Exodus 34:13

But ye shall destroy their altars,.... On which they had sacrificed to their idols; since, if they were allowed to continue, they might be temptations to offer sacrifice thereon, contrary to the

Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land.

Which at first were used by good men for their devotion, as ; but afterwards being horribly abused to superstition and idolatry, were by God, s command to be destroyed.

Exodus 34:13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:Ver. 13. Break their images.] The Popish historians have blurred and blasted those zealous emperors, Zeno and others, that were Iconomachi and Iconoclastai, as sacrilegious. Berne was the first town that, after the Reformation, was purged of images; which Augustine saith cannot be placed in churches, Sine praesentissimo idololatrioe periculo, without extreme danger of idolatry. Epiphanius saith, It is utterly unlawful and abominable to set up images in the churches of Christians. Irenaeus reproveth the Gnostics, for that they carried about the picture of Christ in Pilate’ s time, after his own proportion: using also, for declaration of their affection toward it, to set garlands upon the head of it. Aug., in Psalm cxiv.

(13) Ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves.—In the “Book of the Covenant” the command had been simply to “quite break down their images” (Exodus 23:24). Now, after the Israelites had displayed their idolatrous leanings, it is added that they are likewise to destroy the “altars” and the “groves.” Altars were common among all the idolatrous nations, sometimes attached to temples (1 Kings 16:32; 2 Kings 21:4-5), sometimes separate from them (Numbers 23:1; Numbers 23:29; 2 Kings 16:10-11), and were used for much the same purposes as the Hebrew altars: i.e., for sacrifices, bloody and unbloody, and for burning incense. “Groves”—here mentioned for the first time—were peculiar to a limited number of nations, as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phœnicians, Syrians, and a few others. They appear to have been artificial constructions, either of wood or stone, or both, imitative of vegetable forms, and probably emblematic of the productive powers of nature. The worship connected with the “groves” was of a peculiarly gross and licentious character. The very name, ashêrah, was a modification of Ashtoreth, or Astarte. It is remarkable that nothing is said of destroying Canaannite temples—an indication that as yet they did not exist, and a mark of the high antiquity of the book.

Verse 13. Ye shall destroy their images] See the subjects of this and all the following verses, to Exodus 34:28, treated at large in the notes on "Exodus 23:24".

13. The altars and religious emblems of the Canaanites to be utterly destroyed. Cf. Exodus 23:24, with the references; and the almost verbal repetitions in Deuteronomy 7:5; Deuteronomy 12:3. pillars] or standing-stones: see on Exodus 23:24. Ashηrim] The plur. of Ashηrβh, the sacred wooden (see Deuteronomy 16:21, Judges 6:26) post or column, which stood by the altar in Canaanite places of worship (cf. Judges 6:25-30, by an altar of Baal), and was often by the unspiritual Israelites set up (2 Kings 17:10), or (Deuteronomy 16:21) ‘planted,’ beside the altar of Jehovah. It is often supposed to have been a conventional substitute for a sacred tree; but this is not certain. We have no particulars about the precise size or shape of an Ashηrβh: the two posts, of the form of tree-trunks, resting on a wide base, and surmounted by representations of the full and crescent moon, carved upon a stone from Carthage (Nowack, Arch. ii. 19; Benzinger, Arch. 1p. 381, 2p. 326), might indeed be Ashηrβhs; but we have no evidence that they were. The name Abd-ashirta (‘servant of Ashirta’) in the Tell el-Amarna letters, and the expression ‘finger (oracle) of Ashirta,’ on a cuneiform tablet of c. 1350 found at Taanach (see the writer’s Schweich Lectures, p. 82), seem to indicate that there was an old Semitic goddess Ashηrβh; and if this was the case, the ‘Ashηrβh’ of the OT. was probably her emblem: but the great difference in the Heb. (ΰωψδ and ςωϊψϊ) makes it unlikely that she was the same as the Phoen. ‘Ashtτreth, or the Ass. Ishtar (Benz. Arch.2[220] 326 f.). On account of their heathen associations, the Ashηrξm, like the maẓ ?ẓ ?ηbβhs (see on Exodus 23:24), were proscribed by the more spiritual Israelites. For other allusions to Ashηrβhs, see Deuteronomy 7:5; Deuteronomy 12:3 (repetitions of the present prohibition), 1 Kings 14:15; 1 Kings 14:23; 1 Kings 15:13; 1 Kings 16:33, 2 Kings 13:6; 2 Kings 18:4; 2 Kings 21:3; 2 Kings 21:7; 2 Kings 23:4; 2 Kings 23:6-7; 2 Kings 23:14-15; and comp. Moore’s art. in EB. s.v. [220] I. Benzinger, Hebr. Archδologie, 1894, ed. 2 (enlarged), 1907.

13. Groves — Rather, Asherah, pillars, wooden images of Asherah. See notes on Judges 2:13; Judges 3:7; and 1 Kings 19:15.