deu 16:21. On the other hand, the word Ashtoreth is without any traceable etymology in the Semitic dialects, and was probably derived from Upper Asia, being connected with a Persian word signifying a star, and synonymous with , the star-queen of Sabaeism (see Ges. Thes. pp. 1083-4; Movers, p. 606; and Mller, ut sup.).
With regard to the nature of the Baal and Astharte worship, into which the Israelites fell not long after the death of Joshua, and in which they continued henceforth to sink deeper and deeper, it is evident form the more precise allusions contained in the history of Gideon, that it did not consist of direct opposition to the worship of Jehovah, or involve any formal rejection of Jehovah, but that it was simply an admixture of the worship of Jehovah with the heathen or Canaanitish nature-worship. Not only was the ephod which Gideon caused to be made in his native town of Ophrah, and after which all Israel went a whoring (Jdg 8:27), an imitation of the high priest’s ephod in the worship of Jehovah; but the worship of Baal-berith at Shechem, after which the Israelites went a whoring again when Gideon was dead (Jdg 8:33), was simply a corruption of the worship of Jehovah, in which Baal was put in the place of Jehovah and worshipped in a similar way, as we may clearly see from Jdg 9:27. The worship of Jehovah could even be outwardly continued in connection with this idolatrous worship. Just as in the case of these nations in the midst of which the Israelites lived, the mutual recognition of their different deities and religions was manifested in the fact that they all called their supreme deity by the same name, Baal, and simply adopted some other epithet by which to define the distinctive peculiarities of each; so the Israelites also imagined that they could worship the Baals of the powerful nations round about them along with Jehovah their covenant God, especially if they worshipped them in the same manner as their covenant God. This will serve to explain the rapid and constantly repeated falling away of the Israelites from Jehovah into Baal-worship, at the very time when the worship of Jehovah was stedfastly continued at the tabernacle in accordance with the commands of the law. The Israelites simply followed the lead and example of their heathen neighbours. Just as the heathen were tolerant with regard to the recognition of the deities of other nations, and did not refuse to extend this recognition even to Jehovah the God of Israel, so the Israelites were also tolerant towards the Baals of the neighbouring nations, whose sensuous nature-worship was more grateful to the corrupt heart of man than the spiritual Jehovah-religion, with its solemn demands for sanctification of life. But this syncretism, which was not only reconcilable with polytheism, but actually rooted in its very nature, was altogether irreconcilable with the nature of true religion. For if Jehovah is the only true God, and there are no other gods besides or beside Him, then the purity and holiness of His nature is not only disturbed, but altogether distorted, by any admixture of His worship with the worship of idols or of the objects of nature, the true God being turned into an idol, and Jehovah degraded into Baal. Looking closely into the matter, therefore, the mixture of the Canaanitish worship of Baal with the worship of Jehovah was actually forsaking Jehovah and serving other gods, as the prophetic author of this book pronounces it. It was just the same with the worship of Baal in the kingdom of the ten tribes, which was condemned by the prophets Hosea and Amos (see Hengstenberg, Christology, i. pp. 168ff., Eng. trans.).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(13) Baal and Ashtaroth.Literally, the Baals and the Ashtareths.
Ashtaroth.The plural of the feminine word Ash-tareth, or Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians (1Ki. 11:5), the Phnician Venusidentified sometimes with the moon (e.g., in the name Ashtaroth Karnaim, the city of the two-horned moon, the name of Ogs capital, Deu. 1:4), and sometimes with the planet Venus (2Ki. 23:4; Cic. De Nat. Deor. 3:23; Euseb. Praep. Evang. i. 10). She is called the queen of heaven, in Jer. 7:10; Jer. 44:17, and was called Baalti (my lady) by the Phnicians. The plural form may be, as Ewald thinks, the plural of excellence, or like Baalim an allusion to the different forms and attributes under which the goddess was worshipped. The worship of Baalim and Ashtaroth naturally went hand in hand. (See Jdg. 10:6; 1Sa. 7:4; 1Sa. 12:10.) Ashtaroth is not to be confused with the Asheroth (rendered groves in the E. V.) mentioned in Jdg. 3:7. The words resemble each other less in Hebrew, as Ashtaroth begins with , not with . Mil. tons allusions to these deities are not only exquisitely beautiful but also very correct, as he derived his information from Seldens learned Syntagma de Dis Syrs:
With these in troop
Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians calld
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns,
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Zion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple.
