Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Baal   Listen
Baal

noun
(pl. Heb. baalim)
1.
Any of numerous local fertility and nature deities worshipped by ancient Semitic peoples; the Hebrews considered Baal a false god.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Baal" Quotes from Famous Books



... me was thought to infuse into it a certain truly oracular significance with regard to what was to befall him. Similar importance was attached to the utterance of Jupiter called Belus, [Footnote: The same as Baal.] a god revered in Apamea [Footnote: This is the Apamea on the Orontes, built by Seleucus Nicator.] of Syria. He, years before, when Severus was still a private citizen, had ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... He was a Son of the Living Spirit would be naught to them, if indeed He was so, and of that we will talk afterwards. They would care naught for any God if He came not with pomp and power. They, a chosen people, a vessel of Him they call Jehovah, ay, and a vessel of Baal, and a vessel of Astoreth, and a vessel of the gods of the Egyptians—a high-stomached people, greedy of aught that brought them wealth and power. So they crucified their Messiah because He came in lowly guise—and now are they scattered about ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... grasping of wind."[142] Persians had succeeded Chaldeans; Cyrus, the Anointed of Jahveh, had come and gone; Greeks had wrested the hegemony of the East from Persians, but no change had brought surcease of sorrow to the Jews. They were even worse off now than ever before. Jahveh, like Baal of old, was become deaf to His worshippers, many of whom turned away from Him in despair, exclaiming, "It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance?"[143] Koheleth, like Job, never once mentions Jahveh's name, but always alludes to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... And the diamond shrines from plundered mines, and the golden fanes of Jove, Melted away in the blaze of day at the simple spellword—Love! The light serene o'er that island green played with its saving beams, And the fires of Baal waxed dim and pale like the stars in the morning streams! And 'twas joy to hear, in the bright air clear, from out each sunny glade, The tinkling bell, from the quiet cell, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... a vast number of pagan creeds and rituals. There were Temples without end dedicated to gods like Apollo or Dionysus among the Greeks, Hercules among the Romans, Mithra among the Persians, Adonis and Attis in Syria and Phrygia, Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, Baal and Astarte among the Babylonians and Carthaginians, and so forth. Societies, large or small, united believers and the devout in the service or ceremonials connected with their respective deities, and in the creeds ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... here, Elijah?" that however we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King and Lord of men is nowhere without His witnesses; for in every society, however seemingly corrupt and godless, there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... their authors feel; Then cast them, closely bundled, every brat At the right door. Profusion is its sire. Profusion unrestrained, with all that's base In character, has littered all the land, And bred within the memory of no few A priesthood such as Baal's was of old, A people such as never was till now. It is a hungry vice:—it eats up all That gives society its beauty, strength, Convenience, and security, and use; Makes men mere vermin, worthy to be trapped And gibbeted, as fast ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... prayed as erst Elijah prayed Before the sons of Baal, When on the waiting sacrifice He ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... Phoenician princess, and this was the crowning point of his sinful career. Jezebel was unprincipled and intolerant, and as Ahab was a weak man, he became little more than a tool in her hands. She introduced at once the worship of Baal and Ashtoroth, the male and female gods of her own country. She caused a great temple to be built on the brow of a hill, and there the worship of these idols was carried on. Four hundred and fifty priests ...
