Lookahead: Idol worship was integrated in with every facet of ancient entertainment: “you couldn’t participate in any feasts, celebrations, holidays, sporting events, etc. without worshiping false deities…” Even the emperor thought he was a god and was worshiped as such.  In sum, this does give us a glimpse into how the heathens worshiped.  We also have learned a lot about Egyptian worship from the Torah.  And all this gives us an idea of the possible ancient context from which culture-based worship of the One, True, Living YHVH emerged. The polytheistic cultures constantly attempted to placate their unpredictable, prickly gods with their worship and offerings.  I believe that this was not the type of worship that YHVH wanted. 

To better understand the context within which the children of Israel worshipped God back in the day, we might try to find the answer to:  how did their heathen contemporaries worship?  A first premise in answering this question would be to assume that those who weren’t trying to worship God…were trying to worship satan, even if they had no clue what they were doing. 

As my last post referenced, “hasatan” was drop-kicked down to the earthly realms when iniquity (pride) was found in him.  With pride in excessive operation, the devil probably defined worship as–everyone automatically doing blind obeisance to him. Also, his primary motivation would have had nothing to do with cultivating a relationship with humans.  Today, I heard one Singapore TV preacher say something along the lines of… “satan hates human beings because they were made in God’s image.”  Therefore, he is not pursuing relational fellowship.  And in terms of demonstrating that hatred (the preacher went on to imply), “he’s aiming higher. The devil wasn’t after Adam and Eve.  He was after God and His Throne of Righteousness.  (Psalms 89:14, ‘Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne;’ Psalm 45:6, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.’) If he could compromise God’s righteousness, the throne would cease to be eternal. Basically, he wanted to go higher by dragging God down to his level. The ultimate reason for this behavior is so that everybody everywhere would obey him.”  The devil may consider himself to be in a neck ‘n neck competition, but he is so vastly out-matched and out-distanced that the mere thought of this is outright ridiculous.  To my point, where the devil was concerned, worship was a means to an end–to show God that he was the preferred object of all worship, and in so doing, exact a modicum of revenge. 

Additionally, I am of the opinion that ancient fake gods and false idols are actually demonic entities, if the people are not otherwise driven to worship them due to demonic oppression.  So when the “ites” (Amorites, Perizzites, Midianites, Jebusites, etc., etc.) and other contemporaneous people groups were living in Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt, it was the same scenario.  Worship was considered to be unquestioned obeisance which knowingly or unknowingly was an angry fist-shake at God.  

And basically their worship attempts = petitioning fake gods for good crops or long overdue rain or healthy offspring or food on the table, i.e., the ability to have a good life without pain and destruction. Talk about a lesson in futility!  As Jesus said, “You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation (the good life) is from the Jews (therefore, God).” John 4:22  Bottom line, to an “ite,” worship = “trying to do what you think a fake god is telling you to do, to mitigate risk and/or avoid pain.”  

Hence, heathen worship was fear-based in nature; but the fear level was probably proportional to popular opinion about how friendly the fake god was.  Additionally, most of the gods were considered to be more fallible and far more immoral than human beings, so it would have been difficult to reverence/respect them.  

AI Overview to “how did Mesopotamians worship?” (where “Mesopotamia” was taken to be a blanket term from ~3000 to 150 B.C., lumping in Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, etc.): 

• Priests and Rituals: Priests played a crucial role in mediating between the gods and humans, performing rituals, offering prayers, and interpreting omens. 
• Personal Shrines: Individuals also had personal shrines within their homes where they would pray to their chosen deities and offer small gifts. 
• Myths and Stories: Mesopotamian religious beliefs were shaped by myths and stories, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, which explained the creation of the world and the role of the gods. 
• Offerings and Sacrifices: Offerings of food, drink, and other valuable items were made to the gods, along with animal sacrifices. 
• Festivals: Religious festivals, such as the New Year festival in Babylon, were celebrated with processions, music, and feasting. 
• Demons and Evil Spirits: Mesopotamians also believed in demons and evil spirits, which they sought to ward off through rituals and incantations. 
• Astronomy and Astrology: Mesopotamians were skilled astronomers and astrologers, who studied the movements of the stars and planets, believing that they could influence human affairs. 

This is just one (consolidated) opinion which confirms some of my background knowledge, however, I should confess that I haven’t run it to ground yet.  Nevertheless, if we choose to lend some credence to it, it appears that the Mesopotamian peoples did believe in demons or evil spirits.  They didn’t realize that their fake gods were higher echelon demons.  In addition, it sounds like they petitioned their gods through intermediaries, but could also go direct. 

