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KTU

Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit

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Baal Cycle

KTU 1.4 VI

And Kothar-wa-Hasis responds:
You will revert, Baal, to my suggestion.
Kothar-wa-Hasis inquires again:
Please hear, Mightiest Baal:
Shall I not fit a window in the house
A vent in the midst of the palace?
And Mightiest Baal retorts:
You shall not install a window in the house⁠
A vent in the midst of the palace.
So that Pidray, Daughter of Light
Tallay, Daughter of Showers
The Beloved of El, Yamm, do not ... And spat ...
[…] insulted me and spat
And Kothar-wa-Hasis replies:
You will return, Baal, to my suggestion.
Swiftly, he builds his house
Quickly, he raises his palace.
He sends to Lebanon for its timber
To Siryon for its prime cedar.
Indeed to Lebanon for its timber
To Siryon for its choice cedar.
A fire is kindled in the house
A flame within the palace.
Behold! For one day, then two Fire blazes in the house
A flame within the palace.
For a third day, then a fourth
Fire burns in the house
A flame within the palace.
For a fifth day, then a sixth Fire blazes in the house
A flame within the palace.
Then, on the seventh day⁠
The fire departs the house
The flame, the palace.
The silver has transformed into plates
The gold into bricks. Mightiest Baal exults:
I have built my house of silver
My palace of gold.
Baal organizes for his dwelling
Haddu arranges for his palace.⁠
He slaughters large livestock and small:
He slaughters bulls and fatling rams
Year-old calves
Sheep in droves, and kids.
He invites his siblings into his house
His kin within his palace;
He invites the seventy sons of Athirat.⁠
He offers the gods rams
Offers the goddesses ewes.
He offers the gods bulls
Offers the goddesses cows.
He offers the gods thrones
Offers the goddesses seats.
He offers the gods jars of wine
Offers the goddesses cruets of wine.
As the gods dine, drink
A suckling of the breast is offered
With a salted knife, a cut of fatling.
They drink wine from goblets
From gold cups, the blood of trees.
[…]
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Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 1.4 VI:46 and Judges 9:5

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

In the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Baal has 70 sons of Athirat, and in Judges, Jerubbaal has 70 sons. The number likely reflects an ancient Near Eastern tradition that symbolized a full household, showing how the Hebrew Bible follows these traditions.

Passages

KTU 1.4 VI:46

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Baal organizes for his dwelling Haddu arranges for his palace. He slaughters large livestock and small: He slaughters bulls and fatling rams Year-old calves Sheep in droves, and kids. He invites his siblings into his house His kin within his palace; He invites the seventy sons of Athirat. He offers the gods rams Offers the goddesses ewes. He offers the gods bulls Offers the goddesses cows. He offers the gods thrones Offers the goddesses seats.
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Judges 9:5

Hebrew Bible
4 They paid him 70 silver shekels out of the temple of Baal Berith. Abimelech then used the silver to hire some lawless, dangerous men as his followers. 5 He went to his father’s home in Ophrah and murdered his half brothers, the 70 legitimate sons of Jerub Baal, on one stone. Only Jotham, Jerub Baal’s youngest son, escaped, because he hid. 6 All the leaders of Shechem and Beth Millo assembled and then went and made Abimelech king by the oak near the pillar in Shechem.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Judges

References

"... Moses will be able to choose seventy elders who will assist him. Yahweh will take of the spirit that is on Moses – that is undoubtedly the spirit of Yahweh – and put it on these elders so as to share in carrying the burden of the people. The number seventy is well attested in the ancient Near East and should in many cases be considered symbolic. It can be used of a family group, including the “seventy sons of Athirat” in the Ugaritic pantheon, seventy “brothers” of Barrakab king of Yaudi (located in northern Syria) in the eighth century BCE who were murdered, the seventy descendants of Jacob who went to Egypt (Genesis 46:7; Exodus 1:5), of Jerubbaal and his seventy sons (Judges 9:5), and on other occasions (Judges 1:7; 2 Kings 10:6). The leading members of Emar (late second millennium BCE) are referred to as “the seventy sons of Emar”. The number seventy, if not the institution of elders described here, also survived in the seventy-member Sanhedrin, which was the supreme political, religious and legal body at the time of Jesus ..."
Pekka Pitkänen, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual, and Colonialism, Routledge Studies in the Biblical World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 109.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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KTU 1.4 VI:46 and Judges 9:5

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