Canaanite Gods

I recently ran across this quote: "Men shape their gods, and then their gods shape them." Man cannot shape the true God…He is what He is and none can change Him. But man can shape false gods and idols that are fantasies out of man's own imagination.

Remember this quote as we take a brief look at the gods of the Canaanites, of which El, Baal, Anath, Astarte, Asherah, and Mot are just a few. These are gods of their own devising; gods they chose over the one true God who was known even in that time but whom they chose to reject.

The warning to us is that men do take on the characteristics of the God that they worship; for worship is an intimate relationship. Worship, whether of God or an idol, is where we give the biggest part of our time and effort. This is why we are to be known by our fruit (our character); fruit is a result of worship. If Jesus is our Lord, for example, then our fruit should display love, joy and peace with one another. If the fruit we display leans towards anger, lust and violence, then Jesus is not our Lord; there is an idol in our lives instead.

Therefore, the gods of the Canaanites, the idols that they worshiped, that they depended upon for their very lives, are a very telling sign of how the Canaanites themselves lived and why God eventually seeks to destroy them.

El is the Hebrew word for "god" and is used in the Old Testament for the God that we know, as well as for pagan idols or gods. In the Old Testament Hebrew, for example, El-e-lo-he-Israel in Genesis 33:20 means "the God of Israel."  El Elyon means "the most high God" (Genesis 14:18), El Shaddai means "God Almighty" (Genesis 17:1), and so forth.

But in the Canaanite religion El was the name of their most important god who was a murderer of his own family members and a terror to all. He symbolized uncontrolled lust. Asherah, his wife, was also a sexual consort to his son, Baal; the Canaanites called her "holy." Baal was considered the god of rain and storm and fertility; he had an incestuous relationship with his sister, Anath, who was a goddess of sex and war. Baal was called "the Lord of Heaven." Mot was the god of death and sterility. Astarte was as evil as Anath and Asherah. Such was the evil of the gods of the Canaanites.

The spirit of anti-christ was in these idols; a spirit of rebellion against God. The depraved characteristics attributed to these false gods became the depraved characteristics of the Canaanites. Their cultic practices were barbaric and thoroughly licentious: incest and sexual perversions of all sorts, sacred prostitutions, sacrifice of children, snake worship, violence, lust….as their gods were so the Canaanites became. Such vile practices produced such moral and religious degeneracy in the Canaanite culture and community, that the earth was said to "vomit out its inhabitants" (Leviticus 18:25) and God eventually ordered the Israelites to "utterly destroy" them.

As unpleasant as it is to even write of these things, how grievous were these things to God who commanded his people to "be separate" from the Canaanites, and stay clear of anything even bearing a resemblance of these horrific things done by them. The chosen people of God (then and now) represent God on earth. He would not allow the representation of His character and those called by His Name to be linked to anything such as this.

And in the midst of this land of cultic practices, we find Abram building an altar to worship the One True God. Abram was certainly aware of the practices of those who worshiped other than God. But his concern was only with the God he was now choosing to follow; who had called him out of the midst of idol-worshippers, to be separated unto God.

God had promised never to destroy the entire earth by flood, no matter how vile its inhabitants become; but He will not let evil prevail forever.

Abram's altar was the first sign that change was coming to that land.