by Brian Godawa
1 Kings 22
My favorite Bible passage about the divine council is the story of King Ahab asking for the prophet Micaiah’s advice on attacking Ramoth-gilead. I’ve included this story in the novel as an example of God’s angelic heavenly host versus the fallen heavenly host who are the demonic gods of the nations.
Micaiah describes a scenario so obviously supernatural that little explanation is required. Though the beings in the council here are not described as “gods” like elsewhere, they are described as the “host of heaven,” which the Bible defines as divine beings or gods.[46]
1 Kings 22:19–23:
And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.”
The fascinating thing about this vision is that we get a glimpse into the actual process of counseling that God takes from his heavenly host. We see them surrounding his throne in counsel. We see them suggesting different things. Then God chooses one and empowers the spirit to accomplish his task. Most shocking of all, God is shown to be sovereignly ordaining “a lying spirit” to achieve his holy purpose of judgment. God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, though without himself being guilty of sin.
This may all seem rather scandalous to those Christians who prefer a simple and uncomplicated spiritual world where God sits on his throne and declares the end from the beginning without anyone’s input. But biblical facts are the facts. God uses a bureaucracy of intermediary divine agents called gods, Sons of God, heavenly host, or holy ones, with whom he interacts and engages counsel.
Or as Psalm 82:1 puts it:
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
There are plenty of other passages that describe the divine council of heavenly beings around Yahweh who counsel with him and carry out his decisions with duly delegated legal responsibility. But this one shows it at work in our very story of Jezebel’s husband Ahab.[47]
Leviathan
Leviathan is a crucial character in the Chronicles universe. It shows up in Chronicles of the Nephilim, Chronicles of the Apocalypse, as well as Chronicles of the Watchers. It is drawn from the ancient Near Eastern worldview that permeates the Bible.
Contrary to what some hyper-literalists may think, Leviathan is not a real world sea dinosaur or even an extinct sea monster. It is a spiritual image used by ancient Near Eastern religions to symbolize the chaos of the cosmos that their god fought to bring about his rule and order. The Babylonians called it Tiamat. The Canaanites called it Lotan, the Ugaritic translation for “Leviathan.” Hebrews called it Leviathan and sometimes Rahab.[48]
The battle of divinity to create order out of chaos is called “chaoskampf” by theologians.[49] In Mesopotamian religion, Marduk fought and defeated Tiamat the sea dragon and split her in half to create the heavens and earth that symbolized the establishment of Babylonian world power.[50] The Canaanite Baal fought and defeated Sea (Yam), River (Nahar), and Leviathan (Lotan) in order to become the Most High ruler of the Canaanite pantheon.[51]
So, Yahweh is depicted as fighting and defeating Leviathan to establish his covenantal order with Israel at Sinai.
Psalm 74:13–17:
You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.
In the above psalm, the Red Sea deliverance of the Israelites (“dividing the sea”) was the metaphor of God taking them out of the chaos of pagan Egypt. As in other ancient religions, Yahweh is depicted as defeating the sea, which also represented chaos to land dwellers. And Leviathan is in that sea as its instrument of power. But Yahweh crushes the heads of the sea dragon of chaos, and the creatures of the desert feast on his body. This banquet of eating the flesh of Leviathan symbolizes Yahweh’s victory and is a common theme that appears in both biblical and extrabiblical Jewish poetry.[52]
The book of Revelation describes the victory of Christ over his enemies in chapter 19 as the “great supper of God” where the birds of prey eat the flesh of his defeated foes (19:17). While Leviathan is not included in this Revelation passage, it is the same kind of nature banquet motif as described in Psalm 74 with creatures feasting on the flesh of the enemies of God. The banquet of flesh was a common way of symbolizing deliverance from and victory over one’s enemies.
Leviathan does show up in Revelation as the seven-headed sea dragon who is the satanic enemy of chaos against God’s people.[53] Once again, the sea dragon’s defeat is symbolically linked to God establishing a new order, namely the new covenant kingdom of God in Christ’s blood (Revelation 12:9-11).
But did the monster grow some new heads in this new incarnation? Not necessarily. If one looks closely at the fourteenth verse of Psalm 74 (especially in the Hebrew), it says that Leviathan has multiple heads, plural, not head, singular (Yahweh “crushed the heads of Leviathan”). And it is no coincidence that the Leviathan of the Canaanite Baal epic also has multiple heads (seven).[54]
But the last component of Psalm 74 above is the creation language that reminds the reader of Genesis 1. God separates day and night, establishes the heavenly host, and makes the seasons (v. 15-17). This is not some unconnected jump back to the creation of the universe. It is another cosmic metaphor of the covenant in terms of a “heaven and earth.” Right after Yahweh delivers them through the sea, he brings them to Sinai, where he establishes his covenant order. The Mosaic covenant was a spiritual cosmos, a heaven and earth of God’s operations with his people. Yahweh delivers his people, destroys the dragon of chaos with victory, and creates his covenantal order with Israel, a new “cosmos.”
