‘ And they forsook Yahweh, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.'
The repetitiveness is deliberate so that the words will be burned into the hearer's hearts. We must not understand by ‘forsook' that they ceased to look to Yahweh in some way as their God. They still accepted their part in the tribal covenant, at some times more firmly than others. They still recognised Him in feasts and sacrifices. But He had become One among others. To be called on but not to be followed fully. And their part in covenant obedience was overlooked. Just as among many Christians today.
“Baal and the Ashtaroth.” Baal means ‘lord, master'. He was widely worshipped and was the god of rain, storm and lightning. In the Baal myths it was through his death and being brought back to life again in a perpetual cycle, as nature died and lived again each year, that life went on and the fields were fruitful. They saw earth as caught up with the patterns of the gods, nature was but an aftermath of those patterns (This was in no sense a resurrection in the sense in which we understand the idea, it was a continual death and revival to life, a yearly cycle, as happens in nature).
Thus, by stimulating the gods, nature could be stimulated, and this could be done by ‘sympathetic magic', orgies of sex which stimulated Baal into action. So sacred prostitutes and perverted sex were at the centre of Canaanite religion. They worshipped Baal, they sacrificed to him, they did anything that would move him, but most of all they tried to manipulate him through sexual activity.
But the noun ‘baal' was applicable too to Yahweh, for He was Lord and Master (see Hosea 2:16, compare Jeremiah 31:32). Thus the dangerous practise arose of thinking of Yahweh as ‘Baali' (‘my lord') (Hosea 2:16) which could lead to all kinds of complications.
We know this because godly men could call their sons ‘Ishbaal' (1 Chronicles 9:39) and ‘Meribaal' (1 Chronicles 9:40), a practise later altered when ‘Yah' replaced ‘Baal' in names. David called one of his daughters Beeliada (1 Chronicles 14:7), possibly originally meaning ‘one who knows the lord (Baal)'. Later writers, appalled at this, changed the name ‘baal' to ‘bosheth' meaning ‘shame', thus we have Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth (Eshbaal and Mephibaal, sons of Saul).
“Ashtaroth.” The goddess of fertility, love and war (compare Ishtar, Astarte). Numerous plaques containing the figure of a naked goddess have been discovered at different sites in Palestine, many of which would represent Ashtaroth. Her worship too consisted largely in depraved sex. She was the goddess of reproduction.
When the bad years came to the Israelite farmers it was inevitable that they began to wonder whether it was because they had not paid due regard to these gods, and the temptation was thus to compromise and see what would happen if they paid due observance to Baal and Ashtaroth, and if things improved the following year, as could well happen, they then knew who was responsible. Thus did they inevitably begin to compromise their faithfulness to Yahweh. They served Baal and the Ashtaroth while keeping up a nominal obedience to Yahweh and the covenant at the central sanctuary which was, for some, far away. This was the result of not keeping separate from the Canaanites.
It reminds us that if we too are to remain faithful to God we must keep ourselves separate from anything that can lead us astray. If we find something that cools our fervour for the Lord we should do away with it, ‘drive it out'. Otherwise we may find that His anger comes on us. This is especially true of things that cause evil desire. From those we are told to ‘flee'.