Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Ashtoreth / Astarte
A goddess of war and love whose Hebrew name was deliberately mispronounced to mean shame.
Judges 2:13, in every translation this tool compares.
Her name in Hebrew is deliberately mispronounced. The consonants are hers, the vowels are lifted from the word for shame, so the spelling itself is an insult. She was a goddess of war and love, and Saul's armor was hung up in her temple after he died.
The vowels in the Hebrew are borrowed from boshet, "shame," so the Masoretic pointing is itself a piece of polemic. Saul's armor is hung in her temple. DDD treats "Ashtoreth" and "Ashtaroth" as the same singular name, read as a plural only later by analogy with the generic word for "goddesses," and the usual vocalization split between the two forms is a dialect difference, not evidence of two deities.
H6253, 9 occ
Astarte is a war and love goddess across the Levant, distinct from Asherah though popular writing constantly merges them. She is the West Semitic counterpart to Ishtar and Inanna, invoked in curses to "smash an enemy's skull," pictured in Egypt as a warrior on horseback, and patron goddess of both Tyre and Sidon, Baal's consort in each, with kings styled as her priests. Her name is probably the feminine of a masculine Athtar tied to the planet Venus, so that if the morning star is the male god (compare Isaiah 14:12's "Day Star, son of Dawn") the evening star is the goddess, the same morning and evening split later attested in Greek tradition. Egyptian reliefs of Ramesses III credit her, alongside Anat, as his protective shield in battle, "Mistress of Horses, Lady of the Chariot." DDD also judges that the unnamed Queen of Heaven of Jeremiah 7 and 44 is probably Astarte and not Anat or Asherah.
- Judges 2:13
- Judges 10:6
- 1 Samuel 7:3-4
- 1 Samuel 31:10
- 1 Kings 11:5,33
- 2 Kings 23:13
- T. C. Mitchell, "Ashtaroth, Ashtoreth," New Bible Dictionary, 93
- Joel Burnett, "Ashtoreth," Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, 114-115
- DDD s.v. "Astarte," 109-113
