Demonic · Infernal Court · c. 400 BCE
Baalberith
Also called Baal-Berith, Berith of Shechem · also recorded as El-berith (per Wikidata)
'Lord of the covenant', a god of Shechem — reassigned by demonologists as the notary who countersigns infernal pacts.
Narrow source base
Lord of the covenant, and a real deity of Shechem: Judges has the temple treasury of Baal-berith fund Abimelech's coup, which is the closest thing in the Hebrew Bible to an audited account of a Canaanite sanctuary. The later career is built entirely on the name. If the god is lord of the covenant then he must be the one who handles agreements, so early-modern demonology makes him the notary of hell who countersigns pacts — an office invented by translating an epithet and then taking the translation literally. The corpus keeps both, because the second is unintelligible without the first.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None as a demon. Baal-berith — 'lord of the covenant' — had a temple at Shechem, which Judges has Abimelech destroy.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon · c. 900–100 BCE
- Named there as
- Baal-berith
- Rank
- Secretary of Hell
- Order
- Infernal Court
- Base of operations
- None as a demon. Baal-berith — 'lord of the covenant' — had a temple at Shechem, which Judges has Abimelech destroy.
- Era
- c. 400 BCE
- Traditions
- Folk & Demonological, Canaanite & Ugaritic
Traits
- Domain
- Pacts, archives, blasphemy
- Traditional form
- Not consistently described
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Baalberith, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- malefic1
- knowledge1
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Baalberith, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 2,263 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Baal-berith, Baalberith
- Rank: given as God of Shechem; Secretary and keeper of the archives
The deity of the Shechemites in Judges, whose temple funds Abimelech.
Made the notary of hell, who countersigns pacts — the office is early-modern invention built on the name's meaning, 'lord of the covenant'.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Baalberith?
Is Baalberith the same as Baal Hadad?
What rank is Baalberith?
How else is Baalberith spelled?
What is Baalberith said to do?
How old is Baalberith?
Nearest in the corpus
If Baalberith is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Asmoday
King · Goetic Spirit
Commands seventy-two legions, one for every spirit in the book. He is the Asmodeus of Tobit, who killed Sarah's seven husbands and was driven into Upper Egypt by Raphael, and behind that the Avestan Aeshma-daeva, the demon of wrath — one of very few Goetic spirits with an ancestry that can be traced.
Astaroth
Duke · Goetic Spirit
The Canaanite goddess Astarte, three thousand years on, made a male duke of hell with her name intact. The Goetia has him discourse willingly on the fall of the spirits, and warns the operator to hold a ring to his face against the stench of his breath.
Beelzebub
Prince · Infernal Court
'Lord of the Flies' — a Philistine god of Ekron whose name was almost certainly deformed as a Hebrew insult, then inherited by Christian demonology as the second power of hell.
Belial
King · Goetic Spirit
In the Hebrew Bible beliya'al is not a name but a word meaning worthlessness; by 2 Corinthians it is a person, and by the Goetia a king in a chariot of fire handing out senatorships. The text says he was created next after Lucifer and fell among the first, and will not answer truly without gifts.
The Spirits of Affliction
Group of Named Spirits · Deliverance tradition
The remaining 'spirit of X' phrases, grouped because the tradition's whole method stands or falls on how they are read.
Bael
King · Goetic Spirit
First of the seventy-two and, by the Goetia's own account, chief among them — a three-headed thing on spider's legs, ruling in the east and granting invisibility. The name is the Canaanite storm god Baal, three thousand years and one demotion later.
The books behind Baalberith
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon
Various · c. 900–100 BCE · Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
Read Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon in full ↗Cover: Public domain · see en:Aleppo Codex; scanned by · Wikimedia file page
Dictionnaire Infernal
Jacques Collin de Plancy · 1818; illustrated ed. 1863 · French
Read Dictionnaire Infernal in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Collin de Plancy · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.