An excavation in Israel has uncovered a pottery fragment bearing one of the oldest known Hebrew inscriptions. One, containing only the words “Ishbaal son of Beda,” suggests something notable about religion in the time of King David, as Hershel Shanks writes:
The name Ishbaal or, more commonly, Eshbaal, is well known from the Bible. It means “man of Baal” [a storm god worshipped in the area]. The name Beda appears for the first time in this inscription.
Dating to about 1000 BCE, the inscription reads from right to left and consists of whole and partially preserved letters incised into the clay pot before firing. . . . In the Bible, various Baal names appear of people who lived in King David’s time or earlier: Jerubbaal (Judges 6:32), Meribbaal (1 Chronicles 9:40), etc. But the Bible mentions no Baal names after this—neither Baal nor Eshbaal. Baal names simply do not appear in the Bible after David’s time.
The archaeological situation is a bit, but not completely, different. We have more than a thousand seals and seal impressions (bullae) and hundreds of inscriptions from Israel and Judah from the post-David period (the 9th to 6th centuries BCE). The name Eshbaal is not to be found among these names. The situation with the name Baal is slightly different; it does occasionally appear in [northern] Israel—and of course in Philistia, Ammon, and Phoenicia. But not in Judah.
It seems that Baal and Eshbaal were banned in David’s kingdom. One reason may have been that, at least officially, Judah was monotheistic.
Read more on Bible History Daily: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/first-person-banning-baal/