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Jeremiah 3 gives Israel's God Baal's power to send rain from the Baal Cycle, making drought a consequence of the people's broken loyalty to him.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.4 V:6
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
A court, like Athirat's sons. And Lady Athirat of the Sea responds: You are great, El, so very wise; The gray hair of your beard instructs you Your soft beard down to your chest. So now may Baal enrich with his rain May he enrich with abundant water in a downpour. And may he give his voice in the clouds May he flash lightning to the earth. Is it a cedar house that he would complete Or a brick house that he would construct Let it be told to Mightiest Baal: Invite a caravan into your house, commodities amid your palace. The mountains will bring you ample silver, the hills, the finest gold; the top-tier ore will be brought to you. So build a house of silver and gold, a house of pure stones, of lapis lazuli.
Jeremiah 3:3
Hebrew Bible
1 “If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife, he may not take her back again. Doing that would utterly defile the land. But you, Israel, have given yourself as a prostitute to many gods. So what makes you think you can return to me?” says the Lord. 2 “Look up at the hilltops and consider this. Where have you not been ravished? You waited for those gods like a thief lying in wait in the wilderness. You defiled the land by your wicked prostitution to other gods. 3 That is why the rains have been withheld and the spring rains have not come. Yet in spite of this you are obstinate as a prostitute. You refuse to be ashamed of what you have done.
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Notes and References
“... The mountainous temple home from which Baal utters his voice and rains
lavishly upon the earth (KTU 1.4 V-VII) appears not only in descriptions of
Yahweh roaring from Zion (Joel 3:16; Amos 1:2) or giving forth rains (Isa.
30:19; Jer. 3:3; 5:24; 10:13; 14:4; 51:16; Amos 4:7) but also in postexilic
discussions of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. The tradition of the
temple home that guarantees the life-giving rains underlies the relationship
between tithe and temple in Malachi 3:10. This passage reflects the notion
that payment of the tithe to the temple would induce Yahweh to open the
windows of heaven and pour down crop-producing rains. Similarly, Haggai
1:7-11 attributes drought and scarcity to the failure to rebuild the temple.381
Yahweh’s role as the divine source of rain appears elsewhere in postexilic
prophecy (Zech. 10:1). Joel 4 (E 3) presents various aspects of the mountain
tradition. It is the divine home (4:17 [E 3:17]), the location of Yahweh’s roar
(4:16 [E 3:16]), the site of divine battle (4:9-15 [E 3:9-15]) with heavenly
hosts (4:11-13 [E 3:11-13]; cf. 2:1-11), and the origin of the divine rains
issuing in terrestrial fertility (4:18 [E 3:18]). ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
(p. PDF 105–106) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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