— The Man Who Did Not Die - The Story of Elijah • J. H. Willard

... succeeded in this mansion by a sour fanatic knight, a distant and collateral relation, who claimed the same merit for expelling the priestess of Baal, which his predecessor had founded on maintaining the votaresses of Heaven. Of the two unhappy nuns, driven from their ancient refuge, one went beyond sea; the other, unable from old age to undertake such a journey, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... examples, Knox himself, about 1540-43, was 'a priest of the altar,' 'one of Baal's shaven sort.' On that score he later claimed nothing. After the murder of Cardinal Beaton, the murderers and their associates, forming a congregation in the Castle of St. Andrews, gave Knox a call to be their preacher. He was now ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... with fifteen pickpockets, to profess scruples of conscience in regard to admitting another pilfering rogue to the fraternity? "Thou that sayest, A man should not steal, dost thou steal," or consent, in any instance, to stealing? "If the Lord be God, serve Him; but if Baal, then serve him." The South may well laugh to scorn the affected moral sensibility of the North against the extension of her slave system. It is nothing, in the present relations of the States, but sentimental hypocrisy. It has no stamina—no back-bone. The argument for non-extension ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... surrounded by all that was luxurious and beautiful. How he contrived it, no one knew, for his resources remained at the lowest ebb. Perhaps his friends helped him, for English Liberals of good means regarded him as a martyr in the cause of freedom, one who would never bow the knee to Baal, and who had dared the first Napoleon when his very word was law. But Foscolo's friends without doubt became tired of his extravagance and his licentious habits, and fell away from him. Disease at last found him out; he died of dropsy at ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... existing Caesarea, which was situated on the Mediterranean shore of Samaria, and which in later literature came to be known as Caesarea Palestina. Caesarea Philippi is believed to be identical with the ancient Baal Gad (Josh. 11:17) and Baal Hermon (Judg. 3:3). It was known as a place of idolatrous worship, and while under Greek sovereignty was called Paneas in recognition of the mythological deity Pan. See Josephus, Ant. xviii, 2:1; this designation ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... 1871, p. 444. In this same article Mr. Huxley says: "Elijah's great question, Will ye serve God or Baal? Choose ye, is uttered audibly enough in the ears of every one of us as we come to manhood. Let every man who tries to answer it seriously ask himself whether he can be satisfied with the Baal of authority, and with all the good things his worshippers are promised in this world and the next. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... Covenanters held armed musters by concert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which at that season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest of Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned out of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, and exposed during some time as a malefactor. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... uttered words necessary to prayer. The followers of Baal cried aloud, thinking their much shouting would reach the ear of their god, but Nehemiah speaks not, does not even whisper, and his prayer is heard in heaven. Surely now-a-days, when there are some who seem to think ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... other letters, that the city of this chief was the important town Cumidi, now Kamid, in the southern Lebanon, at the south end of the Baalbek plain, west of Baal Gad. In Abu el Feda's time this town was the capital of ...
— Egyptian Literature

... nor weeping, Fear or the child's amaze— Soberly under the White Man's law My white men go their ways. Not for the Gentiles' clamour— Insult or threat of blows— Bow we the knee to Baal," Said our Lady of ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... took the same idol for their chief god; for it appears from Pagan records, that the different nations were so very accommodating with their gods that they lent them to one another. Moloch seems to have been the same as Baal, both names signifying dominion, or more particularly the sun, the prince ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... They dare not sit or lean, But fume and fret and posture And foam and curse between; For being bound to Baal, Whose sacrifice is vain, Their rest is scant with Baal, They glare and pant for Baal, They mouth and rant for Baal, For Baal in ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... commonly called Mixt or Promiscuous Dancing," and with marriage according to the form of the Established Church. The old order was changing, but not without producing friction and bitterness of spirit. The orthodox brethren stigmatized Ratcliffe as "Baal's priest," and the ministers from their pulpits denounced the Anglican prayers as "leeks, garlick, and trash." The upholders of the covenant were convinced that already "the Wild Beasts of the ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... the more the obelisks or pillars to gods, falsely supposed to be the authors of the blessings. The words are as condensed as a proverb, and are as true to-day as ever. Israel had attributed its prosperity to Baal (Hosea ii. 8). The misuse of worldly wealth and the tendency of success to draw us away from God, and to blind to the true source of all blessing, are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the middle ages, the monasteries of Europe and Asia kept alive the tiny flame of Greek and Roman culture throughout the foggy ignorance of the Dark Ages, so did the priests of Baal, of Ashtoreth, of Marduk and of Ormuzd pass on the torch of their day to their successors who were Greeks and Romans. The