Genesis 30:13 and 35:26 name him as the second son of Zilpah, Le'ah's handmaiden, and Ya'akov (Jacob). See also Numbers 1:40.
Genesis 46:17 tells us that Asher's sons were Yimnah (ימנה), Yishvah (ישוה), Yishvi (ישוי) and Beri'ah (בריעה). His daughter was named Serach (שרח).
Yimnah is usually taken to mean "prosperity", though this is probably a late application of the meaning of Asher himself; in fact it refers to his role as Bin-Yamin, the right-hand-man or official heir, and is a princely title not a name.
On the principle that no one gives two of their children names so close to identical that it doos the entirely family to fights and confusions, Yishvah and Yishvi are probably the same person by a variant name (as Sarah is also Sarai, the Hey - ה - and Yud - י - likewise interchanged; probably regional dialects, like plow and plough, night and nite, through and thru in English); the name means "even" or "level". A son of Sha'ul is also named Yishvi (1 Samuel 14:49).
Beri'ah appears in 1 Chronicles 7:23 as a son of Ephrayim, not Asher, though 1 Chronicles 7:30 agrees that he was a son of Asher; maybe, in this instance, they were two different people. 1 Chronicles 8:13 then notes another Beri'ah, co-head with Shema of the inhabitants of the valley of Ayalon who drove out the inhabitants of Gat. 1 Chronicles 23:10 notes that King David had a great-grandson named Beri'ah. Beri'ah means "a gift".
Serach means "abundance", which again is taken from one of the goddess' epithets - both Asher and Sarah are connected to the same root-word that gives Asherah. The name also appears in 1 Chronicles 7:30. Serach (שרח) is probably a corruption of Sarah (שרה), or rather Asherah, and the latter is one more indication that the patriarchs Av-Raham and Sarah were themselves originally the Aramaean gods Asherah and Ba'al.
Genesis 49:20 gives Ya'akov's blessing of Asher: "his bread shall be fat and he shall yield royal dainties". This too reflects the attributes of the goddess Asherah (cf the names of Asher's sons).
Numbers 1:12, 40 and 41 detail Asher's tribe at the time of the Mosaic census.
Yimnah is usually taken to mean "prosperity", though this is probably a late application of the meaning of Asher himself; in fact it refers to his role as Bin-Yamin, the right-hand-man or official heir, and is a princely title not a name.
On the principle that no one gives two of their children names so close to identical that it doos the entirely family to fights and confusions, Yishvah and Yishvi are probably the same person by a variant name (as Sarah is also Sarai, the Hey - ה - and Yud - י - likewise interchanged; probably regional dialects, like plow and plough, night and nite, through and thru in English); the name means "even" or "level". A son of Sha'ul is also named Yishvi (1 Samuel 14:49).
Beri'ah appears in 1 Chronicles 7:23 as a son of Ephrayim, not Asher, though 1 Chronicles 7:30 agrees that he was a son of Asher; maybe, in this instance, they were two different people. 1 Chronicles 8:13 then notes another Beri'ah, co-head with Shema of the inhabitants of the valley of Ayalon who drove out the inhabitants of Gat. 1 Chronicles 23:10 notes that King David had a great-grandson named Beri'ah. Beri'ah means "a gift".
Serach means "abundance", which again is taken from one of the goddess' epithets - both Asher and Sarah are connected to the same root-word that gives Asherah. The name also appears in 1 Chronicles 7:30. Serach (שרח) is probably a corruption of Sarah (שרה), or rather Asherah, and the latter is one more indication that the patriarchs Av-Raham and Sarah were themselves originally the Aramaean gods Asherah and Ba'al.
Genesis 49:20 gives Ya'akov's blessing of Asher: "his bread shall be fat and he shall yield royal dainties". This too reflects the attributes of the goddess Asherah (cf the names of Asher's sons).
Numbers 1:12, 40 and 41 detail Asher's tribe at the time of the Mosaic census.
Joshua 17:7 sets the north-western boundary of the tribal domain of Menasheh at the border with Asher, but is unspecific as to where precisely that border runs.
Joshua 19:24-31 ff gives the boundaries of his tribal domain at the extreme north-west of Kena'an.
Despite all of which Judges 1:32 has Asher dwelling among the Beney Kena'an, "the inhabitants of the land; for they did not drive them out".
