The bible calls them the "Great Whore of Babylon".
Asherah is closely connected with ASHTORETH and her worship, (Judges 3:7) comp.
Third, we have to be careful what influences us, and always balance our opinions against what Scripture truly says. "This fact suggests that Jehu perceived the sacred pole as appropriate in the worship of YHWH." You would probably enjoy reading a literal transcription of the Hebrew. Here’s a fun fact: The word me’ushar, meaning blessed or happy, is linguistically linked to the word asherah!
I wont care to convince any. Elohim means group of Gods, also common in the Bible.
(Root in DBY NIV), 2 Chronicles 34:3And in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the Asherahs, and the graven images, and the molten images. The Canaanite religion fell under the umbrella of “pagan worship.” Any connection between God and Asherah is a perversion of the truth.
And who is God's mate, his complement? Who brought in other Gods?
(WEB JPS ASV NAS NIV), Judges 6:30Then the men of the city said to Joash, "Bring out your son, that he may die, because he has broken down the altar of Baal, and because he has cut down the Asherah that was by it. ... (2) 400 prophets with a lying spirit, 1:K.22:6-8.22-23.
The Vulgate has done this also in Judges 3:7. Yet even in these earlier materials, we sometimes see evidence of a phenomenon that comes to dominate in the exilic period: the impulse to assimilate the attributes of the many gods and goddesses of older polytheistic systems to the one god, YHWH.
Truth is found by starting with an empty plate then assembling facts to come to a conclusion.
Asherah (straight), the name of a Phoenician goddess, or rather of the idol itself (Authorized Version "grove").Asherah is closely connected with ASHTORETH and her worship, comp. Judg 2:3; 6:25; 1Kin 18:19 Ashtoreth being, perhaps, the proper name of the goddess, whilst Asherah is the name of her image or symbol, which was of wood. Finally, a seriously monotheistic Israelite king named Josiah comes in, with his High Priest Chilkiyahu, and decides it’s time to burn down the goddess once and for all. Your reference of 2 Kings 13:6 states "Nevertheless, they did not depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin, but walked in them; and the Asherah also remained in Samaria."
An Asherah pole, like the ones found here, often represented trees associated with this mother goddess, but some archeologists believe they used living trees for these objects of religion.
Hope Bolinger is a literary agent at C.Y.L.E.
The Canaanite religion fell under the umbrella of “pagan worship.” Any connection between God and Asherah is a perversion of the truth. He is a consuming fire. inscription from Khirbet el-Qom, about twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem, contains similar language in 1 Kgs 15:13 and 2 Kgs 18:4, 21:7, and 23:6 (with parallels in 2 Chronicles) indicate that at least during certain points in the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries b.c.e., Asherah’s sacred pole was perceived as an appropriate icon to erect in Jerusalem, even in YHWH’s temple. Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah.
According to Canaanite myth, this mother goddess created several gods in the Canaanite pantheon with the other creator god, El. God does not have a wife. New York: 2000.
The "finger" seems to signify the symbol of the goddess; at any rate it revealed the future by means of a "sign and oracle." Later, Jezebel made Asherah-worship even more prevalent, with 400 prophets of Asherah on the royal payroll (1 Kings 18:19).
'Gaia'. Wow, interesting interpretations.