Eleusinian mysteries, which at a later time were associated with a considerable amount of sensual, closely guarded ritual, were, in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... the tremendous sarcasm of the old prophets—dread humour no doubt, but humour unmistakably—wherever they speak of the helplessness of idols, as in the forty-fourth and forty-sixth chapters of Isaiah, and in Elijah's mockery of the priests of Baal:—"Cry aloud, for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened." Is not the book of Proverbs full of grave, dry, pungent humour? Consider only the following passage out of many of the same ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... fifteen million subjects which remain at the bottom of our crucible we must eliminate five hundred thousand other individuals, to be reckoned as daughters of Baal, who subserve the appetites of the base. We must even comprise among those, without fear that they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... of the earliest race, whence came the magi, &c., was Nimrod, afterward deified by the name of Bel to the Chaldeans, Baal to the Hebrews, [Greek: Belos] to the Greeks, and Belus to the Romans; and when, in later days, statues received adoration (which at first was only accorded to the being of whom the statue was a ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... within ten minutes, the horizon of the towans was cressetted with these beacon-fires: surely (thought Taffy) with many more than usual. And he remembered that Jacky Pascoe had thrown out a hint of a great revival to be held on Baal-fire Night (as ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I die, I die, and there is an end. But the blessing of Heaven, ah! that can be bought, as I have proved once and again, if not with gold, then otherwise. Did I not in bygone years pass the first son of my manhood through the fire to Baal-Sidon? Nay, shrink not from me; it cost me dear, but my fortune was at stake, and better that the boy should die than that all of us should live on in penury and bonds. Know you not, Prince, that the gods must have the gifts of the best, gifts of blood and virtue, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... maddening of masters (him before me always excepted)—a deity which sometimes, under circumstances—apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream of electricity, the irrational ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... to the strangers scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the same mountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea; whence, in earlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phoenician priests of Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to the setting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came the heralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "Leabhar Eoin"[74] which tells their children of him in whom ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... The Patriot is merely the instrument. Marrineal's theory of publicity is interesting. It may even be true. Substantially it is this: All civilized Americans fear and love print; that is to say, Publicity, for which read Baal. They fear it for what it may do to them. They love and fawn on it for what it may do for them. It confers the boon of glory and launches the bolts of shame. Its favorites, made and anointed from day to day, are the blessed of their time. Those doomed by it ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... texts, "Beltane" is derived from bel-tene, "a goodly fire," or from bel-dine, because newly-born (dine) cattle were offered to Bel, an idol-god.[915] The latter is followed by those who believe in a Celtic Belus, connected with Baal. No such god is known, however, and the god Belenos is in no way connected with the Semitic divinity. M. D'Arbois assumes an unknown god of death, Beltene (from beltu, "to die"), whose festival Beltane was.[916] But Beltane ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... something to stop this rain?' he asked; but Andre stared. 'Oh, I was thinking of the priests of Baal,' Paul explained. 'I beg your pardon.' And after the coffee, 'Let's go up and play in the garret,' he proposed: at which Andre stared harder still. 'We always used to play in the garret on rainy days,' Paul reminded him. 'Mais, ma foi, monsieur, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... thing in connection with this custom I have succeeded in ascertaining is that the Sakais have no particular cult for the Sacred Fire like the priests of Baal the Brahmins in India and the Vestals of Rome but appreciate it as a means of cooking their food, preparing their poisons, of warming them during the night and of keeping wild beasts far from their huts. And I was ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... did binde them by an othe to depose that wicked woman, and to promote the king to his royall seat, which they faithfullie did, killinge at his commandement not onlie that cruell and mischeuous woman, but also the people did destroie the temple of Baal, break his altars and images, and kill Mathan Baales high priest before his altars. The same is the dutie aswell of the estates, as of the people that hath bene blinded. First they oght to remoue frome honor and authoritie, that monstre in nature. (so call ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... forced into the channels of orthodoxy. Heterodox prophets, the "false prophets," were consigned to oblivion. Their opponents alone were given a hearing. Secular history there was to be none; there was room only for the sacred. We may take it for granted that the "prophets of Baal," as their adversaries triumphantly nicknamed them, had their disciples who collected their writings and recorded the deeds of their spirit. But they were one and all suppressed. The political achievements of mighty dynasts had been recorded by annalists; the pious narrators in the so-called ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... Glaucon, for will