Page 12 - Biblical Backgrounds student textbook

interesting that God clearly said not to sacrifice children to Him. Where did Jephthah get such an idea?
He got it from the religious practices of the Canaanite peoples. Let’s look at those next.
Religious Practices in Ancient Canaan:

“El” was the great deity of ancient Canaan. Asherah was the goddess wife of El. Another deity
was Ba’al. Ba’al is seen in many places in Scripture. He is the God of war and fertility. Ba’al was
also considered the God of storms and rain. This is significant when one considers Elijah’s
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duel with the priests. God had withheld rain for three years from the land. The people and
these priests would have looked to Ba’al to bring it. Elijah prayed for rain to Yahweh in the
sight of the rulers and priests and it began to rain immediately. This was
understood as a cosmic battle in which the true deity had made himself known.
The images on each side are of Ba’al.
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The Canaanites were also known to sacrifice their children in the flames to Ba’al
to try to entice him to send rain and abundance. John Holmes mentions that this
might be why Jephthah mistakenly thought God would want this sacrifice. Holmes’
supposition seems logical. The culture Jephthah had grown up in was not Jewish. It was
Canaanite. His understanding of how to gain favor was not consistent with Yahweh, it was
consistent with Canaanite (Ugaritic) deities.

Another deity of the time was Astarte, who you may know from the Old Testament as Asherah. She was
the goddess of fertility in terms of sex. She was also the goddess of love and war.

A final deity you will want to know is Yamm. Yamm is the Canaanite god of chaos and is seen as the God
of the sea. Notice that chaos is the state of the earth, pictured as covered in water in Genesis, and
Yahweh creates order. This would be viewed as a clear statement that Yahweh is more powerful than
that of Yamm.

Social life in Ancient Canaan:
Because the ancient Canaanites were in the land that Abraham went to, he had to interact with their
customs in some cases. He likely lived in goat skin tents. These goat skins were still used to may wine
pouches in the time of Jesus. They would cook in firepit stoves as well.

Marriage customs were like some found in Africa today. The father of the groom would set up the
marriage of his son by choosing a bride. Voss explains that the would-be groom and the bride’s family
would agree to a gift to the family of the bride. The bride’s father would ensure she had a dowry to
provide for her in the case of her husband’s death. The goal of marriage was to produce a male heir to
the family to continue the family name. Sometimes a barren woman would offer her husband a slave girl
to have a child with (Genesis 16:2). The woman would accept the child as her own when it was born.
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18 Spar, Ira. “The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cana/hd_cana.html (April
2009)
19 Images of Ba’al are in public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal
20 Voss, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs, 40-41.

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