Parshat Bechukotai starts in Leviticus 26 verse 3.  We read the promises God makes if we keep His Torah and and then the threats of suffering if we do not.  But if we backup to the end of Parshat Behar (25:50 – 55) we read about the fair treatment of slaves, and are reminded that we were once slaves in Egypt.  Ending this section is a command not to worship idols.  (26: 1 – 2) .  Coming as it does after these laws of slavery it seems like just another place where the Torah tells us not to worship idols.  The Massorah which is the traditional division of paragraphs in the Torah clearly connects verses 26:1 -2 to the end of chapter 25.  But the Christians place them at the beginning of a new section, chapter 26.  According to the Christian division, based on the Septuagint, the idol worship prohibition is directly connected to the promises God makes.  I.e. Don’t worship idols, instead do my laws and you will get blessings.  And what are these blessings? First and foremost it is rain.

Let me quote the relevant verses:

^“1 Do not make for yourselves gods and a statue and an upright stone do not stand up for yourselves and don’t put a covering stone in your land to prostrate upon because I am the Lord your God.²  My Sabbaths shall you keep and my Temple shall you fear, I am the Lord. ³ If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them,⁴ then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.⁵ Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely.”

Read this way, the connection between verses 1-2 and verses 3-5 is that instead of worshiping idols you should keep God’s Laws and then you will receive blessings.  Baal was the primary Canaanite deity.  He was the god of storm and fertility.  In the hilly land of Canaan there are no rivers. Agriculture is completely dependent on rain (compare Deut. 11 : 10 -11). Baal was worshiped as a fertility god, the storm brings rain which drenches that land and makes it fruitful. The rains should come and come in the right time of year so as to be useful for the grain harvest. When the people are told not to worship Baal they will naturally fear that the rains will then cease to come.  So the Torah reassures them that by keeping God’s Law, they will get the blessing of rain and so much abundance that “the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing”.

Verse 1 contains a strange list of idols.  At first reading we might suppose that the verse is simply listing various different kinds of worship all of which are forbidden.  But after a close reading we will notice the use of the word and not or.  It seems these items were worshiped together all at once.

In the ancient city of Hazor a collection of items for the worship of Baal were discovered. They are currently on display at the Israel Museum.  We find a semi-circle of smooth upright stones, the middle one is a slightly larger stone which has worshiping  hands and a crescent moon carved into it . In the center of the semi-circle is one flat stone which is unhewn.  There is also a statue of a seated Baal, its head having been severed at some later point, probably by Israelite monotheists.  Baal worship seems to have required all these elements.  The carved stones are the gods (elilim, “idols”)  from verse one.  The stone bearing the hands and moon is the upright stone.  The unhewn stone is the covering stone used for prostration and the statue is the seated Baal statue. All of these pieces were brought together to make a kind of ad hoc temple to worship Baal. Thus the Torah is listing the specific elements of Baal worship and telling the people not to worship Baal and instead promising fertility in the land based of adherence to God’s Laws.

The Massorah disconnects the prohibition of idolatry from the promises of agricultural success perhaps because idolatry was no longer such a threat.  In the absence of current idolatrous practice, it was better to simply emphasize the success that will come from Torah observance, without offering it as an alternative to a no longer existing practice.

-ND