Hyper-literalist assumptions may cause distress in the believer who thinks this would mean that the Red Sea deliverance was “just a myth” or a spiritual symbol that didn’t really happen in history. But this is simply a misunderstanding of the nature of ancient storytelling. Everything is not all “literal” or all “symbolic.” It is very common for biblical writers to describe historic events with poetic or symbolic flair. So the Red Sea deliverance connected to the Sinai covenant was an historic event. But it also had spiritual ramifications so important they had to be described using symbolic terms of Leviathan and creation.
Leviathan can’t be a literal physical creature because it is destroyed and eaten here in Psalm 74, yet is described by Isaiah as being alive then slain in the future at another victory of God, namely, the coming of Messiah (Isaiah 27:6, 9).
Isaiah 27:1:
In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Leviathan is a spiritual symbol of the chaos that battles against order. But this chaoskampf in the Bible is not the same as pagan versions of it, where there is a dualist equivalence between the combatants, and either one might win. For example, Genesis 1 depicts Leviathan very differently for its theological purpose. W
e read of God’s Spirit hovering over the dark “face of the deep” (v. 2), which is “without form and void,” or “an unfilled wasteland” (Hebrew: tohu wa-bohu), an expression of that chaos which the sea tends to represent to the ancient world. The Hebrew word behind “deep” is tehom, which scholars argue is a linguistic connection to that sea dragon Tiamat. But in this context, there is no chaoskampf battle depicted. God simply speaks, and order is established through the separation of things.
When a sea dragon does appear, it is simply one of many sea creatures God created to swarm in the sea.
Genesis 1:21:
So God created the great sea creatures [tannim] and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm… And God saw that it was good.
The Hebrew word for “sea creatures” (tannim) is a word that is translated elsewhere as dragon.[55] Though Leviathan is not used here, the intent of the chapter is to demythologize the elements of the natural world that pagan cultures had divinized, including not only the sun, moon, and stars, but the sea (chaos) and the dragons that resided there.
The imagery of chaoskampf, sea, and dragon are used poetically in some Bible passages to communicate the notion of God’s creation of order out of chaos. In other passages, those mythopoeic symbols are tamed with ease and without a dualistic struggle because they are after all symbols in the service of their creator.[56] In the Bible, Leviathan has no chance of winning as he does in pagan mythology. All things are subject to the sovereign control of Yahweh, even chaos and evil.
One last element bears discussion related to Leviathan. In the novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel, Jezebel is portrayed as having a tattoo of Leviathan on her back. This connects her spiritually both Leviathan and Asherah, a key figure in the story. Asherah was considered the mother of the gods in Canaanite mythology. She was the consort of the high god El, and as such was mother of Baal. Though Jezebel was a priestess of Astarte, there is some evidence that over time, Asherah, Astarte, and even Anat may have blended into one another as different names of one goddess.[57] One of the epithets of Asherah was “Lady of the Sea,” or “Lady who Treads the Sea.” Some scholars suggest that the epithet can be translated, “Lady who Treads the Sea Dragon.”[58] The theological interconnections of all these images with the Asherah whom Israel embraced becomes readily apparent.
See my book When Giants Were Upon the Earth (paid link) for more on the theological meaning of Leviathan and its interaction with other fantastical motifs in the Bible.
Chapter 3:
The Gods of Canaan
Baal
In 1929, an archeological excavation at a mound in northern Syria called Ras Shamra unearthed the remains of a significant port city called Ugarit, whose developed culture reaches back as far as 3000 BC.[59] Among the important finds were literary tablets that opened the door to a deeper understanding of ancient Near Eastern culture and the Bible. Those tablets included Syro-Canaanite religious texts of pagan deities mentioned in the Old Testament. One of those deities was Baal (alternate spelling of Ba’al).
In the Bible, Baal is used both as the name of a specific deity[60] and as a generic term for multiple idols worshipped by apostate Israel.[61] It was also used in conjunction with city names and locations, such as Baal-Hermon and Baal-Zaphon, indicating manifestations of the one deity worshipped in a variety of different Canaanite situations.[62] Simply speaking, in Canaan, Baal was all over the place. He was the chief god of the land. One could say he was the spiritual prince of Canaan as the angel Michael was the prince of Israel who fought the spiritual princes of Persia and Greece (Daniel 10:13, 20-21).
