For I will remove the names of the Baal idols from your lips, so that you will never again utter their names!”

But the more I summoned them, the farther they departed from me. They sacrificed to the Baal idols and burned incense to images.

When Ephraim spoke, there was terror; he was exalted in Israel, but he became guilty by worshiping Baal and died.

So they took a bull, as he had suggested, and prepared it. They invoked the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “Baal, answer us.” But there was no sound and no answer. They jumped around on the altar they had made.

All the people of the land went and demolished the temple of Baal. They smashed its altars and idols to bits. They killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altar. Jehoiada the priest then placed guards at the Lord’s temple.

They have built places here for worship of the god Baal so that they could sacrifice their children as burnt offerings to him in the fire. Such sacrifices are something I never commanded them to make! They are something I never told them to do! Indeed, such a thing never even entered my mind!

The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight. They forgot the Lord their God and worshiped the Baals and the Asherahs.

That very day Gideon’s father named him Jerub-Baal, because he had said, “Let Baal fight with him, for it was his altar that was pulled down.”

After Gideon died, the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. They made Baal-Berith their god.

The Israelites cried out for help to the Lord: “We have sinned against you. We abandoned our God and worshiped the Baals.”

Elijah replied, “I have not brought disaster on Israel. But you and your father’s dynasty have, by abandoning the Lord’s commandments and following the Baals.

Elijah said to them: “I am the only prophet of the Lord who is left, but there are 450 prophets of Baal.

I still have left in Israel seven thousand followers who have not bowed their knees to Baal or kissed the images of him.”

He worshiped and bowed down to Baal, angering the Lord God of Israel just as his father had done.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord, but not to the same degree as his father and mother. He did remove the sacred pillar of Baal that his father had made.

Jehu assembled all the people and said to them, “Ahab worshiped Baal a little; Jehu will worship him with great devotion.

The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he followed in his ancestor David’s footsteps at the beginning of his reign. He did not seek the Baals,

(Wicked Athaliah and her sons had broken into God’s temple and used all the holy items of the Lord’s temple in their worship of the Baals.)

“How can you say, ‘I have not made myself unclean. I have not paid allegiance to the gods called Baal.’ Just look at the way you have behaved in the Valley of Hinnom! Think about the things you have done there! You are like a flighty, young female camel that rushes here and there, crisscrossing its path.

You steal. You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to other gods whom you have not previously known.