Ashtaroth

Ashtaroth carries two distinct senses in Scripture. As a place name it is the royal city of Og, king of Bashan, on the high tableland east of the Jordan, later assigned to Manasseh and set apart as a Levitical town. As a divine name it is the plural form of Ashtoreth, the Sidonian goddess whose worship repeatedly drew Israel away from Yahweh during the period of the judges and the monarchy.

The City of Og in Bashan

The city first surfaces as Og's seat at the close of the wilderness wars. Moses recalls the campaign against the two Amorite kings "after he had struck Sihon the king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who dwelt in Ashtaroth, at Edrei" (Deut 1:4). The covenant memory preserved at Gibeon repeats the pairing: news had reached the Hivites of "all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, who was at Ashtaroth" (Josh 9:10).

The city is also tied to the older population it housed. Og is described as "of the remnant of the Rephaim, who dwelt at Ashtaroth and at Edrei" (Josh 12:4). An earlier campaign in Genesis takes Chedorlaomer through the same district, where his coalition "struck the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim" (Gen 14:5) — a name sometimes treated as possibly identical with Ashtaroth.

Allotted to Manasseh

After the conquest Ashtaroth is incorporated into Israel's tribal map. The summary of Manasseh's eastern grant lists "half Gilead, and Ashtaroth, and Edrei, the cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan" as the inheritance of the sons of Machir (Josh 13:31). The city later appears among the Levitical assignments, given "to the sons of Gershom [were given], out of the family of the half-tribe of Manasseh, Golan in Bashan with its suburbs, and Ashtaroth with its suburbs" (1Ch 6:71).

The Goddess Ashtoreth

The plural Ashtaroth most often names the Sidonian goddess and the cult images set up to her, frequently bracketed with Baal. The pattern is fixed already in Judges: "they forsook Yahweh, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth" (Judg 2:13). The cycle deepens later in the same book: "the sons of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and served the Baalim, and the Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Sidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; and they forsook Yahweh, and didn't serve him" (Judg 10:6).

Samuel's reform makes Ashtaroth the test case for Israel's repentance: "If you⁺ are returning to Yahweh with all your⁺ heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you⁺, and direct your⁺ hearts to Yahweh, and serve him only; and he will deliver you⁺ out of the hand of the Philistines. Then the sons of Israel put away the Baalim and the Ashtaroth, and served Yahweh only" (1Sa 7:3-4). The same confession is rehearsed in Samuel's covenant speech at Gilgal: "We have sinned, because we have forsaken Yahweh, and have served the Baalim and the Ashtaroth" (1Sa 12:10).

The cult moves from popular apostasy to royal sponsorship under Solomon. "For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the detestable thing of the Ammonites" (1Ki 11:5). The oracle against him names the same charge: "they have forsaken me, and have worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the sons of Ammon" (1Ki 11:33).

Jeremiah's polemic against domestic idolatry — "the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger" (Jer 7:18) — is commonly identified with this same goddess.

The Temple at Beth-shan

Ashtoreth had her own sanctuary in Philistine territory. After the rout on Gilboa the victors "put his armor in the house of the Ashtaroth; and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan" (1Sa 31:10) — Saul's trophy hung in the goddess's temple as a public taunt against Israel and its God.

High Places at Jerusalem Destroyed

Solomon's installations endured for centuries until Josiah's reform. "The high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of Olives, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the detestable thing of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the detestable thing of Moab, and for Milcom the disgusting thing of the sons of Ammon, the king defiled" (2Ki 23:13). Ashtaroth's two threads — the fortified seat of Og and the goddess of the Sidonians — both pass under Yahweh's hand: the city goes to Manasseh and to the Levites, and the shrines of the goddess are at last torn down.