Par. Lost, i. 439.
The derivation of the word is very uncertain. It probably has no connection with the Greek Aster, or the Persian Esther.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
13. Ashtaroth This is the plural form of Ashtoreth, the Venus of Syria, whose rites were more filthy and abominable than even those of the Grecian Venus, whose temple, with its thousand female votaries, polluted Corinth, and on a smaller scale defiled every Grecian city. Ashtoreth was the female, as Baal was the male, divinity of the Zidonians. Her worship was very ancient and widespread. Another name was Asherah, rendered groves in our English version; though this name seems rather to have designated the idol images of the goddess than the goddess herself. See Jdg 3:7, note.
As God originally created man male and female, so Canaanitish mythology seems to have embodied these conceptions in its system of worship. The masculine life-giving force of nature was worshipped under the names of Baal, Lord; Chemosh, governor; Hadad, the only one; Moloch, king; or simply El, god; the feminine receptive faculty was adored as Ashtoreth, Baalith, or Atar-gath. Thus the chief deities consisted of an apotheosis of the generative forces and laws of nature; an adoration of the objects in which those forces were seen, and where they appeared most active. Such an origin was, it may easily be seen, the source of the grossest sensuality. Debauchery was consecrated by religion. Thus, too, Baal was lord of the sun and god of fire; and as the sun calls into being and growth things evil as well as good, he was also called god of flies, (Baal-zebub.) And many a State gave a local name of its own to the deity. Hence Baal-gad, Baal-peor, Baal-hermon.
Side by side with these varying conceptions of Baal were corresponding ones of his consort Ashtoreth. Where he is sun-god, she is goddess of the moon; where he is Priapus, she is Venus; where he is Zeus, she is his royal partner Hera. And from these multiform representations of the two chief deities they came to be spoken of often in the plural, and instead of Baal and Ashtoreth we have Baalim and Ashtaroth.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘ And they forsook Yahweh, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.’
The repetitiveness is deliberate so that the words will be burned into the hearer’s hearts. We must not understand by ‘forsook’ that they ceased to look to Yahweh in some way as their God. They still accepted their part in the tribal covenant, at some times more firmly than others. They still recognised Him in feasts and sacrifices. But He had become One among others. To be called on but not to be followed fully. And their part in covenant obedience was overlooked. Just as among many Christians today.
“Baal and the Ashtaroth.” Baal means ‘lord, master’. He was widely worshipped and was the god of rain, storm and lightning. In the Baal myths it was through his death and being brought back to life again in a perpetual cycle, as nature died and lived again each year, that life went on and the fields were fruitful. They saw earth as caught up with the patterns of the gods, nature was but an aftermath of those patterns (This was in no sense a resurrection in the sense in which we understand the idea, it was a continual death and revival to life, a yearly cycle, as happens in nature).
Thus, by stimulating the gods, nature could be stimulated, and this could be done by ‘sympathetic magic’, orgies of sex which stimulated Baal into action. So sacred prostitutes and perverted sex were at the centre of Canaanite religion. They worshipped Baal, they sacrificed to him, they did anything that would move him, but most of all they tried to manipulate him through sexual activity.
But the noun ‘baal’ was applicable too to Yahweh, for He was Lord and Master (see Hos 2:16, compare Jer 31:32). Thus the dangerous practise arose of thinking of Yahweh as ‘Baali’ (‘my lord’) (Hos 2:16) which could lead to all kinds of complications.
