Transliteration:( Atad'oona Ba'lanw wa tazaroona ahsanal khaaliqeen )
128. Ba'l is the name of the famous ido! of this city. It is due to this idol that the city is called Balbak, which is in Syria. This idol was made of gold. It was twenty yards long and in its eyes rubies were placed. 100 devotees of this idol were staying in the temple. The devil was speaking from the stomach of this idol, which these devotees would memorize and explain to the people (Tafseer Roohul Mu'ani).
The tafsir of Surah As-Saffat verse 125 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Saffat ayat 123 which provides the complete commentary from verse 123 through 132.
71. Lexically, baal means master, chief and possessor. This word was also used for husband, and has been used in this sense at several places in the Quran itself, e.g. in (Surah Al-Baqarah, Ayat 228); (Surah An-Nisa, Ayat 127); (Sura Houd, Ayat 72) and (Surah An-Noor, Ayat 31). However; in the ancient times the Semetic nations used it in the meaning of deity or lord; they had even given the name of Baal to a special god. The chief male god of the Phoenicians, in particular, was Baal and their chief goddess was Ashtoreth, his wife. The scholars differ as to whether Baal meant the sun or Jupiter, and Ashtoreth the moon or Venus. In any case, historically it is certain that Baal worship was prevalent from Babylon to Egypt throughout the Middle East, and the polytheistic communities of the Lebanon and Syria and Palestine, in particular, had become its devotees. When the Israelites settled in Palestine and Jordan after they came out from Egypt, they started contracting marriage and other social relations with the polytheistic nations round about them, in violation of the strict prohibitive injunctions of the Torah, the disease of idolworship began to spread among them, too. According to the Bible, this moral and religious decline had started appearing among the Israelites soon after the death of Joshua, son of Nun, who was the first caliph of the Prophet Moses:
And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtoreth. (Judges, 2: 11-13).
And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites and Hivites, and Jebusites. And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. (Judges, 3: 5-6).
At that time worship of Baal had so deeply affected the Israelites that, according to the Bible, in one of their habitations a public altar had been built at which offerings were made to Baal. A God-worshiping Israelite could not bear the sight; so he pulled down the altar one night. Next morning a great multitude of the people gathered together and demanded that the man who had cast down the altar be put to death. (Judges, 6:25-32). This evil, at last, was put to an end by Samuel, Saul and the Prophets David and Solomon (peace be upon them). They not only reformed the Israelites generally but also eradicated polytheism and idol worship from their kingdom. But after the death of the Prophet Solomon the mischief was again revived and the Israelite state of northern Palestine was swept away in the flood of Baal-worship.
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