you not become one with us? I dare to prophesy like a seer from old Chaldea. Assur of Nineveh, Marduk of Babylon, Baal of Tyre, Ammon of Memphis—all have bent the knee to Mazda the Glorious, to Mithra the Fiend-Smiting, and shall the weak daevas, the puny gods of Greece, save their land, when greater than they bow down in ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... sir," he muttered sourly, "to address the Lord on your own behalf. As for that young man of Baal, your master, rejoice not yet in his escape. By the same crowning mercy in which the Lord hath vouchsafed us victory to-day shall He also deliver the malignant youth into my hands. For your share in retarding his capture your life, sir, shall pay forfeit. You shall hang at daybreak ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... we feel as if the world were against us, and we were standing alone, let us not forget God's word of final encouragement to his prophet, "Yet have I left me seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed to Baal." ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"—which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress—because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet," which—since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)—had become feeble in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of the chariots of fire and horses of fire, would have borne him again to the dull realities of life; and there, rebuking Ahab, and fleeing from Jezebel, punishing the prophets of Baal, and upbraiding the people of God in their idolatries, fasting and faint under junipers, or covering his face with his mantle at the still small voice of the Lord his God, he would again have prayed, "O Lord God, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers." 'Let me not ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... except for what was bad in them. He looked upon the gods whom that century had worshipped as the direct authors of the bloodshed and ruin in which their epoch had closed. The memory of mild and humane philosophers was covered with the kind of black execration that prophets of old had hurled at Baal or Moloch; Locke and Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau, were habitually spoken of as very scourges of God. From this temper two consequences naturally flowed. In the first place, while it lasted there was no hope of an honest philosophic discussion of the great ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... or Aibhe! Hail! or All Hail! Trath—pronounced trah, early, and la, day! or "Ai, tra, la, la, la"—"Hail, early day! day," a chorus which Moses and Aaron may have heard in the temples of Egypt, as the priests of Baal saluted the rising sun as he beamed upon the grateful world, and which was repeated by the Druids on the remote shores of Western Europe, in now desolate Stonehenge, and a thousand other circles, where the sun ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... not for mere amusement, but in order to destroy the confidence which was groundlessly placed in them. The weapons of sarcasm and contemptuous treatment are used with success, even as Elijah employed them on Baal and his worshippers at an earlier time (I. Kings xviii. 27). A desire to convert the heathen, by proving the absurdity of their idol-worship, may be inferred from the last clause of v. 27, compared with vv. 5, 25. As the history of Susanna ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... was to a large extent an unwholesome influence. The Canaanites worshiped many gods. Each village had its Baal, or lord, who had to be bribed with burnt offerings of fat beasts, or (as they thought) the soil would lose its fertility and the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... them in the style of the hexagon, with chambers at the angles of the great court or square. The visitor entering through the portico, and passing into the great court, has before him on the opposite side (the west) of the court, the Great Temple originally dedicated to Baal. This was a magnificent peristyle measuring 290 feet by 160 feet, with nineteen huge columns on each side, and ten on each end, making fifty-eight in all. The circumference of these columns at the base is twenty-three feet and two inches, and at the top twenty feet; and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... but, sir, the Church is sorely divided. I didn't like to say it before your lady, for I see that she's got some one she cares for amongst us, but there's a strong party among the apostles and elders that are worshippers of Baal, and are most evil in their conduct and practice, and are apostate, though they call themselves followers of the prophet. And Mr. Brigham Young is at the head of them. It's a bad thing that the Illinois militia is set out to fight against us and turn us out of the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... morning, my mind was in some degree reassured with the hope that there are yet left, throughout the land, 'seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him;' and that among these shall yet 'arise judges, as at the first, and counsellors, and lawgivers, as in the beginning.' My soul longeth for the coming of that day, more than for the increase of corn, and ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... beyond question the Ashtoreth or Astarte (identical with our star), which was the principal goddess of the Phoenicians; and we believe she was originally the goddess of the moon. This is doubted by a modern writer, who says, "Baal is constantly coupled with Astarte; and the more philosophical opinion is that this national god and goddess were the lord and lady of Phoenicia, rather than the sun and moon: for to a people full of political life the sun and moon would have been themselves ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... laid his finger to his nose. "Ye laack subtelty, fraiend. The priests of Baal must be met with their own waipons. Look ye. This poor man is found with his swaard in his braist. He has