We know this because godly men could call their sons ‘Ishbaal’ (1Ch 9:39) and ‘Meribaal’ (1Ch 9:40), a practise later altered when ‘Yah’ replaced ‘Baal’ in names. David called one of his daughters Beeliada (1Ch 14:7), possibly originally meaning ‘one who knows the lord (Baal)’. Later writers, appalled at this, changed the name ‘baal’ to ‘bosheth’ meaning ‘shame’, thus we have Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth (Eshbaal and Mephibaal, sons of Saul).
“Ashtaroth.” The goddess of fertility, love and war (compare Ishtar, Astarte). Numerous plaques containing the figure of a naked goddess have been discovered at different sites in Palestine, many of which would represent Ashtaroth. Her worship too consisted largely in depraved sex. She was the goddess of reproduction.
When the bad years came to the Israelite farmers it was inevitable that they began to wonder whether it was because they had not paid due regard to these gods, and the temptation was thus to compromise and see what would happen if they paid due observance to Baal and Ashtaroth, and if things improved the following year, as could well happen, they then knew who was responsible. Thus did they inevitably begin to compromise their faithfulness to Yahweh. They served Baal and the Ashtaroth while keeping up a nominal obedience to Yahweh and the covenant at the central sanctuary which was, for some, far away. This was the result of not keeping separate from the Canaanites.
It reminds us that if we too are to remain faithful to God we must keep ourselves separate from anything that can lead us astray. If we find something that cools our fervour for the Lord we should do away with it, ‘drive it out’. Otherwise we may find that His anger comes on us. This is especially true of things that cause evil desire. From those we are told to ‘flee’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 2:13 And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.
Ver. 13. And served Baal and Ashtaroth, ] i.e., He-gods and she-gods of all sorts, closing up their orisons with, Diique, deaque, omnes, as Servius telleth us. a From this word Ashtaroth seemeth to come the Greek word , and the Latin astrum, a star: as Saturn, Jupiter, Luna, Pallas, &c., came from the Hebrew.
a In Georg, lib. i.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Ashtaroth. The special evil of Canaanite nations. Name derived from the Asherah (see App-42). The Asherah was idolatry of the most revolting form of immorality under the guise of religion. All virtue surrendered. The “going a whoring” is more than a figure of speech. See Exo 34:13. Deu 7:5; Deu 12:3; Deu 16:21. Note all the occurrences of ‘Ashtaroth: Deu 1:4. Jos 9:10; Jos 12:4; Jos 13:12, Jos 13:31. Jos 2:13; Jos 10:6. 1Sa 7:3, 1Sa 7:4; 1Sa 12:10; 1Sa 31:10.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Ashtaroth
Ashtaroth, plural of Ashtoreth 1Ki 11:5 were figures of Ashtoreth the Phoenician goddess (the Astarte of the Greeks), which were worshipped as idols during times of spiritual declension in Israel.; Jdg 10:6; 1Sa 7:3; 1Sa 7:4; 1Sa 12:10; 1Sa 31:10; 1Ki 11:5; 1Ki 11:33; 2Ki 23:13. Jeremiah refers Jer 44:18; Jer 44:19 to Ashtoreth as the “queen of heaven.”
