Ancestor Worship The adoration or deification of the dead by the living members of the family or community. Cults of the dead surrounded Israel in the pagan religious practices of the Canaanite world and were rejected by the circumscribed religion of Israel (Deut 14:1; 18:10–11; 26:14; Jer 16:5–8).

Rituals of ancestor worship included invoking the deceased, offering food, and pouring a libation (Tsumura, Samuel, 39–40). It was common for ancient people to respect the dead and offer sacrifices in an attempt to appease the forefathers, in the hope of receiving a physical or spiritual blessing.

While the Israelites may have followed some ancestor-veneration practices, as a whole, they did not worship their ancestors as deities (Miller, Religion of Ancient Israel, 237; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 60). Nonetheless, priestly texts within the Old Testament suggest that ancestor cults were a legitimate and persistent temptation for Israel (King and Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, 376–77). The Levitical priesthood can be understood as standing in contrast to the practices of other ancient religious contexts, in which the firstborn was expected to venerate and regulate worship of the ancestors (Milgrom, Numbers, xxxvi). The Historical Books describe how good kings (e.g., Josiah) worked to eliminate ancestor cults, while evil kings (e.g., Manasseh) promoted them (Tropper, “Spirit of the Dead,” 808).