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BEL

(Heb. bēl; Akk. bēlu[m])

An Akkadian common noun meaning “master,” “ruler,” “lord,” or “owner”; the cognate of West Semitic baʿl. In Akkadian the term was widely used to refer to the king or to specify various officials (e.g., bēl pīḫati, “governor”). Together with the proper name of any deity, bēlu could be used as an appellative in deferential address: e.g., bēlu Šamaš, “lord Šamaš,” or Marduk bēliya, “Marduk, my lord.” The honorific title “lord” was used independently from quite early on for one of several gods: Enlil originally, and then Marduk. In Babylonia, it became an ubiquitous title of Marduk, the patron deity of the state and of the city Babylon (cf. Enuma Elish).

In the OT Bel occurs always as a name or title for Marduk (Isa. 46:1; Jer. 50:2; 51:44). All three of the texts in which it occurs date to the middle of the 6th century b.c.e., during or immediately after the Neo-Babylonian imperial era (605-539). In Isa. 46:1, Bel is paired with Nebo, the Mesopotamian god Nabû; Marduk and Nabû were the principal deities of the Babylonian state. Isa. 46:1-2 describes them in procession together departing helplessly from Babylon into exile, probably a satirical reinterpretation of their usual ritual procession during the Babylonian New Year, or akītu-festival. Jer. 50:2b reads: “Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed.” Here the use of bēl as a name for Marduk is explicit. In Jer. 51:44 Yahweh declares: “I will punish Bel in Babylon.” It is difficult to determine whether the anti-Babylon oracles in Jer. 50-51 date to a period before or after the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus in 539. Clearly the prophet assumed that Yahweh would (or had?) rescue(d) his people from Babylon and its titular god, Marduk/Bel. Bel is encountered again later in the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon.

Numerous names in the Bible and West Semitic epigraphs are compounded with baʿl. In the Bible, however, only one name for certain is compounded with the East Semitic bēl: Belshazzar (spelled variously: Aram. bēlšaʾṣṣar in Dan. 5; bēlʾšaṣṣar in 7:1; 8:1); the Akkadian form is Bēl-šarra-uṣur, “Bel (i.e., Marduk) protect the king.” Belshazzar was crown prince and son of Nabonidus, the last king of the Babylonian Empire.

David Vanderhooft

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BEL

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)