The Semitic word baal, meaning owner or master, was also used in ancient religions for lord or god, and it is still defined as a Canaanite or Phoenician deity.

Among the greatest of the Semitic peoples’ deities were Baal and Astarte-both symbols of fertility.

Numbers 25:3

So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel.

2 Chronicles 24:7

For the sons of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had broken into the house of God, and had also presented all the dedicated things of the house of the Lordto the Baals.

From Canaan, worship of Baal spread to Egypt by the Middle Kingdom and throughout the Mediterranean following the waves of Phoenician colonization in the early 1st millennium

1 Samuel 12:10

Then they cried out to the Lord, and said, ‘We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord and served the Baals and Ashtoreths; but now deliver us from the hand of our enemies, and we will serve You.’

Deuteronomy 4:3

Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor; for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal of Peor.

Judges 2:13

They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

In the First Book of Kings. Many scholars believe that this describes Jezebel’s attempt to introduce the worship of the Baʿal of Tyre, Melqart, to the Israeli capital Samaria in the 9th century BCE

Hosea 11:2

As they called them, So they went from them; They sacrificed to the Baals, And burned incense to carved images.