“Again the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective — they served the ba‘alim, the ‘ashtarot, the gods of Aram, the gods of Tzidon, the gods of Mo’av, the gods of the people of ‘Amon and the gods of the P’lishtim. They abandoned Adonai and did not serve him.”-Judges 10:6
Verse 6 gives us a list of the names of the other Canaanite gods the Israelites went whoring after.
There’s a couple of things you should know about this list of pagan deities.
FIRST, by no means is the list exhaustive, it is simply representative of the chief gods the gentile nations worshipped in and around Canaan.
SECOND, the list isn’t a pecking order of the gods with one god ranked higher than another.
As I’ve mentioned before, in ancient times, the gods were considered to be territorial.
For example, Hadoth, Ba’al, Moath and Anath were the names of the gods who controlled the territory of Syria.
The chief god who controlled the land of the Moabites was called Chemosh.
The gods of the Philistines were Dagon and Ba’al.
And the Ammonites worshipped Molech as their highest deity.
So it all depended on where an Israelite lived in Canaan that determined which god he’d end up whoring after.
The Israelites who lived in Syria would most likely be tempted to worship the god Moath.
Those Israelites whose tribal territory bordered the land of the Philistines would be tempted to worship Dagon and so on and so forth.
And again, I stress the gods mentioned were just a teeny tiny representation of the ton of deities the Canaanites worshipped.
Now the main takeaway I want you get from today’s post is this.
The ancient world was awash in idolatry and worshipping a multitude of different gods for different things during different occasions.
But here’s the thing.
We could say the VERY SAME THING about the condition of the world today.
The modern world IS ALSO awash in idolatry and worshipping a multitude of different gods for different things during different occasions.
I’m living in Tokyo, Japan right now and I can testify to the fact there’s a pagan temple dedicated to a god or series of heathen gods located in practically every neighborhood.
Students go to these Shinto shrines to seek help from the gods to get into a good university.
And then before graduation, they pray to the pagan gods to get a good job at a prestigious company.
For pretty much any major life situation you can think of, the Japanese will visit their local temple to beseech the gods for supernatural help with whatever ordeal they’re struggling with.
A lot of folks mistakenly think the Bible is outdated and has zero relevance to the modern, “scientific”, and atheistic world we live in today.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Bible speaks DIRECTLY to our situation in our modern times today.
Even more so considering that we see steps being taken to establish a central world government over every nation in the world.
And when Israel decides not to participate in this global central government, I tell ya, all hell is gonna break loose.
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