I will break the bar of Damascus, And cut off the inhabitant from the valley of Aven, And him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden; And the people of Syria shall go into captivity to Kir," says Yahweh.
Midway, on its ,” was Baalbek, or Heliopolis, where the Egyptian worship is said to have been brought of old times from their “city of the sun .” Baalbek, as the ruins still attest, was full of the worship of the sun. But the whole of that beautiful range, “a magnificent vista” , it has been said, “carpeted with verdure and beauty” , “a gem lying deep in its valley of mountains,” was a citadel of idolatry. The name Baal-Hermon connects Mount Hermon itself, the snow-capped height which so towers over its southeast extremity, with the worship of Baal or the sun, and that, from the time of the Judges Judges 3:3. The name Baal-gad connects “the valley of Lebanon,” that is, most probably the south end of the great valley, with the same worship, anterior to Joshua Joshua 11:17; Joshua 12:7; Joshua 13:5.