Baal-Peor

This was the famous, or rather infamous dunghill idol of Moab; and which they tempted the Israelites worship. The Psalmist mournfully speaks of it, (Ps. cvi. 18.) "they joined themselves unto Baal - peor, and ate the offerings of the dead." (Num. xxv. 1 - 3. Hos. ix. 10.) From what this prophet saith of their shame; and from the impure name of this strumpet idol; there is reason to believe that the greatest indecency was joined with idolatry, in the, worship of this Baal - peor.

Peor is supposed to have been a part of Mount Abarim; and Baal was the great idol or chief god of the Phoenicians, and was known and worshipped under a similar name, with tumultuous and obscene rites, all over Asia. He is the same as the Bel of the Babylonians. Baal, by itself, signifies lord, and was a name of the solar or principal god. But it was also variously compounded, in allusion to the different characters and attributes of the particular or local deities who were known by it, as Baal Peor, Baal Zebub, Baal Zephon, &c. Baal Peor, then, was probably the temple of an idol belonging to the Moabites, on Mount Abarim, which the Israelites worshipped when encamped at Shittim; this brought a plague upon them, of which twenty-four thousand died, Numbers 35. Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, to whom Solomon erected an altar, 1Ki 11:7, is supposed to have been the same deity. Baal Peor has been farther supposed by some to have been Priapus; by others, Saturn: by others, Pluto; and by others again, Adonis. Mr. Faber agrees with Calmet in making Baal Peor the same with Adonis; a part of whose worship consisted in bewailing him with funeral rites, as one lost or dead, and afterward welcoming, with extravagant joy, his fictitious return to life. He was in an eminent degree the god of impurity. Hosea, speaking of the worship of this idol, emphatically calls it “that shame,” Hos 9:10. Yet in the rites of this deity the Moabite and Midianite women seduced the Israelites to join.

(Hebrews Ba’al Peor’, בִּעִל פְּעוֹר, lord of Peor, or sometimes only פְּעוֹר, Peor, respectively represented in the Sept. by Βεελφεγώρ and φογώρ appears to have been properly the idol of the Moabites (Num 25:1-9; Deu 4:3; Jos 22:17; Psa 106:28; Hos 9:10); but also of the Midianites (Num 31:15-16). It is the common opinion that this god was worshipped by obscene rites, and from the time of Jerome downward it has been usual to compare him to Priapus (see Sickler, in Augusti’s Theol. Blatt. 1, 193 sq.). Selden and J. Owen (De Diis Syris, 1:5; Theologoumena, 5:4) seem to be the only persons who have disputed whether any of the passages in which this god is named really warrant such a conclusion. The narrative (Numbers 25) seems clearly to show that this form of Baal-worship was connected with licentious rites. The least that the above passages express is the fact that the Israelites received this idolatry from the women of Moab, and were led away to eat of their sacrifices (comp. Psa 106:28); and it is possible for that sex to have been the means of seducing them into the adoption of their worship, without the idolatry itself being of an obscene kind. It is also remarkable that so few authors are agreed even as to .the general character of these rites. Most Jewish authorities (except the Tarnum of Jonathan on Numbers 25) represent his worship to have consisted of rites which are filthy in the extreme, but not lascivious (see Braunius, De Vestit. Sacerd. 1:7, for one of the fullest collections of Jewish testimonies on this subject). Without laying too much stress on the rabbinical derivation of the word פְעוֹר, hiatus, i.e. “aperire hymenem virgineum,” we seem to have reason to conclude that this was the nature of the worship. This is, moreover, the view of Creuzer (2. 411), Winer, Gesenius, Furst, and almost all critics. The reader is referred for more detailed information particularly to Creuzer’s Symbolik and Movers’ Phonizier. The identification of Baal with the sun SEE BAAL, as the generative power of nature confirms the opinion of the lascivious character of this worship. Peor is properly the name of a mountain SEE PEOR, and Baal-Peor was the name of the god worshipped there. Some identify this god with CHEMOSH SEE CHEMOSH (q.v.). SEE BAALIM.

By: Morris Jastrow, Jr., J. Frederic McCurdy, Marcus Jastrow, Louis Ginzberg

Name of a Canaanitish god. Peor was a mountain in Moab (Num. xxiii. 28), whence the special locality Beth-peor (Deut. iii. 29, etc.) was designated. It gave its name to the Ba'al who was there worshiped, and to whose service Israel, before the entrance into Canaan, was, for a brief time, attracted (Num. xxv. 3, 5; Ps. cvi. 28). The god is himself also called "Peor" by abbreviation (Num. xxxi. 16; Josh. xxii. 17). It is commonly held that this form of Ba'al-worship especially called for sensual indulgence. The context seems to favor his view, on account of the shameful licentiousness into which many of the Israelites were there enticed. But all Ba'al-worship encouraged this sin; and Peor may not have been worse than many other shrines in this respect, though the evil there was certainly flagrant. In Hosea ix. 10 "Baal-peor" is the same as "Beth-peor," and is contracted from "Beth-baal-peor."

—In Rabbinical Literature:

The worship of this idol consisted in exposing that part of the body which all persons usually take the utmost care to conceal. It is related that on one occasion a strange ruler came to the place where Peor was worshiped, to sacrifice to him; but when he heard of this silly practise, he caused his soldiers to attack and kill the worshipers of the god (Sifre, Num. 131; Sanh. 106a). The same sources mention various other facts concerning the cult, all of which give the impression that it still existed at the time of the Tannaim. That the statements of the Rabbis are not wholly imaginative and do not take their coloring from the rites of some heathen or antinomian-Gnostic sects is shown by the fact that the worship of Peor is ridiculed, but nowhere stigmatized as moral depravity, by the Rabbis, which latter might have been expected, had the assertions of the Rabbis been based on the Gnostic cults mentioned.

BAAL-PEOR.—The local deity of Mt. Peor (Deu 4:3 b, Num 25:6). In Deu 4:3 b and Hos 9:10 it is perhaps the name of a place.

bā-al-pē´or. See BAAL. (1).