Much of what follows is repeated under Asherah:
It is surely not a coincidence that the land occupied by the Bene Asher (אשר) was precisely the place where Eshet (Isis) went in search of the remains of her brother, who had been killed by his uncle Set and his body, cut in fourteen parts, put out to sea in a boat? Osiris is the Greek form of his name; to the Egyptians he was Osher. Asherah is the Assyrian form of Isis, prefixed with an Aleph (א) whose absence is one of the key distinctions between Yehudit and Aramaic; so the loss of the Aleph would yield Sarah. Asherah would also become Asher in the masculine, and the Asherim (or sometimes Asherot and Ashterot) were the sacred trees, effectively totem poles, used in her worship: the Cross, the Obelisk and the Christmas Tree are all variations of it. Is it conceivable that Asher is to Asherah as Dan was to Dinah, the inference of either a sister-tribe, or more likely the tribal name of her worshippers?
Asher is taken to mean "happy" or "fortunate" (which one should be if one worships Asherah properly! she is the goddess of fertility in all its forms), and is common in the Psalms especially, many of which begin with, or include, a verbal pun on the goddess’ name, such as the two verses sung under the title "Ashrey" in synagogue every morning: Psalm 84:5 "Ashrey Yoshvey Beytecha - happy are they who dwell in the house of Asherah"; and Psalm 144:15 "Ashrey ha-am she-cacha-lo - happy are they when it is so" (the "so" being the intense fertility of the land brought by Asherah).
Asher is taken to mean "happy" or "fortunate" (which one should be if one worships Asherah properly! she is the goddess of fertility in all its forms), and is common in the Psalms especially, many of which begin with, or include, a verbal pun on the goddess’ name, such as the two verses sung under the title "Ashrey" in synagogue every morning: Psalm 84:5 "Ashrey Yoshvey Beytecha - happy are they who dwell in the house of Asherah"; and Psalm 144:15 "Ashrey ha-am she-cacha-lo - happy are they when it is so" (the "so" being the intense fertility of the land brought by Asherah).
To the Romans, Venus was regarded as the bringer of good fortune. The Roman equivalent of Ba'al was Hercules (Greek Herakles), Venus' lover, but in Kena'an (e.g 2 Kings 23:4) he was Asherah's consort.
On innumerable occasions (Judges 10:6 1 Samuel 7:4; 1 Samuel 12:10, Judges 3:7 et al) the text gives Ashtarot rather than of Asherah, being the Babylonian Ishtar rather than the Assyrian Astarte, but still clearly the same goddess, who in Egypt was Eshet and, as noted above, Venus to the Romans. In Eleusis she was worshipped as Diana (later as the Virgin Mary), and by the Greeks at different times as Aphrodite or Demeter. To the Celts she was Guinevere (the name means "the white one", as does Eshet) the consort of Beli, which translates into Celtic as Ar-Thor or The King (Arthur). Beli is of course Bel or Ba'al, Astarte's consort; to the southern Beney Kena'an Ba'al's consort was Anat, which is another variation on the same fertility goddess, as Yah was to the Ionian Phoenicians and the Beney Chet (Hittites).
She was worshipped in sacred groves. The larger Asherim were sometimes immense pillars of stone, akin to the menhirs of Carnac, more often the trunks of large trees, pollarded and carved, something in the manner of a totem pole (cf Judges 6:25 and Deuteronomy 16:21). The altar of Ba'al at Shomron (Samaria) in the time of King Achav was an idol of this type (1 Kings 16:32/33), with the Asherah alongside it. A similar pillar at Ophrah, known as "Adonai Shalom" or "Lord of Peace", was erected by Gid'on (Gideon) in Judges 6:24, and from the time of Menasheh until Yoshi-Yahu (Josiah) there was even one erected in Yeru-Shala'im (2 Kings 21:3-7), until Yoshi-Yahu himself had it torn down (2 Kings 23).
The Asherim, or sometimes Asherot and sometimes Ashterot or Ashtarot, appear, among many other examples, in Micah 5:13/14 and Deuteronomy 7:5, and in the plural Asherot in Judges 3:7 and you will see that, in the link I have chosen here to 2 Chronicles 33:3, the Yehudit gives Asherot, some translations give Asherim, but several others "Asherah poles" - an indication of our modern inability to understand the nuances of the esoterics of this ancient "pagan" religion.