To provide a couple of examples, here are the synopses of an ancient Mesopotamian creation account, followed by a  flood account:  

As AI referenced previously, there is a creation myth called the Enuma Elish that was written by the Babylonians in ~1300 B.C.  A synopsis of the account makes for some entertaining reading:   (Note:  Ea and Tiamat are dualing male and female resp. dieties, and Kingu is Tiamat’s husband.) “At this point, the major character of the story, Marduk the son of Ea, emerges.  He is charged with the responsibility of leading and defending those marked for execution by Tiamat, a challenge that he accepts with the qualification that if he is successful, the gods will make him their head…Marduk swiftly eliminates Tiamat and captures Kingu and the rest of the entourage.  Marduk then splits Tiamat in two, making heaven from one half of her cadaver, and the earth from the other half…Further reflection and an outburst of protest by the employed gods lead Marduk to relieve the gods of…manual work by a second creation, the creation of humankind.  He does this by having Kingu killed and using his blood to create humankind…”¹

 hmmmm…busts through the negative stop on the normality meter, as far as I’m concerned.  

Now here’s the flood account and an excerpt from the Gilgamesh Epic which is a poem initially written in ancient Sumer in ~2100 B.C.  This poem described a hero named Utnapishtim who was told by the false gods that he needed to build a boat because they were going to destroy humankind (reason unknown).  

“Furthermore, the dimensions of the ship built by the heroes are strange: ‘equal shall be her width and her length’–that is cubic as later lines in the epic confirm.  Along with his family and animals, the hero takes aboard professional sailors.  It is human skill and ingenuity that will keep this ship afloat.  In addition, Utnapishtim takes aboard copious amounts of silver and gold, a little nest egg with which to start over if indeed he ever emerges from this nightmare alive.”² 

The storm lasts seven days and seven nights.  Only Utnapishtim and his wife survive (no animals either, I guess) and the fake gods realize that they failed to obliterate all humanity.  So they bestow immortality on the two survivors. 

On the other hand, in the Biblical Account which was written in 500 B.C.:  “To be more precise, Noah is told to build not a boat, but an ark (6:14), more a chest than a ship.  Its dimensions (approximately 450 ft. x 75 ft. x 45 ft.), far from being nonsensical, are quite worthy of a seagoing vessel.  No sailors accompany Noah aboard, nor is there reference to any type of navigational equipment…No material possessions are to be packed either.”³

Millenia later we have learned that rather than a 200 foot cubic boat that was not seaworthy enough for everyone to survive after seven days…God designed a totally water-tight ark that could rotate 90 degrees on any axis without tipping over or sinking and which dimensionally is the template for huge cruise ships today.  At the two week point when Utnapishtim would have been disembarking, God was probably beginning to toss flood waters and 240 foot waves (tsunami is 100 feet) around to create mountains and oceans and even shift tectonic plates around in the creation of (sub)continents including North America which was formerly part of a single, huge land mass. (Source: The Ark and The Darkness Video)

So we can see that the heathens’ false deities weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, in addition to being very naughty–not someone you would want to depend on or exemplify, given the alternative. 

And, as time went on, the deities became more decadent, and pervasive in the culture.  I caught a TBN documentary on the “This Month in Christian History Show” that talked about Christian persecution in second century Rome.  It also captured the religious impact on the era.  By that time, fake religion had completely invaded social and political life.  Idol worship was integrated in with every facet of ancient entertainment: “you couldn’t participate in any feasts, celebrations, holidays, sporting events, etc. without worshiping false deities…” Even the emperor thought he was a god and was worshiped as such.    

In sum, this does give us a glimpse into how the heathens worshiped.  We also have learned a lot about Egyptian worship from the Torah.  And all this gives us an idea of the possible ancient context from which culture-based worship of the One, True, Living YHVH emerged.  

The polytheistic cultures constantly attempted to placate their unpredictable, prickly gods with their worship and offerings.  I believe that this was not the type of worship that YHVH wanted.  He spent a good deal of time lavishing grace on the Israelites, and, once their trust level was built up, He received the type of worship He was after.  The Sons of Israel began to acknowledge and appreciate that grace.  They also began to obey and seek Him and demonstrate their respect and awe–not fear.  Moses’ trust level wasn’t there yet…but David’s was. 🙂 

In the next post, we are going to explore the role that fear plays in worship–and the difference between between awe and fear. 

We are also going to ask/answer the question:  how did the Jews typically worship during the time period of Jesus’ earthwalk?  And how, in all His Jewishness, did Jesus worship?  

++++++++++++

¹Victor P. Hamilton, Handbook on the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005), 36

²Ibid., 67

³Ibid., 68