Who was Ashtoreth?

Goddess of the Phoenicians and Zidonians, worshipped by Israel after the death of Joshua, and by Solomon. Ashtaroth was the chief female goddess and Baal the chief male god, and they are often named together. Josiah destroyed the emblems of her worship as introduced by Solomon. Judges 2:13; Judges 10:6; 1 Sam. 7:3-4; 1 Sam. 12:10; 1 Sam. 31:10; 1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23:13. Ashtaroth is often called ASTARTE, which is her name in the Greek, and Istar or Ishtar in the Assyrian.

City of Bashan in the kingdom of Og, on the east of the Jordan. It was given to the half-tribe of Manasseh and afterwards devoted to the Levites. Deut. 1:4; Joshua 9:10; Joshua 12:4; Joshua 13:12, 31; 1 Chr. 6:71: apparently the same as BEESH-TERAH in Joshua 21:27. Identified with Tell Ashtarah, 32 50' N, 36 1' E.

"And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel;" he calls them to repentance; he feels the time for action has come; he does not fail to bring home upon their consciences their wicked idolatry. "Put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you," he says. And the faithful ministry is blessed. "Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only." Their reformation is now begun, and after the weary twenty years' drought, there is "sound of abundance of rain." "The strange gods and Ashtaroth," Samuel says. Ashtaroth was the principal deity worshiped by the Phenicians and Sidonians. She is frequently mentioned in connection with Baal (see Judges 2:13; 10:6; 2 Sam. 12:10), and was probably considered his consort. She is supposed to be identical with the Venus of the Greeks. "Her worship," The Biblical and Theological Dictionary says, "became at length the most impure and revolting that can be imagined, and was celebrated in shady groves, proverbial for scenes of debauchery." She was a "strange god" to Israel, as all the others, but is singled out by Samuel as being, most likely, the divinity with which they were specially infatuated. This shows Israel's condition at this time, when they could take. as the object of their special worship a deity of such a character. After the disastrous defeat of Saul and his armies on Mount Gilboa, the Philistines hung the armor of Saul as a trophy in the temple of this very goddess (1 Sam. 31 10). Thus does God visit upon His people punishment of a kind most suited to remind them of the very cause of their departure from Him.

On the following day the real business commenced. "Balak took Balaam, and brought him up into the high places of Baal, that thence he might see the utmost part of the people." This is the first mention of Baal in the Word of God. It was the chief male deity of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites, Ashtoreth being the chief female deity. (Sorrowful words to write!) This form of idolatry obtained a footing in Israel in the days of the judges, it was cast out in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 7:3-6); it became firmly established in the kingdom of the ten tribes in the reign of Ahab; and Jezebel's daughter Athaliah introduced it into the Kingdom of Judah. This great evil was one of the causes of the expulsion of the whole twelve tribes from the land of promise.

It has been stated that Solomon himself was not actually guilty of idolatry. If he built the places of idolatrous worship for his many wives only, he was guilty of the sin of idolatry. The abominations were then introduced. Luxuries, wealth, self-indulgence, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life led into idolatry. It is the same in the closing days of the present age. Ashtoreth, a Phoenician goddess, was worshipped with impure rites. Milcom (Molech) was the idol-god of the Ammonites. Chemosh was the sun-god and war-god of the Moabites.

Idolatry was no new evil amongst God's favoured but faithless people Israel. Their whole course in this respect is traced with much detail in Ezek. 20. In Egypt, before the deliverance, they worshipped the gods around them (ver. 8); they worshipped idols in the wilderness, although perhaps covertly (ver. 13), and they worshipped idols in the land (ver. 28). The worship of Baal in particular is noted in Judges 2:11-13; Gideon was instructed by God to throw down the altar of Baal which his father had erected, and also to cut down the Asherah which stood by it (Judges 6:25): just before Jephthah was raised up for the people's deliverance, they confessed that they had forsaken God, and served Baalim (Judges 10:10).

