Asherah

Exodus 34:13

Exodus 34:13, in every translation this tool compares.

First, in plain English

Two things under one name: a goddess, and the wooden object that stood for her. That is why English Bibles wander between Asherah, groves and poles without settling. A carved image of her stood inside the Jerusalem temple under one king.

What the text says

Both a goddess and the wooden object that stood for her, so English versions wander between "Asherah," "groves," and "poles." A carved image of her stood in the Jerusalem temple under Manasseh.

The word

H842 (אֲשֵׁרָה), 40 occ

Ancient Near Eastern background

Athirat at Ugarit is El's consort and mother of the gods, "Lady Athirat of the Sea" and "creator of the gods," and her seventy sons make up the divine assembly; her intercession with El wins Baal his palace after Yam's defeat. The Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions naming Yahweh and "his asherah" are the most argued-over epigraphic find in this area. DDD's Asherah article adds that the Khirbet el-Qom inscription pairs the same formula with an engraved hand, an apotropaic symbol, and that both sites invoke the deity or object for blessing and protection, not polemic, so the language belonged to ordinary worshippers as well as to the Deuteronomists' opponents. Excavations at Philistine Ekron (Tel Miqne) have turned up jar inscriptions dedicated to a goddess 'srh, which suggests her cult reached beyond Israel and Judah. Heiser reads Athirat's seventy sons against the seventy nations disinherited at Babel and allotted to the sons of God in Deuteronomy 32:8-9, a deliberate rival claim in which Yahweh's council outnumbers and outranks Asherah's.

Where scholars disagree

Whether the inscriptions name a consort or a cult object is the argument itself, and it isn't settled. Reading asherah there as a proper divine name is grammatically unlikely, since Hebrew proper names don't take possessive suffixes, and that pushes most scholars toward either a cult object or a hypostatized asherah that could act as Yahweh's consort without being a fully independent goddess. DDD goes further and argues that the article/no-article distinction some scholars use to separate the goddess from the object in the Hebrew text isn't a reliable rule, since "Baal" and "Ashtoreth" both take the article as proper names elsewhere; on that reading many of the 40 occurrences stay ambiguous between goddess and object and can't be sorted cleanly.

Where it appears

Exodus 34:13
Deuteronomy 16:21
Judges 6:25-30
1 Kings 15:13
1 Kings 18:19
2 Kings 21:7
2 Kings 23:4-7

Sources

Lindenberger, *Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters*, 133-134
Walls, "The Gods of Israel in Comparative ANE Context," 266-267
Walton, *Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: 1 & 2 Kings…*, 161
DDD s.v. "Asherah," 99-104
Heiser, *The Unseen Realm*, note-to-build: missing from entities.json