Beelzebul

In 2 Kings 1, Ahaziah falls through a lattice and sends messengers to enquire of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he will recover. Elijah meets them with the rebuke: is it because there is no God in Israel that you go to enquire of the god of Ekron? The Hebrew name reads as “lord of flies,” and it is widely thought to be a deliberate Israelite distortion of a Philistine title — something like “Baal the prince” — turned into an insult.

The Greek manuscripts of the Gospels read Beelzeboul, with an l. The Latin and Syriac versions give Beelzebub, with a b, assimilating the Gospel name to the god of Ekron. The familiar English “Beelzebub” therefore reflects that translational harmonisation rather than the Greek text, and the connection between the Gospel name and the Philistine god — though ancient and widely assumed — is an identification made by translators, not stated by the evangelists.

The accusation itself belongs to a recognisable pattern in the Gospels. Christ’s opponents do not deny the exorcisms; they cannot. They reinterpret them, attributing to a demonic source what they can neither dispute nor accept. Matthew records that the charge followed immediately on a healing the crowds had greeted by asking whether this might be the Son of David.

St. John Chrysostom reads Christ’s reply as an argument from the accusers’ own premise rather than a statement about demonic organisation. If the exorcisms were Satan’s work, Satan would be dismantling himself; and if their own sons cast out demons, by whom do they do it? The logic exposes the accusation as unserious — made not from conviction but from refusal.

The Fathers are therefore careful not to draw a demonology out of the exchange. Christ speaks of “Satan” and the scribes of “Beelzebul,” and the Gospels do not equate the two for us. This record keeps the same restraint, on the same principle that governs the entry for Abaddon, whom Revelation likewise does not identify with Satan: where Scripture withholds an identification, the Church does not supply one.

The weight of the passage falls on what follows. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is read by the Fathers not as a magic formula that traps the unwary, nor as a limit on God’s mercy, but as the settled and deliberate refusal to recognise God’s saving work when it stands in front of you — calling the light darkness. Such a refusal cannot be forgiven for the same reason a closed hand cannot be filled. Chrysostom is explicit that the scribes’ sin was not ignorance but knowing malice, and Orthodox pastoral tradition has consistently reassured the anxious that fear of having committed this sin is itself evidence of not having committed it.

The passage is appointed in the Orthodox lectionary and read in church, as a Gospel about the authority of Christ and the danger of hardened refusal. Beelzebul has no commemoration, no hymn and no place in any service, as no demon has.

Where the services speak of the demonic at all — in the exorcisms of the catechumenate, in the renunciation at baptism, in the Great Blessing of the Waters — they speak in the general terms Scripture uses, address Christ, and never name an individual spirit. The Church has no practice of naming demons, which is one reason the profusion of names in later Western demonology never took root in the Orthodox East.

The healing of the blind and dumb demoniac that occasions the accusation appears in Gospel cycles as a miracle of Christ. The composition is the Lord, the man healed, and the crowd; the scribes stand apart, in the posture Orthodox iconography reserves for those who object.

Beelzebul is not depicted. There is no traditional composition for him and no icon of him, and the demon leaving the man, where shown, is the usual small dark haloless shape at the frame’s edge.

The name has had an enormous afterlife and almost none of it in the Church. The Testament of Solomon gives Beelzeboul a speaking role as a prince of demons; medieval and early modern Western demonology ranked him second only to Satan, or identified the two outright, and assigned him a court and a portfolio; and modern literature, from Milton onward, fixed that picture in the popular imagination. “Lord of the flies” as a byword owes far more to that tradition than to the two verses in 2 Kings.

The Orthodox East did not develop this literature. There are no Orthodox catalogues of demons with ranks and offices, and the Church’s reticence here is deliberate: naming and classifying the enemy grants him an attention the tradition regards as spiritually dangerous.

The passage’s real influence in Orthodox life is pastoral. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has troubled scrupulous consciences in every generation, and the Church’s answer has been consistent — that the sin is a hardened and knowing refusal, and that the anxious person asking the question is by that very anxiety not the person the Lord was describing.

The Greek New Testament manuscripts read Beelzeboul. The Latin Vulgate and the Syriac read Beelzebub, matching the Baal-Zebub of 2 Kings 1, and the English translations followed the Latin — which is why the familiar spelling ends in a b that the Greek does not have.

The change is small and the consequence is not: it silently asserts that the Gospel name and the Philistine god are the same. That identification is ancient, widely held, and quite likely right — but it is an inference, and this record marks it as one. The Hebrew Baal-Zebub, “lord of flies,” is itself probably an Israelite mockery of a title such as “Baal the prince.”

The Gospels do not say. The scribes say “Beelzebul, the prince of the demons”; Christ replies by speaking of Satan. His argument — if Satan casts out Satan, his kingdom cannot stand — reasons from what the accusers have alleged, and does not require that the two names denote the same being.

Later Western demonology settled the question in both directions at different times, sometimes identifying Beelzebul with Satan and sometimes ranking him just beneath. The Orthodox Church has settled it in neither, and this record follows the text. It is the same discipline applied to Abaddon, whom Revelation calls the angel of the abyss without ever identifying him with Satan.

This is the part of the passage that troubles people, and it deserves a plain answer. The Fathers do not read it as a formula that can be stumbled into, nor as a boundary on God’s willingness to forgive. Mark states the ground of the warning directly: it was said because they said He had an unclean spirit — that is, because they looked at the healing work of God and named it demonic.

St. John Chrysostom emphasises that the scribes’ sin was not ignorance but knowing malice; they had seen and they refused. A refusal of that kind cannot be forgiven while it lasts, for the same reason a closed hand cannot be filled — the forgiveness is offered and the refusal is the thing that declines it.

The pastoral tradition of the Church is consistent and worth stating: anyone frightened that they may have committed this sin has, by that very fear, shown that they have not. Fear of it is repentance already beginning. Anyone genuinely troubled should speak with their priest rather than reason about it alone.

• Matthew 12:22–32 — The fullest account: the healing, the accusation, the kingdom divided, the strong man bound, and the blasphemy against the Spirit.
• Mark 3:22–30 — Scribes from Jerusalem make the charge; Mark states the reason for the warning outright — “because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.”
• Luke 11:14–23 — The parallel account, with “if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.”
• Matthew 10:25 — “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?” — Christ’s own reference to the slander, before it is made.
• 2 Kings 1:2–16 — Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, whom Ahaziah consulted and Elijah rebuked. The connection to the Gospel name is ancient and probable, but is an identification made by translators, not stated by the evangelists.
• Testament of Solomon 3–6 (extra-biblical) — Pseudepigraphal, c. 1st–3rd c. AD, where Beelzeboul appears as a prince of demons. Cited as reception history only; the Church does not receive it.

Orthodox teaching is not one undifferentiated body of claims. What Scripture states, what the Church prays, what the Fathers taught, and what later writers explain are distinct registers — this page keeps them apart so you can see what each statement rests on.