The "Groves" so frequently referred to in the history of Ahab and Elijah were really statues of Ashtoreth. Baal seems to have represented the sun, and Ashtoreth the moon. In the divine indictment of the Northern Kingdom, when the people were carried captive into Assyria, we read: "they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images, two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal" (2 Kings 17:16). Note how "all the host of heaven" is here linked with Baal. In Jer. 7:18 Ashtoreth is called "the queen of heaven." From Job 31:26-27 we gather that homage to the Sun and moon was the earliest form of idolatry.

Verses 16-20. The Lord told the prophet that no prayer of intercession would be answered. "I will not hear thee." What a word this is, coming from Him, who had told Israel to cry unto Him and He would answer. They had provoked Him by making cakes to the queen of heaven. They had fallen in with the worship of a female idol, so prevalent among the idolatrous nations which surrounded them, like the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Babylonian Venus, Ishtar, was called by them the queen of heaven. The Assyrian called her Beltis, the female form of Baal; they placed in the sculpture a star over her head and called her "the mistress of the heavens." The Phoenicians worshipped this "queen of heaven" under the name of Ashtoreth or Astarte. This wicked worship, with which all kinds of immoral ceremonies were connected, had been adopted by the Jews. The women made cakes to present to this goddess. Jewish tradition tells us that the image of the idol was stamped on each cake. This worship of "the queen of heaven" is perpetuated in the mystical Babylon, Rome, the great whore and mother of harlots (Rev. 17). Mary is called by Romanists "the queen of heaven" and "mistress of the heavens." It can be proven that Mariolatry is but the continuation of the Babylonish worship of the goddess they called "queen of heaven." If the Lord was provoked to anger because the women of Israel brought cakes to this queen of heaven, how much more is He provoked to anger with the idolatries of papal Rome?

"Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken to thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goes forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: 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 to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our men?" (Ver. 15-19.) Thus they gloried in their shame, regarding not the works of Jehovah nor the operation of His hands, to their own destruction. Their calamities they interpreted as the consequence of slighting the queen of heaven,* for their will was thoroughly committed to a so-called religion, which consecrated mere depravity and passion.

*This was the female form of Baal or Bel, named Beltic, Ashtaroth, Astarte, Alitta, Mylitta, Aphrodite, etc., whose worship was attended by the grossest immorality.

The name signifies 'master, possessor;' and whether singular or plural it always has the article. The chief male god of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites, as ASHTORETH was the chief female goddess. The Israelites in coming into the land doubtless found temples, groves, altars and high places set apart to Baal: incense was offered and offerings burnt, and children were sacrificed to him, whilst a great retinue of prophets and priests was maintained in his service, as is manifest by its revival afterwards. Num. 22:41 ; 1 Kings 18:22; Jer. 11:13; Jer. 19:5; Jer. 32:29.

Baal stands thus for the power implied in possession, apart from any thought of how it may be used, as Ashtoreth speaks (comp. Joshua 21:27) of fruitfulness here in the nature-sense. Both might be used (and were) in the vilest applications and unitedly they reveal the mystery of iniquity that is native in the heart of man. Power he seeks, — to have things in his hand: that, without question of how he will use it, — irresponsible power; while, underneath, the lusts that war in his members" hold him as a poor slave to their will. Baal and Ashtoreth are twin worships, the natural complements of each other: both meaning independence of God, and together self-bondage; in which is found the awful tyranny of a more malignant despotism, that of the adversary of God and man alike, the "spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience." (Eph. 2:2.)

Dius and Menander, Tyrian historians, mention an Eithobalus of Ahab's time, who was priest of Ashtoreth (female consort of Baal), who having murdered Pheles, became king of Tyre. See Josephus, c. apion, i. 18. This was, in all probability, Jezebel's father. Her zeal for the spread and maintenance of the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, or Astarte, is therefore easily accounted for; hence, also, her inveterate hatred of the holy worship of Jehovah, and her murderous designs against His prophets. Her name means chaste — Satan's counterfeit or ridicule, as it were, of purity. Was it the hope of strengthening his kingdom, or her seductions, with the attractions of her painted face, that led Ahab into this alliance? Behind it all, we may be sure, Satan was seeking by this new move to utterly corrupt and destroy God's people and His truth from the earth. "And Ahab made a grove" — Asherah — an image, or pavilion, to Astarte" and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.