YHWH and Ba'al

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On the eve of the traditional date of the birth of a young boy named Yeshua, let's turn to his forefather, David. I'm sure some of you are aware that some of Saul's house had baal names, including his successor to the throne, Ishbaal (censored as Ish-bosheth in Samuel), and Jonathan's son, Meribaal (Mephi-bosheth in Samuel).But Saul's line is not alone in the bible, Baal names occur even in the line of David.

Here's 2nd Samuel 5:16, a segment of a list of the names of children born to David in Jerusalem:
>Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet

At first glance we can find no trace, not even a hint of ba'al in this list, unlike the quite suspicious bosheth censors (as it means shame). El names are already known to be common in the bible. However once again chronicles produces hidden gems. Here is the same list from 1st Chronicles 14:7:
>Elishama, Beeliada, and Eliphelet

The author of Samuel's censor is revealed. There are some who would argue that there is no guarantee that these names are specifically referencing Ba'al Hadad. Ba'al, although often used as shorthand for Hadad, could be used to for several other gods as it simply is the title lord, it could perhaps even be refering to Ba'al YHWH. However this fails to account for why these names would need to be censored later.

Though in a way I think this criticism is exactly right: these names could be refering Yahweh as Ba'al, but not Ba'al Yahweh. There's a rather curious name of a warrior who joined David at Ziklag in 1st Chronicles 12:6- Bealiah, which translates to Ba'al is Yah. This could support the theory that Ba'al was used as a title for Yahweh, or it could be a proclamation that Yahweh IS Ba'al. This would follow what has been know for a long time, which is that YHWH's cult was quite heavily synchronized with Ba'al's, from the residence of Mount Zaphon, being refered to as the "cloud rider" to the slaying of Leviathan. Cont.