The Baal Cycle
Ancient Near East
Baal organizes for his dwelling Hadd 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.
Date: 1500 - 1300 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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.
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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Notes and 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 ..."
Pitkänen, Pekka
A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual, and Colonialism
(p. 109) Routledge, 2018
* 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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