Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

by John H. Walton

In the polytheistic religions of the ancient world it was not considered obligatory for individuals to worship the state gods. It might be to their advantage and coincide with their self-interests to do so, but the state god would hardly be offended by their worship of their local or ancestral deities. This observation brings considerable clarity to the centuries-long struggle of the Israelites to understand that Yahweh’s status as state God excluded the worship of local gods, nature gods, or ancestral gods. Their native mentality would have seen no conflict. They could willingly acknowledge Yahweh as the national God and as the supreme God, but such conclusions would not require sole worship of Yahweh. State religion was an entirely different issue than family religion. The uniqueness of Israel is that here we can see an attempt to merge those two horizons. Every indication is that they were consistently syncretistic throughout the monarchy period,d though the prophets had high hopes that the people would repent of their syncretism and adopt covenant faithfulness to Yahweh wholeheartedly.