killed himself, says the fool. Not so, say the apothecaries. Then why the swaard, asks the coroner. Because of the daivilish cunning of his murderers, says Doctor Taitus ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... "O Baal Tammuz! O Baaleth! O Astoreth! Azarias, the son of Gaber, a Jew, to be such a merchant as I am. Oh, my legs, why did ye bring me hither? Oh, my heart, why dost Thou suffer such pain and palpitation? Most worthy prince," ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... oriental nations, and they carried the idea into the valley of the Nile, and, indeed, wherever they went. It appeared to be the substitute of idolatrous nations, on alluvial lands, for an isolated hill, or promontory. It was at such points that Baal and Bel were worshipped, and hence the severe injunctions of the sacred volume, on the worship established in the oriental world "on high places." Such was the position of the pyramids in the vallies of the Euphrates ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... ix.). On the death of Gideon, Abimelech set himself to assert the authority which his father had earned, and through the influence of his mother's clan won over the citizens of Shechem. Furnished with money from the treasury of the temple of Baal-berith, he hired a band of followers and slew seventy (cp. 2 Kings x. 7) of his brethren at Ophrah, his father's home. This is one of the earliest recorded instances of a practice common enough on the accession of Oriental ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... be directly beside my purposed matter. In Syria Phenices, which bordereth upon Jewry, and near to the foot of Mount Carmel, there is a moor or marsh whereout riseth a brook called sometime Belus, and falleth into the sea near to Ptolemais. This river was fondly ascribed unto Baal, and also honoured under that name by the infidels long time before there was any king in Israel. It came to pass also, as a certain merchant sailed that way, loaden with nitrum, the passengers went to land for ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... Now all the tribes which together revolted, and the house of my father Nephthali, sacrificed unto the heifer Baal. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... hundreds to witness the impending redemption (ab. 1706). But the ascetic Hasidim and the epicurean Frankists were alike doomed to disappear or to be swallowed up by a new Hasidism, combining the teachings and aspirations of both, the sect founded by Israel Baal Shem, or Besht (ab. 1698-1759), and fully developed by Bar of Meseritz ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... sin," and do worse than the heathen that dwelt round about them, or that was cast out from before them: but when God converted him, the whole land was reformed. Down went the groves, the idols, and altars of Baal, and up went true religion in much of the power and purity of it. You will say, The king reformed by power. I answer, doubtless, and by example too; for people observe their leaders; as their fathers did, so did they; 2 Chron. ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... she said, lightly, "as mine do. There is no excuse for you. There is for me. For you know I'm like Naaman; I have to bow my head in the temple of Baal. After all," she continued, in a more serious voice, "I suppose I shall be able some day to worship before my own altar, for, do you know, I expect to end ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... writing En-ki-d is an endeavor to give a Sumerian aspect to a name that may have been foreign. The element dg corresponds to the Semitic tbu, "good," and En-ki being originally a designation of a deity as the "lord of the land," which would be the Sumerian manner of indicating a Semitic Baal, it is not at all impossible that En-ki-dg may be the "Sumerianized" form of a Semitic BA'L TZOB "Baal is good." It will be recalled that in the third column of the Yale tablet, Enkidu speaks of himself in his earlier period while still living with cattle, as wandering into the cedar forest ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... the American Beauty rose, is part of our social life of to-day. And here, in the Ramesseum, I found campaniform, or lotus-flower capitals on the columns—here where Rameses once perhaps dreamed of his Syrian campaigns, or of that famous combat when, "like Baal in his fury," he fought single-handed against the host of the Hittites massed in two thousand, five ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... dangers, and he avoided the certain denunciation of Walter Baal, the Mayor of Dublin probably, who was then actually persecuting his mother, Dame Eleanor Birmingham; he fled to the castle of Thomas Fleming, who concealed him in a secret chamber in his house and treated him as a friend. But when everybody thought the danger past, and that it was no ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... prophet's has heard the plaint from the bare heights. Many a frenzied shriek had gone up from these shrines of idolatrous worship, and as with Baal's prophets, it had brought no answer, nor had there been any that regarded. But this weeping reaches the ear that is never closed. Contrast with verse 23: 'Truly in vain is the help that is looked ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... is a high hill, called the Table Mountain, which covers all the adjoining territory for an hundred miles. The natives, who are quite black, behaved to us very peaceably, but seemed to have no religion, yet their skins were slashed or cut, like the priests of Baal; and one seemed to act as chief, as he settled the prices for the whole. Some of our people went a considerable way into the country, and discovered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... the city of "Baal of the Bek'a," the traveller makes his way across Lebanon, and under the snows of Jebel Sannin—nearly 9000 feet in height—to the old Phoenician city of Beyrout. Beyrout is already mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna under the ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... Him, and were therefore not roused to the practice of intolerance in return. This reciprocal recognition of their deities by the nations in the midst of whom the Israelites lived, is sufficiently evident from the circumstance, that they all called their highest deity by the same name—Baal—and expressed, by some epithet, only the form of manifestation peculiar to each. Now, the Israelites imagined that they might be able, at one and the same time, to satisfy the demands of their God, and to propitiate [Pg 177] the idols of the neighbouring mighty nations—especially ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... had done its own special work for the advancement of man—as for that matter all things must, whether by help or helplessness. Not less than Elijah did the wretched priests of Baal serve those slow, sure, eternal Purposes, which include an Ahab and all the futile fury of his little life as the sun includes ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... amongst the heathen nations and caused them to worship images and other things aside from Jehovah. These heathen idolaters built an altar in the valley of Hinnom for the purpose of offering sacrifices to their gods. The Jews forsook their covenant with Jehovah and became worshipers of Baal, one of Satan's deified ones. In practising Baal worship they offered their children as sacrifices, and upon this has been based the doctrine of torture by fire, concerning which Jehovah says: "They have built also the high places of Baal, to ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... "Marmy, baal you take 'em yarroman like 'it Hinchinbrook; my word, plenty of alligator sit down along of water. He been parter that ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... of a gun. The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call of the wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but must always be doing something with nature—either hunting, or camping out, or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. But there is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as characteristic of Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a true poet. The test is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a burn "and no' think lang." Such was Fiona's way with nature. She needed nothing ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... I?—ah, true! I am Baal-Zebub, Prince of the Fly. I took thee, just now, from a rose-wood coffin inlaid with ivory. Thou wast curiously scented, and labelled as per invoice. Belial sent thee,—my Inspector of Cemeteries. The pantaloons, which thou sayest were made by Bourdon, are an excellent pair ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as eve, High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, When all church bells were silent our cap and ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... several days, and explored the ruins thoroughly. It is the ancient Heliopolis. One of the most striking things amid its rocky tombs and sepulchral caves and its Doric columns and temples was the grand old eagle, the emblem of Baal. On Sunday I heard Mass at the Maronite chapel, and returned the call of the ladies aforesaid. In the evening we dined with the Governor, who illuminated his house for us. We passed a most enjoyable evening. I spent most of the time in the harim with the ladies. They wished me to tell them a story; ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... stocks and stones? The explanation is a simple but a humiliating one. The worship of these foreign deities was accompanied with sensual excesses, which appealed to the strongest elementary passions of human nature. Feasts, dances and drunken orgies formed part of the worship of Baal and the other Canaanite divinities. Idolatry in Israel was never due to theoretic changes of opinion; it was only the way in which an outbreak of laxity and luxury manifested itself. Its equivalent in our day would be an excessive development of the passion for amusement ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... prophets, and servants might be present, because he would offer costly and great sacrifices to Ahab's god; and that if any of his priests were wanting, they should be punished with death. Now Ahab's god was called Baal; and when he had appointed a day on which he would offer those sacrifices, he sent messengers through all the country of the Israelites, that they might bring the priests of Baal to him. So Jehu commanded to give all the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... bass-viol; and dancing, if practised at all, must be called "calisthenics." The drama was to her an invention of the Enemy of Souls—and if she ever saw a play, it must be at a museum, and not within the walls of that temple of Baal, the theatre. None but "serious" conversation was allowable, and a hearty laugh was the expression of a spirit ripe for ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... did not make for amity. He stood straight and pointed in turn to the visible statues and then to Tasper Britt, in person. "Baal, and the images of Baal!" ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... the root "Sanah"sentis, a bush; but this is not satisfactory. Our eminent Assyriologist, Professor Sayce, would connect it with "Sin," the Assyrian Moon- god as Mount Nebo with the Sun-god and he expects to find there the ruins of a Lunar temple as a Solar fane stands on Ba'al Zapuna (Baal Zephon) or the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... there is too much servility in our North; there is too much crouching and cringing, but I am prepared to say there are more than seven thousand that have never bowed the knee to your Baal of slavery, and never will. We never shall do homage to your Southern goddess, though you may cry loud and long in demanding its worship. You say if we have another slave case, if we come to you to help us through, you will do it, and that if a slave wants his freedom bad enough to run for it, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... Meanwhile, may we suggest horse-racing or profane language?' We may be sure, then, that the sin suggested, as a conjurer forces a card, is not a relevant one. We may be fairly sure also that it is one with which some neighbour is more chargeable than are we ourselves. The priests of Baal were foolish to cut themselves with knives, but it is to be set to their credit ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... not leap up at their coming, as men in a beleaguered town do when the guns of the relieving force are heard booming from afar. Often God's delays seem to us inexplicable, and our prayers to have no more effect than if they were spoken to a sleeping Baal. But such delays are merciful. They help us to the consciousness of our need. They let us feel the presence of the sorrow. They give opportunity of proving the weakness of all other supports. They test and increase desire for His help. They throw us more unreservedly into His arms. They afford ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... been practically completed, it has assumed, once and for all, the greater rank, and a Cathedral of Marseilles still stands on its terrace in full view of the sea. Tradition has it that a Temple of Baal once stood on this site and later, a Temple to Diana; that Lazarus came in the I century, converted the pagan Marseillais and built a Christian Cathedral here. A more critical tradition says that Saint Victor first came as missionary, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... direction of Elijah, Ahab gathered the prophets of Baal, numbering four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah, four hundred more, at some point on this mountain, probably at the eastern end, passed on my way over to Nazareth later in the day. "And Elijah ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... vanquish the invaders of my peace. I write these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd increase,—I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and Elijah with the priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian among my mental nurslings; a dire resolve has filled me to effect a premature destruction of the literary populace superfaetating in my brain,—plays, novels, essays, tales, homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... reminded of that prophet's experience more than nine hundred years before. It was this: Ahaziah, a king of Israel, was seriously injured by a fall from the balcony of his house. He sent to inquire of the false god Baal-zebub whether he should recover. God sent Elijah to reprove him for his idolatry and insult to Himself. The king sent a captain with fifty men to seize the prophet, but they were consumed by fire from heaven. ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... the vice of idolatry, Though I should suffer all other villany. When Joshua was dead, that sort from me did fall To the worshipping of Ashteroth and Baal, Full unclean ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... beautiful vessel, deep red in colour, double-banked with scarlet oars, its broad, flapping sail stained with Tyrian purple, its bulwarks gleaming with brass work. A brazen, three-pronged ram projected in front, and a high golden figure of Baal, the God of the Phoenicians, children of Canaan, shone upon the after deck. From the single high mast above the huge sail streamed the tiger-striped flag of Carthage. So, like some stately scarlet bird, with golden beak and wings of purple, she swam upon the face of the waters—a ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to the extent of praying to senseless stocks and stones which could return them no answer, was, by the Jewish law, an act of rebellion to their own Lord God, and as such most fit to be punished capitally. Thus the prophets of Baal were deservedly put to death, not on account of any success which they might obtain by their intercessions and invocations (which, though enhanced with all their vehemence, to the extent of cutting and wounding themselves, proved so utterly unavailing as to incur the ridicule of the prophet), ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... corn god, and that the resemblance between the words Dagan and Dagon are accidental. Professor Sayce makes reference in this connection to a crystal seal from Phoenicia in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, bearing an inscription which he reads as Baal-dagon. Near the name is an ear of corn, and other symbols, such as the winged solar disc, a gazelle, and several stars, but there is no fish. It may be, of course, that Baal-dagon represents a fusion of deities. As we have seen in the case of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... shouting, hovering, watching for a new chance, when Monarch, firmly planting both paws, braced, bent those mighty shoulders, and, spite of shortening breath, leaned back on those two ropes as Samson did on pillars of the house of Baal, and straining horses with their riders were dragged forward more and more, long grooves being plowed behind; dragging them, he backed faster and faster still. His eyes were starting, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton

