125أَتَدعونَ بَعلًا وَتَذَرونَ أَحسَنَ الخالِقينَAli Unal“Will you continue to invoke Ba‘l1 (as deity), and forsake the Creator Who creates everything in the best and most appropriate form and has the ultimate rank of creativity –“Ba’l” literally means master, lord, or chief. The ancient Semitic peoples called one of their deities by this name and worshipped him together with “his wife,” Ashtaroth. During the period of the Judges, many among the Children of Israel began to worship them: “And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed other deities from among the deities of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths” (Judges, 2: 12–13). This deviance re-appeared after the death of the Prophet Solomon, upon him be peace. The Prophet Ilyās, upon him be peace, who is also mentioned in the Qur’ān(6: 85) and thought to be the Biblical Elijah, grew up at the same time, during the reign of King Ahab, in Israel, who was notorious for his injustices, (1 Kings, 17–21) and King Jehoram, in Judah (2 Chronicles, 21). He struggled against this deviance, immoralities, and injustices.