The altar raised by Gideon was dedicated to Yahveh-shalom, ‘the Yahveh of Peace,’ and it was still standing at Ophrah when the narrative relating to it was written.[337] Its name shows that it could hardly have been built before Gideon had returned in peace from the Midianitish war. There was much that had first to be done. Gideon’s first task was to destroy the symbol of Asherah and the altar of Baal. The revelation made to him had been made in the name of Yahveh, and it was in the name of Yahveh alone that he was about to lead his countrymen to victory. It is true that between Yahveh and Baal the Israelite villager of the day saw but little difference. Yahveh was addressed as Baal or ‘Lord,’[338] and the local altars that were dedicated to Him in most instances did but take the place of the older altars of a Canaanitish Baal. Mixture between Israelites and Canaanites, moreover, had brought with it a mixture in religion. Along with the title, Yahveh had assumed the attributes of a Baal, at all events among the mass of the people. Joash and the villagers, who demanded that Gideon should be put to death for destroying the altar of Baal, doubtless thought that they were zealous for the God of Israel. It was the symbol of Asherah only which was the token of a foreign cult. Perhaps the answer made by Joash to the charge against his son has been coloured by the theology of the later historian. It breathes rather the spirit of an age when the antagonism between Yahveh and Baal had become acute than that of one who was himself a worshipper of Baal and Asherah, and whose son in the hour of victory made an idol out of the enemy’s spoil. The Baal worshipped by the villagers of Abi-ezer was regarded as Yahveh himself, and hence it was that the offence committed by Gideon against him was an offence committed against the national God, and therefore punishable with death. To set him up as another god in opposition to the God of Israel carries us down to the age of Elijah, when the subjects of Ahab were called upon to choose between the Yahveh who had led them out of Egypt and the Phœnician Baal. It belongs to the same period as the etymological play on the name of Jerubbaal.