Though the Semitic noun baal means lord or master, it was also used as the proper name of the Canaanite storm god.[63] In the Baal epic from Ugarit, El was the supreme father of the gods who lived on a cosmic mountain. A divine council of gods called Sons of El surrounded him, vying for position and power. When the god Sea (Yam) is coronated by El and given a palace, Baal rises up and kills Sea, taking Sea’s place as Most High over the other gods (excepting El). A temple is built and a feast celebrated. Mot (Death) then insults Baal, who goes down to the underworld, only to be defeated by Mot. Anat, Baal’s violent sister, seeks Death and cuts him up into pieces, then brings Baal’s body back up to earth, where he is brought back to life, only to fight Mot to a stalemate.[64] This return of the storm and vegetation god is a common mythical representation of the annual death of winter and new life of spring and autumn. [65]
The temporary loss of Baal to the underworld is also reflected in Jezebel’s name, which in Canaanite means “Where is the Prince?” a liturgical call that Canaanites proclaimed every harvest. It is also reflected in Elijah’s taunt to the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel when he wonders if their god is absent because he is asleep in the earth (1 Kings 18:27).
The reader will notice that I have depicted this mythical narrative in the novel as a real journey where Anat rescues Baal from Mot in Sheol. And it is spiritually connected to Elijah’s drought and the confrontation on Mount Carmel, thus affirming the biblical notion of the connection between earthly events and heavenly principalities. I consider it biblical appropriation and subversion of pagan mythology by the Hebrew metanarrative.
In the novel, I depict the Baal that Jezebel brings to Israel as Baal-Hadad, the storm god. This is contrary to a commonly argued interpretation that the god referred to in the Mount Carmel confrontation is Melqart. The argument for the latter is that Melqart was the patron god of Tyre, his name meaning literally, “king of the city.” Melqart was a Phoenician appropriation of Herakles, the Greek divinized warrior. When Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal, he said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” Herakles was known as a philosopher (“musing”) and for having gone on a hero’s journey into the underworld. There was also a ceremony of “awakening” the god from his winter sleep. The taunt of Elijah is considered an allusion to elements of musing, journey, and awakening.[66]
But biblical scholars John Day and Mark Smith explain that there are significant problems with this interpretation and argue convincingly that the Baal of Jezebel is Baal-Shamem (another name for Hadad; it gets confusing sometimes with all the multiple names for one being!).[67] Baal-Shamem means “lord of the heavens.” This Shamem/Hadad was a storm god who was also associated with the Greek god Zeus. The most significant element of the Mount Carmel episode was that it was a contest of whose god was the storm god, lord of the heavens, a result of the drought called by Elijah. Melqart was not a storm god while Shamem/Hadad was.
Smith points out that an ancient inscription on Carmel identifies the god of Carmel as Zeus Heliopolis, the namesake of Shamem/Hadad, not Melqart.[68] Day argues that there are no royal names in Tyre that incorporate Melqart into their nomenclature, a common ancient practice. But there are many Tyrian names that incorporate Baal (a common reference to Shamem/Hadad) into their names, not the least of which is Jezebel and her father Ethbaal.[69]
Regarding the taunt of Elijah, Smith writes that the notion of a sleeping god being awakened is common to deities throughout the Near East, including Yahweh (Psalm 44:24; 78:65). As illustrated above, the Baal epic depicts Hadad/Shamem as being held in the underworld by Mot and being brought back to life out of the “sleep of death” by Anat. Jezebel’s name is a translation of the liturgical phrase Tyrians would chant to raise Baal from that sleep to bring the rains.
In fact, according to the Baal epic, it is Hadad (Shamem) who is captured by Mot (Death) and imprisoned in the underworld as dead, which represents the seasonal deadness of the weather and crops in winter. The question “Where is the Prince?” is given in the text as a call to the return of harvest rains.
Parched are the furrows of the grand fields,
May Baal restore the furrows of the ploughed land.
Where is Mightiest Baal?
Where is the Prince, Lord of the Earth?
(KTU 1.6:4:1-5)[70]
So Elijah’s taunt is a sarcastic answer to the Baal prophets’ liturgical calling for their Lord. But rather than just the mockery of being awakened from the dead, Elijah adds other options of musing, going to the toilet, or being on a journey (perhaps a reference to Anat’s journey to find Baal in the underworld). The contest on Mount Carmel was ultimately about ending the death of drought and returning the rains of harvest season. It was a contest of storm gods. Baal (Shamem/Hadad) was a storm god, Melqart was not.
When the prophets of Baal “cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed” (1 Kings 18:28), this was a liturgical mourning ritual to bring Baal-Hadad back from the underworld. The activity was sympathetic magic, replaying Anat’s own activity in the Baal epic before freeing Baal to bring the rains.
With a stone [Anat] scrapes her skin,
Double-slits with a blade.
She cuts cheeks and chin,
Furrows the length of her arm.
She plows her chest like a garden,
Like a valley she furrows her back:
“Baal is dead! What of the peoples?”
(KTU 1.6:1:2-8)[71]
What appears upon a cursory reading of the biblical text to be a mockery of Baal and his prophets turns out to be a complex subversion of their entire Baal-Hadad narrative and mythology. Elijah’s wit and wisdom made him the holy Oscar Wilde of the ancient world (for more on God’s use of sarcasm in the Bible, see my book, The Imagination of God (paid link).
