Demonic · Infernal Court · c. 400 BCE
Beelzebub
Also called Baalzebub, Beelzebul, Lord of the Flies, Baal-Zebul · also recorded as Ba'al Zəbûb, Baal Zebub, Ba'al Zəbûl, Baal muian, Beelzeboul, Baʿl-zabūl, Baʿal Zəvûv, Baal Zebul, Ba'al Zebul, בַּעַל זְבוּב (per Wikidata)
'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.
Deep source base
2 Kings names Baal-Zebub, god of Ekron, whom Ahaziah consults about his injury. The name reads as 'lord of flies', which is a strange thing to call your own god; most scholars take it as a deliberate Hebrew corruption of *Baal-Zebul*, 'lord of the exalted house' or 'prince Baal'. The New Testament form Beelzeboul is called 'prince of the demons', and the Testament of Solomon has him as the chief of the bound spirits, formerly the highest-ranking angel in heaven. Milton makes him Satan's second, and de Plancy keeps him prince under Lucifer.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
What the name means
Hebrew *Baal-Zebub*, 'lord of the flies' — almost certainly a deliberate deformation of Ugaritic *Baal-Zebul*, 'prince Baal' or 'lord of the exalted house'. The joke is the whole point.
Where it was actually worshipped
Ekron, one of the five Philistine cities.
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-zebub
- Rank
- Prince
- Order
- Infernal Court
- Base of operations
- Ekron, one of the five Philistine cities.
- Era
- c. 400 BCE
- Traditions
- Christian, Jewish, Solomonic, Folk & Demonological
Traits
- Domain
- Pestilence, flies, false worship, gluttony
- Traditional form
- A colossal fly, or a crowned figure with fly's wings
- Capital sin (Binsfeld, 1589)
- Gluttony — Assigned to the lord of the flies, presumably by association with rot and feasting.
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
now Tel Miqne
One of the five Philistine cities, and the town whose god Ahaziah sent to consult.
Baal-zebub of Ekron, before the name became a title in Christian demonology.
31.780, 34.851 · Pleiades 687888
5 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 5 offices attributed to Beelzebub, 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
- martial2
- malefic2
2 marks
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
6 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 6 texts that names Beelzebub, 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.
6 texts spanning roughly 2,313 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Baal-zebub, Beelzebub, Beelzeboul, Belzébuth
- Rank: given as God of Ekron; Prince of the devils; Prince of demons / formerly highest angel; Prince
An oracular deity consulted about recovery from injury.
Named by the Pharisees as the authority by which exorcisms are performed.
Says he brings destruction by tyrants, causes demons to be worshipped, and incites priests to lust.
“I am Beelzeboul, the ruler of the demons.”
Named as the demon of gluttony in Binsfeld's assignment of one spirit to each capital sin.
Second in the infernal court after Lucifer; chief of the order of flies.
“Belzébuth ou Belzebub ou Beelzebuth, prince des démons, selon les Écritures ; le premier en pouvoir et en crime après Satan, selon Milton ; chef suprême de l’empire infernal, selon la plupart des démonographes.”Beelzebub, or Belzebub, or Beelzebuth, prince of the demons according to the Scriptures; first in power and in crime after Satan according to Milton; supreme head of the infernal empire according to most demonographers. — translated for ColossiansOne
“Beelzebub, or Baalzebûb, the Philistine god of Accaron (Ekron), scarcely 25 miles west of Jerusalem, whose oracle King Ochozias (Ahaziah) attempted to consult in his last illness, IV (II) Kings, i, 2.”
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
The Three Infernal Hierarchies
First Hierarchy → Beelzebub
Pride. Opposed by Francis of Assisi.
The Infernal Court
The Crown → Beelzebub
Prince.
The Seven Princes and the Deadly Sins
Gluttony
Assigned to the lord of the flies, presumably by association with rot and feasting.
Afterwards
What did later readers make of it?
Golding took the title of Lord of the Flies from him. In the Testament of Solomon he is the ruler of the demons; Milton makes him Satan's second and the more reasonable speaker of the two.
Kept in its own section on purpose. Everything above is what the cited texts say; this is what was built on top of them afterwards, and blending the two is how most popular demonology goes wrong.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Beelzebub?
Is Beelzebub the same as Baal Hadad?
What rank is Beelzebub?
How else is Beelzebub spelled?
What is Beelzebub said to do?
How old is Beelzebub?
Nearest in the corpus
If Beelzebub 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.
Moloch
Prince · Infernal Court
The deity of the Tophet child sacrifices in Kings and Jeremiah — or, on a long-running scholarly reading, the name of the sacrifice itself rather than a god.
Mammon
Prince · Infernal Court
Wealth personified. The gospels use the word for money itself; demonology turned the metaphor into an officer of hell.
Belphegor
Prince · Infernal Court
The Moabite Baal of Peor, reassigned by demonology as the demon of sloth and of ingenious inventions. A god turned into a joke about laziness.
Orobas
Prince · Goetic Spirit
Singled out in the Goetia as faithful and honest — he does not tempt or deceive, and he defends the operator against the other spirits, which no other entry promises. He discourses on divinity and the creation of the world.
Sitri
Prince · Goetic Spirit
A griffin-winged leopard's head that resolves into a very beautiful man. His single office is compulsion in desire, running in both directions, and the Goetia is explicit that it extends to making its objects strip.
Stolas
Prince · Goetic Spirit
His teaching is narrow and exact — astronomy, and the properties of herbs and precious stones — with none of the wars, treasures or transformations that crowd the entries around him. He comes as a mighty raven, then a man.
The books behind Beelzebub
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
New Testament
Various · c. 50–110 CE · Koine Greek
Read New Testament in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Wikimedia file page
The Testament of Solomon
Anonymous; tr. F. C. Conybeare · c. 100–400 CE · Greek
Read The Testament of Solomon in full ↗Cover: CC0 · Simeon Solomon · Wikimedia file page
Tractatus de Confessionibus Maleficorum et Sagarum
Peter Binsfeld · 1589 · Latin
Read Tractatus de Confessionibus Maleficorum et Sagarum in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown author · 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
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
Various; ed. Charles Herbermann · 1913 · English
Read The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Herbermann, Charles George, 1840-1916 · 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.