=3. The fascination= of this splendid idolatry had its influence upon the people who had spent their early lives in the monotony of the desert and of a worship which was devoid of images or of anything which could impress itself upon the sight, except the distant and inaccessible pillar of fire and cloud or the rarely seen and approachless Ark, with a few other objects of which many had only occasionally heard. But in the land of the Canaanites and of their own tribes they met the symbols of the worship of Baal and of Ashtoreth upon almost every high hill and in every beautiful grove; they saw their sacred sculptures frequently and their ornamented temples, some remains of which are found upon the mountains of Lebanon at the present day. And those who could not see them were daily entertained with vivid descriptions of the altars and the gold and silver ornaments associated with the worship of the moon as Ashtoreth and of the sun as Baal. =4. Baal was the chief god= of Canaan, whose worship was manifold and spread through the Canaanitish tribes under varied names, which, though differing in form, always suggested the same cruel or obscene worship. Hence the term in Scripture Baalim,[77] the plural of Baal. Thus there was the Baal-thammuz, Ezek. 8:14; Baal-moloch (the fire Baal), 2 Kin. 23:10; Baal-zebub, 2 Kin. 1:2, presiding over that decomposition which gave rise to new life, for zebub, “flies,” symbolized that life; hence the Jewish form in the time of Christ of Beelzebub as a burlesque upon the word and worship, since zebul (the Greek in the New Testament) was a sarcasm intended to mean _dung_, and Satan was thus contemptuously called lord of the dung-heap or Beelzebul. A change of place also changed the form of the name――Baal-hermon, Baal-hazor, Baal-meon, etc. =5. The worship of Baal= and of Ashtoreth was attended by great cruelty and debauchery. These features were stamped upon all the ceremonies of their worship and the precepts of their religion. No other people ever rivalled them in the mixture of bloodshed and debauchery.[78] Every influence for good seemed to have been banished from their religion. Their most frightful worship was that of Baal-moloch, referred to above. In this children were burned alive by their parents; and this practice in honor of Baal was carried by the Phœnicians even to Carthage, where it became an institution of the State. =6. It was to avoid the contamination= of these various idolatries that Moses commanded the extermination of the Canaanites, and it was due to the fact that they permitted the Canaanites to reside among them that the Israelites soon fell into their ways of worship, and in after years they were led in some degree to adopt even the rites of the bloody Moloch. PERIOD IV. THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES. ABOUT B. C. 1402‒1060 (USSHER), BUT FROM HISTORY APPARENTLY OVER 400 YEARS.