Ashtoreth

Not the Grove

English readers often run two goddesses together because their names sound alike. Ashtoreth and asherah are not the same word. Asherah (Strong’s H842) begins with the Hebrew letter aleph and is almost always the carved wooden image set beside an altar. Ashtoreth (H6253) begins with the letter ayin, carries a tav that asherah does not have, and is the name of a goddess. Her plural form, Ashtaroth (H6252), is used when Scripture speaks of her many images and shrines.

Scripture keeps the two apart. Judges 2:13 says Israel “served Baal and Ashtaroth.” Judges 3:7 says they “served Baalim and the groves.” Two verses, two different words. When Josiah cleansed the land, he burned the asherah in one verse (2 Kings 23:6) and defiled Ashtoreth’s high places in another (2 Kings 23:13). The companion study, The Grove That Was Never a Grove, covers the asherah. This study covers Ashtoreth.

Who She Was

Scripture names her plainly: “Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians” (1 Kings 11:5). Zidon, or Sidon, was a Phoenician city on the coast north of Israel. The Phoenicians called her Astarte. In Babylon the same goddess was called Ishtar. History records her as a goddess of fertility, love, and war, and she was tied to the brightest star in the evening and morning sky, the planet the Romans later named Venus. She was the star-goddess of the nations around Israel.

Ashtoreth in Israel’s History

Ashtoreth shows up at every low point in Israel’s story.

The judges. After Joshua’s generation died, “they forsook Yahuah, and served Baal and Ashtaroth” (Judges 2:13). The cycle repeated: “the children of Israel did evil again… and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth” (Judges 10:6).

Samuel. Samuel told Israel that deliverance from the Philistines would come only when Ashtaroth was put away and Yahuah was served “only.” Israel obeyed, and the Philistines were subdued (1 Samuel 7:3-4, 13).

Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served Yahuah only.

1 Samuel 7:4

Saul. When Saul died on Mount Gilboa, the Philistines hung his armor in “the house of Ashtaroth” (1 Samuel 31:10). The first king of Israel ended as a trophy in her temple.

Solomon. The wisest king in Israel’s history followed her in his old age.

For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

1 Kings 11:5

Yahuah tore ten tribes out of the kingdom because of it (1 Kings 11:31-33). The shrines Solomon built for her stood on the hill facing Jerusalem for more than three hundred years.

Josiah. After the book of the Law was found, Josiah finally defiled those shrines.

And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians… did the king defile.

2 Kings 23:13

Scripture calls her “the goddess” when Solomon followed her, and “the abomination” when Josiah tore her down. The Law changed what the king called her.

The Blessing Yahuah Claimed

Ashtoreth was worshipped as the giver of fertility, the one who made wombs and flocks increase. Torah answers that claim inside its own words.

He will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

Deuteronomy 7:13

The phrase “the flocks of thy sheep” is, in Hebrew, the ashteroth of thy flock (H6251), the young and the increase of the flock. The same root behind the goddess’s name is used for what Yahuah promises to give. The nations thanked Ashtoreth for their lambs. Torah says the lambs come from Yahuah, and that the blessing is tied to keeping His commandments (Deuteronomy 7:12). The same wording returns in the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28:4, 18, and 51.

The Queen of Heaven

Jeremiah describes whole families serving a goddess called the queen of heaven.

The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

Jeremiah 7:18

Scripture does not give her another name, but the queen of heaven is widely identified with Ishtar and Astarte, the star-goddess known in Israel as Ashtoreth. When Jeremiah warned the people in Egypt, they refused him to his face.

For then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things.

Jeremiah 44:17-18

Their argument was results. It worked, so they kept it. That argument has never left. The title “Queen of Heaven” is still given today to Mary in Catholic prayer and song. Yahuah never gave that title to any woman. He condemned it.

Weeping for Tammuz

Protestants cannot read this from the outside. Ezekiel was shown two scenes side by side in the Temple court.

Then he brought me to the door of the gate of Yahuah’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

Ezekiel 8:14

And, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahuah, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahuah, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.

Ezekiel 8:16

In the old Babylonian stories, Tammuz was the lover of Ishtar. He died, was mourned, and was brought back. Ezekiel saw women mourning him and men turning their backs on Yahuah’s house to face the dawn. Yahuah called both “greater abominations” (Ezekiel 8:15).

Every spring, Protestant congregations gather outdoors before dawn on Easter morning and face east to celebrate the resurrection. The custom spread from German Protestants in the 1700s. The name “Easter” itself has a disputed origin, and this study does not rest on it. It rests on the practice. A gathering that faces east at dawn to mark a god returning from death is the scene Ezekiel was shown, and Yahuah’s verdict on it has not changed.

The Star Name

The book of Esther introduces a young woman with two names: “Hadassah, that is, Esther” (Esther 2:7). Hadassah is Hebrew for myrtle, a clean tree used at Sukkot (Nehemiah 8:15) and promised in Isaiah 55:13. Esther is a foreign name. Scholars trace it either to the Persian word for “star” or to Ishtar herself. Either way, a Hebrew girl with the name of a clean tree took on the name of a star, the very thing Ashtoreth was worshipped as. That thread runs into the third study of this set.

Closing

Babylon in Revelation speaks the words of the queen of heaven: “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow” (Revelation 18:7). Her plagues come in one day (Revelation 18:8). Samuel’s call still stands over every goddess and every title borrowed from her: put her away, and serve Yahuah only.