Linked to these statues and poles and stones and idols to the goddess were others to her spouse Ba'al, called Asherim (Exodus 34:13; Deuteronomy 7:5 and 12:3; 1 Kings 14:23, 2 Kings 17:10, 23:14; 2 Chronicles 14:2, Micah 5:12; etc). Judges 6:25 ff describes an Asher as a pillar of wood of great size, either fixed or planted in the ground. As such it resembles a totem-pole, or the May or caduceus pole, as well as the Edenic Tree of Life, the World Tree (see illustration below). Such statues stood alongside the Asherot at Beit-El, and even in the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im (as per the link to 2 Kings 23:14), plus elsewhere. They were often paired as an Astarte and a Ba'al pillar (were the Bo'az and Yachin pillars in the Temple then such?). Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah 27:9) laments them, saying that in the time of the Messiah "they will rise no more"; he also couples them with Chamanin (חמנים) or sun-images, which is what Haman was, rather than the Persian prime minister whose attempted genocide of the Jews was thwarted by Queen Ester (Esther in English, אסתר) - a name which itself is not unconnected to Ishtar and Astarte. The fact that Yesha-Yahu laments them, but cannot predict their overthrow until the coming of the Messiah, may well indicate how prevalent goddess-worship remained in Yisra-El until very late on.
Linked to these statues and poles and stones and idols to the goddess were others to her spouse Ba'al, called Asherim (Exodus 34:13; Deuteronomy 7:5 and 12:3; 1 Kings 14:23, 2 Kings 17:10, 23:14; 2 Chronicles 14:2, Micah 5:12; etc). Judges 6:25 ff describes an Asher as a pillar of wood of great size, either fixed or planted in the ground. As such it resembles a totem-pole, or the May or caduceus pole, as well as the Edenic Tree of Life, the World Tree (see illustration below). Such statues stood alongside the Asherot at Beit-El, and even in the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im (as per the link to 2 Kings 23:14), plus elsewhere. They were often paired as an Astarte and a Ba'al pillar (were the Bo'az and Yachin pillars in the Temple then such?). Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah 27:9) laments them, saying that in the time of the Messiah "they will rise no more"; he also couples them with Chamanin (חמנים) or sun-images, which is what Haman was, rather than the Persian prime minister whose attempted genocide of the Jews was thwarted by Queen Ester (Esther in English, אסתר) - a name which itself is not unconnected to Ishtar and Astarte. The fact that Yesha-Yahu laments them, but cannot predict their overthrow until the coming of the Messiah, may well indicate how prevalent goddess-worship remained in Yisra-El until very late on.
Ezekiel 8:14 likewise complains about the women worshiping Tammuz (Ishtar's son and the model for Jesus) at the north gate of the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im.
The key difference between Asherim and Ashterot appears to have been that the Ashterot were natural stone, where the Asherim were carved in wood, something in the manner of the totem-pole. Whenever they were destroyed - usually on the instructions of fundamentalist prophets of YHVH seeking to replace the ancient "pagan" cults with their new monotheistic religion - the Asherim are described as "cut down and burned", where the Ashterot are always "overthrown".Interestingly the Vulgate (Latin) edition of the Tanach translates Asherot as Luci, from Lucus which means "a sacred grove". The Mishnah calls them Eylom ne-aved (אילן ניבד), or "trees to be worshipped", which amounts to an overt admission. The original root - Ashar - means "to be upright" or "straight".
References to Asherah worship among the Beney Yisra-El are too many to list in full; but see, in addition to those already referenced above: 1 Kings 15:13 and 18:19; 2 Kings 14:15, 17:16, 21:3 ff, 23:6; Judges 2:13, 3:7, 6:25 ff and 10:6; 2 Chronicles 15:16, 33:3; etc.
Given that tribes were known as "sons of" – i.e. the Asherites would have been called the Beney Asher - we should note that the term for the worshippers of Asherah would also have been Beney Asherah; and given that the tribe of Dan was a masculinisation of the original Beney Dinah, his sister who was ravished by the Shechemites (Beney Shechem, because inhabitants of towns were also Beney, as were members of craft-guilds and schools of prophets)...it is logical to suggest that the tribe of Asher was defined precisely by its inclination to worship the goddess as Asherah, rather than under any of her other names; and that they were tribally connected to those other, more famous worshippers of Asherah - the Ashurim or Assyrians. In all probability these people, at an early stage of occupation, held sway over an area considerably larger than that defined by Yehoshu'a. Their geographical location, however, on the north-west coast of Yisra-El, between today's Haifa and Lebanese Tsur (Tyre), is, as noted above, precisely the place where Eshet (Isis) came from Mitsrayim (Egypt) to find the body of her brother-spouse Osher (Osiris), after he had been gored to death by his wicked uncle Set (Shet, Seth), and then dispatched into the Mediterranean sea in a sealed casket. The Egyptian name for Osiris was Osher.
1 Chronicles 25:2 has a Levite singer named Asharelah (אשראלא), which verse 15 renders as Yisharelah (ישראלה); the former Aramaic, the latter Yehudit. Readers and scholars may wish to speculate on the possible connection between this, and the name Yisra-El (ישראל).
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press
No comments:
Post a Comment