What concord hath Christ with Belial? — The passage is remarkable as being the only occurrence of the name in the New Testament, all the more so because it does not appear in the Greek version of the Old. The Hebrew word signifies “vileness, worthlessness;” and the “sons of Belial” (as in Deuteronomy 13:13; 1 Samuel 2:12; 1 Samuel 25:17) were therefore the worthless and the vile. The English version, following the Vulgate, translates the phrase as though Belial were a proper name, and this has led to the current belief, as shown in Milton’s poems, that it was the name of a demon or fallen angel, the representative of impurity —
“Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd,
Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself.” — Paradise Lost, i. 490.
“Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,
The sensualest, and, after Asmodai,
The fleshliest incubus.” — Paradise Regained, ii. 204.
St. Paul’s use of the word would seem to imply that some such belief was floating among the Jews in his time. A strange legend, which possibly had a Jewish origin (it is referred to certain necromantici), is found in an obscure and forgotten book (Wierus: Pseudo-Monarchia Dæmonum), to the effect that Solomon was led by a certain woman to bow before the image of Belial, who is represented as worshipped by the Babylonians. Of that worship there is no trace in history; and Milton seems to have recognised this —
“To him no temple stood
Nor altar smoked.”
But if the name had gathered these associations round it, we can understand St. Paul’s using it as representing, or, as it were, personifying, the whole system of impure cultus that prevailed in the worship of Aphrodite at Corinth.
With an infidel. — So many later associations have gathered round the word, that it may be well to remind the reader that it does not mean, as commonly with us, one who has rejected the faith, but simply one who has not as yet received it.