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
served: Jdg 2:11, Jdg 3:7, Jdg 10:6, 1Sa 31:10, 1Ki 11:5, 1Ki 11:33, 2Ki 23:13, Psa 106:36, 1Co 8:5, 1Co 10:20-22
Reciprocal: Deu 13:6 – which thou Deu 29:26 – they went Jdg 6:1 – did evil 1Sa 7:3 – put away 1Sa 7:4 – General 1Sa 12:10 – Baalim 2Ki 23:4 – Baal 1Ch 6:71 – Ashtaroth 2Ch 7:22 – Because they forsook 2Ch 12:2 – because 2Ch 28:2 – Baalim Jer 16:11 – Because Hos 11:2 – they sacrificed Rom 11:4 – Baal
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jdg 2:13. They served Baal and Ashtaroth By Baal or lord here, it is probable, we are to understand the sun, and by Ashtaroth, the same, it seems, with Astarte, the moon, worshipped in different countries under the names Juno and Venus. So that they had he-gods and she-gods, and gods of all kinds, as many as a luxuriant fancy pleased to make and multiply them. It may not be improper to observe here, that the reason why the Israelites so often lapsed into idolatry, may easily be deduced from the common notion of tutelary deities, which they had imbibed during their residence in Egypt, which was the fruitful parent of science and idolatry. One generally-received consequence of this opinion was, that the peculiar or tutelary deity of any country could not be neglected, even by the conquerors of that country, without impiety, and that their impiety would certainly meet with punishment from the deity whom they thus neglected. The Israelites, therefore, unwilling to expose themselves to the resentment which the tutelary deity was supposed to take on those who, inhabiting his land, yet slighted his worship; unwilling likewise to leave their paternal God, they incorporated the worship of both; and served not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but likewise the Baalim, or local tutelary deities of the countries wherein they were settled. In process of time this weakness increased to such a degree, that the rights of the tutelary deity of the country were acknowledged to be superior to those of the Gentilitial God of the conquerors. This might arise from the common opinion, that the favours of the local deity were particularly attached and confined to one certain spot; or from an apprehension of the strength of the inhabitants among whom they were settled, who would not have endured to have their god slighted, without vindicating his honour, and endeavouring to extirpate the offenders. This piece of complaisance and condescension the Israelites seem to have been guilty of, when they are said to have forsaken the Lord God of their fathers, and to have followed other gods, the gods of the people that were round about them. Their defection from the God of Israel did not, however, consist in rejecting him as a false god, or in renouncing the law of Moses as a false religion: but only in joining foreign worship and idolatrous ceremonies to the ritual of the true God. Div. Leg., vol. 4. p. 44.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2:13 And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and {f} Ashtaroth.
(f) These were idols, which had the form of a ewe or sheep among the Sidonians.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
"Baal" was the sun god. The Canaanites believed he was the source and communicator of physical life. They credited him with generating the reproductive powers of nature from his own being. This ability included human as well as animal and plant reproduction and fertility.
"Astarte" (Asherah) was the leading female Canaanite deity, a moon-goddess, whose symbol was originally an evergreen tree or grove. "Asherah" also denotes a cult object in the Hebrew Bible, specifically a wooden pole associated with Asherah worship. [Note: John Day, "Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature," Journal of Biblical Literature 105:3 (September 1986):385-408. See also William F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, pp. 189-92, 205.]
She was "worshipped as the feminine principle of nature embodied in the pure moon-light, and its influence upon terrestrial life." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, p. 269.]
"Essentially, the religion of Canaan was based on the assumption that the forces of nature are expressions of divine presence and activity and that the only way one could survive and prosper was to identify the gods responsible for each phenomenon and by proper ritual encourage them to bring to bear their respective powers. This is the mythological approach to reality. Ritual involves human enactments; particularly by cultic personnel such as priests, of the activity of the gods as described in the myths.
"Since Baal was not omnipresent in the strict sense, each cult center would have its own local Baal. Thus there could be Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith, Baal-Zebub, and so on. This explains why the gods of Canaan are sometimes called Baalim (’the Baals’) in the Old Testament. There was only one Baal theoretically, but he was lord of many places." [Note: Merrill, pp. 159, 161. His section on the nature of Canaanite idolatry, pp. 159-61, is a good introduction to this subject. See also Howard, p. 107, for explanation of the Canaanite pantheon.]
The worship of these idols did not involve or necessitate the abandonment of Yahweh. The Israelites worshipped both the idols and the true God. This practice constituted forsaking Yahweh because He demanded exclusive allegiance. The Israelites became syncretistic rather than exclusive in their worship. It is easier to understand why the Israelites apostatized so quickly and so frequently when we appreciate the syncretistic nature of Baal worship.