... eye of Baal The servant of his Conqueror knew, From skies which knew no cloudy veil, The Sun's hot glances smote ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... shook her fist at the wicked wretch, as she called her, from the window. "Brother," said she, to Dr. Beaumont, who reproved her for the violence of her indignation, "I only wish her to incur the enmity of the Baal she now worships, and to suffer with him as many years of misery as she has inflicted on the noble veteran whose lonely couch our dear Isabel smooths; and while her youthful beauty withers in a dungeon, pillows a father's destitute head on her ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... effected by his skilful treatment. But the illusion was greatly facilitated by his choice of subject. He had not to create his supernatural personages, they were already there. The Father, and the Son, the Angels, Satan, Baal and Moloch, Adam and Eve, were in full possession of the popular imagination, and more familiar to it than any other set of known names. Nor was the belief accorded to them a half belief, a bare admission of their possible existence, such as prevails at other times or in some countries. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... move, except with the ordinary action accompanying speech. The speech was bold and firm, perhaps somewhat ironically remonstrant, like that of Elijah to the priests of Baal, demanding the cessation of these trivial delays. But speech is the most irritating kind of argument for those who are out of hearing, cramped in the limbs, and empty in the stomach. And what need was there for speech? If the miracle did not ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... spirit in which, more or less (according to their different tempers), men do commonly engage in concerns of this world; and I repeat it, better, far better, were it to retire from the world altogether than thus to engage in it—better with Elijah to fly to the desert, than to serve Baal and Ashtoreth in Jerusalem. ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... our sacred rites remove, Whate'er the faith of the successor prove: Our Jews their ark shall undisturb'd retain, At least while their religion is their gain, Who know by old experience Baal's commands Not only claim'd their conscience, but their lands; 660 They grudge God's tithes, how therefore shall they yield An idol full possession of the field? Grant such a prince enthroned, we must confess ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... son of Rechab, you heard three Sundays since, in that noble passage of 2 Kings x. where Jehu, returning from the slaughter of the idolatrous kings, and going to slay the priests of Baal, meets Jonadab and asks him, Is thy heart right—that is, sound in the worship of God, and determined to put down idolatry—as my heart is with thy heart? We hear of him and his tribe no more till the days of Jeremiah, 250 years after, in the story ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... crust of conformity the Briton has an admiration for these recalcitrant individuals who will neither bow the knee to Baal nor to his betters. He likes a man who is a law unto himself. Though he has little enthusiasm for the abstract "rights of man," he is a great believer in "the liberty of prophesying." The prophet is not without honor, even while he is ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... attending church one Sunday forenoon, went in the afternoon with all the insignia of his office to a Conventicle. Defoe's objection to this is indicated in his quotation, "If the Lord be God, follow Him, but if Baal, then follow him." A man, he contended, who could reconcile it with his conscience to attend the worship of the Church, had no business to be a Dissenter. Occasional conformity was "either a sinful act in itself, or else his dissenting ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... when I'm come Above two hundred miles from home; O'er mountains steep, o'er dusty plains, Half choked with dust, half drown'd with rains, Only your godship to implore, To let me kiss your other shore? A boon so small! but I may weep, While you're like Baal, fast asleep. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... concealed his faith. One day the King held a review of his troops, and was delighted with their number and handsome appearance. He said to the Wazir, "Is there any person on earth whose power can compare with mine?" "O yes," answered the Wazir, "there is King Baal-Beg, whose troops fill the deserts and the cultivated lands, the plains and the valleys." "I must make war upon him, then," exclaimed the King, "and destroy his power." He immediately ordered the army to prepare to march, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... she cried, but cried in vain. From impatience she passed to passion; but it was of no avail: there came no more response than from the shrine of the deaf Baal. For to the boys it was an opportunity not at any risk to be lost. Dull Betty never suspected what they were about. They were ranging the place like two tiger-cats whose whelps had been carried off in their absence—questing, with nose to earth and tail ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... phallus is the other great symbol of the Life-Giver, generating life in woman, as the sun in the earth. Bacchus, Adonis, Dionysius, Apollo, Hercules, Hermes, Thammuz, Jupiter, Jehovah, Jao, or Jah, Moloch, Baal, Asher, Mahadeva, Brahma, Vishnu, Mithra, Atys, Ammon, Belus, with many another, these are all the Life-Giver under different names; they are the Sun, the Creator, the Phallus. Red is their appropriate colour. When the sun or the Phallus is not drawn in its natural form, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... retained several of the French names, on account of their measure and euphony. Joas and Joad I have, I believe, invariably versified as one syllable, and Baal also, with one exception, which occurs in the first page; these words, to my judgment, being scarcely of greater quantity than thought, ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley

... Babylonian. He could also be a party to a suit. Thus we find a slave called Nergal-ritsua, in the tenth year of Nabonidos, bringing a suit for the recovery of stolen property. He had been intrusted by his master with the conveyance of 480 gur of fruit to the ships of a Syrian, named Baal-nathan, who undertook to carry it to Babylon, and to be responsible for loss. On the way part of the fruit was stolen, and Baal-nathan, instead of replacing it, absconded, but was soon caught. The slave accordingly appeared against him, and the five judges before whom ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce



Words linked to "Baal" :   Baal Merodach, Semitic deity



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com