The Grove That Was Never a Grove

The Word Under the Word

The King James Bible uses the word “grove” about forty times in the Old Testament. Most readers picture a quiet stand of trees. A shady spot. A peaceful place to pray. That picture is wrong, and the wrong picture has kept a whole lesson buried.

Behind nearly every “grove” in the King James stands one Hebrew word: asherah (Strong’s H842). It is the name of a Canaanite goddess, and it is also the name of the carved wooden image set up to honor her. An asherah was not a forest. It was an idol. It was a pole or a carved post, made by human hands, planted in the ground beside an altar.

Once the word is restored, dozens of passages change shape. The kings of Israel and Judah were not graded on whether they cut down trees. They were graded on whether they tore down an idol.

Five Verses That Break the Grove

Scripture itself shows that an asherah cannot be a stand of trees. Five witnesses settle it.

It was made in a day. A grove of trees takes a lifetime to grow. Yet Ahab simply “made” one.

And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke Yahuah Elohim of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

1 Kings 16:33

It was set up under trees. A grove cannot be built under a green tree. An idol can.

For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree.

1 Kings 14:23

It stood inside the house of Yahuah. Manasseh put one in the Temple. Josiah later carried it out the door, burned it, and ground it to powder. Nobody carries a forest out of a building.

And he brought out the grove from the house of Yahuah, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.

2 Kings 23:6

It was dressed. Women sat near the Temple weaving cloth hangings for it. An idol is clothed. A forest is not.

And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of Yahuah, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

2 Kings 23:7

It was made by fingers. Isaiah lists it beside the altars and images as the work of a man’s hands.

And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images.

Isaiah 17:8

Five witnesses, one verdict. The asherah was a man-made object of worship. The English word “grove” hid it in plain sight.

Two Different Words, One English Word

The confusion grows worse because the King James uses “grove” for a second Hebrew word that has nothing to do with idols.

And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Yahuah, the everlasting El.

Genesis 21:33

Here the Hebrew word is eshel (H815), a tamarisk tree. Abraham planted a real tree and called on the name of Yahuah. That is clean. The English reader, however, sees “grove” in Genesis 21 and “grove” in 1 Kings 16 and assumes they are the same thing. One is a tree planted by a man of belief. The other is an idol planted by a king who provoked Yahuah to anger. One English word was made to carry both, and the line between worship and idolatry was blurred.

What Yahuah Commanded

The Torah does not treat the asherah lightly. Every time it is named in the Law, the command is the same: cut it down, burn it, remove it.

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for Yahuah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous El.

Exodus 34:13-14

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto Yahuah your Elohim.

Deuteronomy 12:3-4

Two things stand out in Deuteronomy 12. First, the names of the false gods were to be destroyed along with the objects. Second, Israel was told “ye shall not do so unto Yahuah.” The nations worshipped their gods with altars on hills, under green trees, beside a carved pole. Israel was forbidden to bring any of that into the worship of Yahuah, even with a sincere heart.

Moses closed the chapter with a warning that speaks straight to modern worship.

Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto Yahuah thy Elohim.

Deuteronomy 12:30-31

The sin in view is not worshipping another god. It is worshipping Yahuah the way the nations worshipped theirs. That is the exact sin of borrowed practice. Taking a pagan custom, renaming it, and offering it to Yahuah is the thing He named and forbade.

The Kings Graded by the Asherah

The books of Judges, Kings, and Chronicles read like a report card, and the asherah is on almost every page.

Gideon. Before Gideon ever fought Midian, Yahuah sent him to his own father’s yard. He tore down the altar of Baal, cut down the asherah beside it, and burned the bullock on a new altar using the wood of the asherah as fuel (Judges 6:25-28). The idol was wood, and its wood became the fire of a right offering. Deliverance from Midian came after the idol came down, not before.

Asa. Asa removed his own grandmother Maachah from her place as queen because she had made an idol for the asherah. He cut it down and burned it at the brook Kidron (1 Kings 15:13). Faithfulness cost him in his own family.

Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab made an asherah, and Jezebel fed four hundred prophets of the asherah at her own table (1 Kings 18:19). At Mount Carmel the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal were slain (1 Kings 18:40). The record says nothing of what became of the four hundred of the asherah. They were invited, but they are not named among the dead.

Hezekiah. Hezekiah removed the high places, broke the images, and cut down the asherim. He even broke the brass serpent Moses had made, because the people had turned it into an object of worship (2 Kings 18:4). A thing Yahuah once used was destroyed the moment it became an idol.

Manasseh. Manasseh rebuilt everything his father tore down. He made an asherah “as did Ahab” and set a graven image of it in the house of Yahuah (2 Kings 21:3, 7). The idol moved from the hilltop into the sanctuary.

Josiah. Josiah’s cleansing did not begin with a vision or a revival meeting. It began when the book of the Law was found in the Temple and read aloud to the king (2 Kings 22:8-11). He tore his clothes. Then he carried the asherah out of the house of Yahuah and burned it, and he did it “that he might perform the words of the law” (2 Kings 23:24). The Law exposed the idol. The Law drove the reform.

What the Prophets Said

The prophets spoke of a day when the asherah would fall for good.

Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will I destroy thy cities.

Micah 5:13-14

Jeremiah said the children remembered “their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills” (Jeremiah 17:2). The asherim stood by the trees, not as the trees. Isaiah promised that “the groves and images shall not stand up” once Jacob’s sin was purged (Isaiah 27:9).

A Name Kept Apart

Some teachers fold the asherah together with Ashtoreth (H6253) and then run both into Ishtar and Easter. Scripture does not make that fold. It names Ashtoreth and the asherah with two separate words, and Judges 2:13 and 3:7 list them separately. This study keeps them apart for the same reason. The case against the asherah stands on Scripture alone and needs no help from a borrowed etymology.

The Pole Still Stands

Jeremiah described how the nations made a wooden idol, and the description is worth reading slowly.

For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not.

Jeremiah 10:3-5

Jeremiah is describing a carved idol, not a holiday decoration. Still, the steps are hard to miss: a tree cut from the forest, decked with silver and gold, fastened so it will not fall, standing upright in the house. Catholic and Protestant homes alike set up such a tree every winter and call it part of the worship of the Messiah’s birth. Deuteronomy 12:30 asks the only question that matters. Where did the custom come from, and did Yahuah ask for it?

The asherah was never only a pole. It was the habit of planting something beside the altar that Yahuah did not command, and then calling the whole arrangement worship. Gideon, Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah each had to choose whether to leave the familiar thing standing. Every believer delivered through the Messiah faces the same choice when the Law is opened and read.

Closing

The four hundred prophets of the asherah ate at Jezebel’s table and then dropped out of the record. Jezebel did not. She appears again in the letter to Thyatira, teaching Yahuah’s servants to eat things sacrificed to idols (Revelation 2:20). The promise is given to the one who overcomes and keeps His works to the end (Revelation 2:26). The pole beside the altar is still being planted, and the call to cut it down has not changed.