When my wife and I named our children, we thought long and hard about each name, and held long discussions over our options. Do we choose a popular name, or a name from an older generation? Should we name this child after a family member? A close friend? A famous person from history? Will a cute name for a child serve them later as an adult?

We considered names found in the Bible. As Christians, it felt important to reflect our faith through names for our children. Not every believer feels this way, but that stood out to us. All to say, we spent a lot of time on the names for each of our children. Every parent I know does the same.

Which is why the name Baal jumped out when I read the genealogy in 1 Chronicles 5 (see verse 5). I usually skim through the lists of names in the Bible (the begats – those dusty passages filled with odd names no one chooses for a child anymore).

I paused when I realized Baal was a local deity. Reaiah (the list names him as the father) and his wife choose to name their firstborn son after a god they were forbidden to worship.

These parents lived in peace and prosperity, enjoying milk and honey poured out from the Lord’s hand. Then they went and named their child after the devil.

The generation that followed reaped the harvest for such blatant disregard for the Lord; They were unfaithful to the God of their ancestors and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God destroyed before them. So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of the king of Assyria…who took them into exile (I Chronicles 5:25-26).

The naming of children reveals a great deal about a society. Here it shows Israel’s collapse, evidenced by no longer honoring the Lord, but rather naming their precious children after a cancerous distortion.

Sobering thoughts from a dusty list of old names.

1 Chronicles 5 in week eighteen in reading the Bible cover to cover

Photo by Ben Wicks