Gary Pollard
The king of Assyria took the Israelites out of Samaria and brought in other people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. They took over Samaria and lived in the cities around it. When these people began to live in Samaria, they did not honor the LORD, so the LORD sent lions to attack them. The lions killed some of them. Some people said to the king of Assyria, “The people who you took away and put in the cities of Samaria don’t know the law of the god of that country. So that god sent lions to attack them. The lions killed them because they don’t know the law of the god of that country.”
So the king of Assyria gave this command: “You took some priests from Samaria. Send one of them who I captured back to Samaria. Let that priest go and live there. Then he can teach the people the law of the god of that country.” So one of the priests who the Assyrians had carried away from Samaria came to live in Bethel. He taught the people how they should honor the LORD. But all those people made gods of their own. They put them in the temples at the high places that the people of Samaria had made. They did this wherever they lived.
The people of Babylon made the false god Succoth Benoth.1 The people of Cuthah made the false god Nergal2. The people of Hamath made the false god Ashima.3 The people of Avva made the false gods Nibhaz and Tartak4. The people from Sepharvaim also burned their children in the fire to honor their false gods, Adrammelech and Anammelech5. But they also worshiped the LORD. They chose priests for the high places from among the people. These priests made sacrifices for the people in the temples at those places of worship. They were afraid6 of the LORD but also served their own gods, just as they did in their own countries.
Even today, they live the same way they did in the past. They don’t honor the LORD. They don’t obey the rules and commands of the Israelites. They don’t obey the law or the commands that the LORD gave to the children of Jacob. The LORD made an agreement with the Israelites. He commanded them, “You must not honor other gods. You must not worship them or serve them or offer sacrifices to them. But you must follow the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt. He used his great power to save you. You must worship him and make sacrifices to him. You must obey the rules, laws, teachings, and commands that he wrote for you. You must obey these things all the time. You must not be afraid of other gods. You must not forget the agreement that I made with you. You must not be afraid of other gods. No, you must be afraid only of the LORD your God. Then he will save you from all your enemies.”
But the Israelites did not listen. They kept on doing the same things they did before. So now those other nations were afraid of the LORD, but they also served their own idols. Their children and grandchildren did the same thing their ancestors did. They still do these things to this day.7
1 Sarpanitu, “the shining one,” was the goddess of fertility associated with the planet Venus and may have been analogous to Ishtar. She was worshiped as “mother goddess and chief consort of Marduk” (britishmuseum.org, Sarpanit). II Kgs calls Succoth Benoth a god, not a goddess. Either this was a jab (it could mean tents of daughters), a corruption over time of the original spelling, or actually a reference to Marduk/Enlil (ISBE: Sakut(h)ban’wat(h)), who was Jupiter.
2 Mars
3 Much uncertainty with this one. It could be related to the Hb word meaning “guilt” but that makes little sense to me. If any false deity in this list deserves to be ridiculed, why not one of the supreme Babylonian gods like Nergal? Ashima/Ashimath was associated with Σειμιος, from “sign”. This god was associated with Tammuz, which helps us potentially identify who it is. According to ISBE, Tammuz was the same as Adhon of the Phoenicians (Syr. Adon), the god of vegetation, winter, life and death cycles. Tammuz was said to be the consort of Ishtar (Venus) and Adonis (the Greek version) of Aphrodite (Venus). Therefore, Tammuz/Ashima/Adon is likely Mars. At Baalbek, Seimos was worshipped with an ornate staff or pole, which was typical of Mars-figure worship all over the world.
4 The name Nibhaz appears to mean “sacrificial altar” and may not lend itself toward a singular meaning. Tartak has several potential meanings, but one possibility seems to fit this context best: Tarthakh was the Persian deity worshiped as the Hero of Darkness/Intense Darkness. The archetypal similarities between Tarthakh and other Mars figures are too many to be coincidence. Considering that many of the false gods in this list appear to be Mars figures, we could safely identify Tartak as the Avvite equivalent of Nergal-Mars. Perhaps Nibhaz was the altar used to sacrifice to this false god and — possibly related to the world pillar/mountain archetype — was itself deified by the Avvites.
5 This pair may be related to Nibhaz-Tartak and Milcom-Ashtoreth and Baal-Asherah. The child sacrifice element, the melech (king) ending, and one version’s association with the underworld (Malik) are consistent with this identification. Anammelech means Anu is king, and may suggest another interpretation. The Akkadian Anu (Gk. Ouranos) was considered “father of the gods” and has been traditionally associated with just the sky. But as Cardona has pointed out (I generally disagree with his views, but his work is meticulous and occasionally useful), “But that An, in his Akkadian version of Anu, was a radiating body in the sky is ascertained not only…by the cuneiform sign which designates him, the stylized picture of a star — * — but also by the allusion to the “terror of his splendour” radiating “in the midst of heaven” (Cardona, D. 2006. God star. Trafford Publishing. pp. 167-168). He makes a compelling case for Anu’s identification with Saturn. Adrammelech is likely Jupiter (via Adad, the thunderbolt-wielding storm god).
6 Hb yr, terror, fear, awesome, dread
7 Israel named a month in two calendars after Tammuz-Mars.
