292. This commandment, "There is to be no other God before my face," also has an earthly meaning that we must not worship any person, dead or alive, as a god. Worshiping people as gods was another practice in the Middle East and in various surrounding areas. The many gods of the nations there were of this type, such as Baal, Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Milcom, and Beelzebub. In Athens and Rome there were Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Athena, and so on. People worshiped some of these at first as holy people, then as supernatural beings, and finally as gods. The fact that these nations also worshiped living people as gods can be seen from the edict of Darius the Mede that for a thirty-day period no one was to ask anything of God, only of the king, or be thrown into the lions' den (Daniel 6:8-28).