[Illustration in text: HADAD OR RIMMON from _Religious Belief and Practices in Babylonia and Assyria_, by Prof. Jastrow. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)]
In many of his characteristics Hadad closely resembled En-lil. Like him he was designated 'the great mountain,' and seems to have been conceived of as almost a counterpart of the older god. It is peculiar that while in Assyria and Babylonia Hadad has many of the characteristics of a sun-god, in his old home in Syria he possessed those of a thunder-god who dwelt among the mountains of northern Palestine and Syria and spoke in thunder and wielded the lightning. But even in Assyria the stormy characteristics of Hadad are not altogether obscured. Hadad's cult in Babylonia is probably not much older than the days of Khammurabi, in whose time the first inscriptional mention of him is made. His worship obtained a stronger hold in the times of the Kassite dynasty, for we find many of its monarchs incorporating his name with their own and altogether affording him a prominent place.
In a curious and interesting passage in his _Hibbert Lectures_,[1] Professor Sayce indicates resemblances between the name Hadad, Dáda, the abbreviated form of the name of Abd-Hadad, who reigned at Hierapolis in the fourth century, Queen Dido of Carthage, and that of the Biblical David. Speaking of Hadad he says: "He was, as I have said, the supreme Baal or Sun-god; whose worship extended southward from Carchemish to Edom and Palestine. At Damascus he was adored under the Assyrian name of Rimmon, and Zechariah (xii 11) alludes to the cult of the compound Hadad-Rimmon in the close neighbourhood of the great Canaanitish fortress of Megiddo. Coins bear the name of Abd-Hadad, 'the servant of Hadad,' who reigned in the fourth century at Hierapolis, the later successor of Carchemish, and, under the abbreviated form of Dáda, Shalmaneser speaks of 'the god Dáda of Aleppo' (Khalman). The abbreviated form was that current among the nations of the north; in the south it was confounded with the Semite word which appears in Assyrian as _dadu_, 'dear little child.' This is the word which we have in Be-Dad or Ben-Dad, 'the son of Dad,' the father of the Edomite Hadad; we have it also in the David of the Old Testament. David, or Dod, as the word ought to be read, which is sometimes written Dodo with the vocalic suffix of the nominative, is the masculine corresponding to a Ph[oe]nician goddess whose name means 'the beloved one,' and who was called Dido by the writers of Rome. Dido, in fact, was the consort of the Sun-god, conceived as Tammuz, 'the beloved son,' and was the presiding deity of Carthage, whom legend confounded with Elissa, the foundress of the city. In the article I have alluded to above, I expressed my conviction that the names of Dodo and David pointed to a worship of the Sun-god, under the title of 'the beloved one,' in southern Canaan as well as in Ph[oe]nicia. I had little idea at the time how soon my belief would be verified. Within the last year, the squeeze of the Moabite stone, now in the Louvre, has been subjected to a thorough examination by the German Professors Socin and Smend, with the result of correcting some of the received readings and of filling up some of the lacunæ. One of the most important discoveries that have been thus made is that the Israelites of the northern kingdom worshipped a Dodo or Dod by the side of Yahveh, or rather that they adored the supreme God under the name of Dodo as well as under that of Yahveh. Mesha, the Moabite king, in describing the victories which his god Chemosh had enabled him to gain over his Israelitish foes, tells us that he had carried away from Atarath 'the _arel_ (or altar) of Dodo and dragged it before Chemosh,' and from Nebo 'the _arels_ (or altars) of Yahveh,' which he likewise 'dragged before Chemosh.' Here the _arel_ or 'altar' of Dodo is placed in parallelism with the _arels_ of Yahveh; and it is quite clear, therefore, that Dodo, like Yahveh, was a name under which the deity was worshipped by the people of the land. I have suggested that Dod or Dodo was an old title of the supreme God in the Jebusite Jerusalem, and that hence Isaiah (v 1), when describing Jerusalem as the tower of the vineyard the Lord had planted in Israel, calls him Dôd-i, 'my beloved.' We can easily understand how a name of the kind, with such a signification, should have been transferred by popular affection from the Deity to the king of whom it is said that 'all Israel and Judah loved him' (I Sam. xviii 16)."