Judges 2:13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They served Baal and Ashtaroth By Baal or lord here, it is probable, we are to understand the sun, and by Ashtaroth, the same, it seems, with Astarte, the moon, worshipped in different countries under the names Juno and Venus. So that they had he-gods and she-gods, and gods of all kinds, as many as a luxuriant fancy pleased to make and multiply them. It may not be improper to observe here, that “the reason why the Israelites so often lapsed into idolatry, may easily be deduced from the common notion of tutelary deities, which they had imbibed during their residence in Egypt, which was the fruitful parent of science and idolatry. One generally-received consequence of this opinion was, that the peculiar or tutelary deity of any country could not be neglected, even by the conquerors of that country, without impiety, and that their impiety would certainly meet with punishment from the deity whom they thus neglected. The Israelites, therefore, unwilling to expose themselves to the resentment which the tutelary deity was supposed to take on those who, inhabiting his land, yet slighted his worship; unwilling likewise to leave their paternal God, they incorporated the worship of both; and served not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but likewise the Baalim, or local tutelary deities of the countries wherein they were settled. In process of time this weakness increased to such a degree, that the rights of the tutelary deity of the country were acknowledged to be superior to those of the Gentilitial God of the conquerors. This might arise from the common opinion, that the favours of the local deity were particularly attached and confined to one certain spot; or from an apprehension of the strength of the inhabitants among whom they were settled, who would not have endured to have their god slighted, without vindicating his honour, and endeavouring to extirpate the offenders. This piece of complaisance and condescension the Israelites seem to have been guilty of, when they are said to have forsaken the Lord God of their fathers, and to have followed other gods, the gods of the people that were round about them. Their defection from the God of Israel did not, however, consist in rejecting him as a false god, or in renouncing the law of Moses as a false religion: but only in joining foreign worship and idolatrous ceremonies to the ritual of the true God.” Div. Leg., vol. 4. p. 44.