but you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and you shall cut down their Asherah poles;
Parallel Translations
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but you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and you shall cut down their Asherah poles;
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But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
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But ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and ye shall cut down their Asherim.
Cross-references (11)
Passages linked to Exodus 34:13 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 2 Kings 18:4 He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because in those days the children of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan.
- Exodus 23:24 You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor follow their practices, but you shall utterly overthrow them and demolish their pillars.
- Deuteronomy 7:5 But you shall deal with them like this: you shall break down their altars, dash their pillars in pieces, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their engraved images with fire.
- Deuteronomy 7:25-26 You shall burn the engraved images of their gods with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourself, lest you be snared in it; for it is an abomination to Yahweh your God. You shall not bring an abomination into your house and become a devoted thing like it. You shall utterly detest it. You shall utterly abhor it; for it is a devoted thing.
- Deuteronomy 12:2-3 You shall surely destroy all the places in which the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods: on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree. You shall break down their altars, dash their pillars in pieces, and burn their Asherah poles with fire. You shall cut down the engraved images of their gods. You shall destroy their name out of that place.
- Deuteronomy 16:21 You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside Yahweh your God’s altar, which you shall make for yourselves.
- Judges 2:2 You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars.’ But you have not listened to my voice. Why have you done this?
- Judges 6:25 That same night, Yahweh said to him, “Take your father’s bull, even the second bull seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is by it.
- 2 Kings 23:14 He broke in pieces the pillars, cut down the Asherah poles, and filled their places with men’s bones.
- 2 Chronicles 31:1 Now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah, and broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the Asherah poles, and broke down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, also in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities.
- 2 Chronicles 34:3-4 For 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, the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images. They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence; and he cut down the incense altars that were on high above them. He broke the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images in pieces, made dust of them, and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (11 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Which pleasant places they chose for their idols.
Which pleasant places they chose for their idols.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Exo 34:13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break…
Exo 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, {a} 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.
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{a} Aug., in Psalm cxiv.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Which at first were used by good men for…
Which at first were used by good men for their devotion, as Gen 21:33; but afterwards being horribly abused to superstition and idolatry, were by God, s command to be destroyed.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain But ye shall destroy their altars,.... On which they…
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 command of God:
break their images: of gold or silver, wood or stone, which they made for themselves, and worshipped as deities; seeing if these continued, the sight of them might lead to the worship of them, and so bring under the divine displeasure, as a breach of the command of God given them:
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and cut down their groves; which were clusters of trees, where they had their temples and their idols, and did service to them, and where, besides idolatry, many impurities were committed. Such places were originally used by good men for devotion, being shady and solitary, but when abused to superstitious and idolatrous uses, were forbidden. It is said (n), the word for "grove" is general, and includes every tree they serve, or plant, for an idol.
(n) R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 72. 1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 13. Ye shall destroy their images] See the…
Verse 13. Ye shall destroy their images] See the subjects of this and all the following verses, to Ex 34:28, treated at large in the notes on "Ex 23:24".
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Statues. Septuagint have, "pillars," and subjoin after groves, (unless…
Statues. Septuagint have, "pillars," and subjoin after groves, (unless it be another translation, as Grabe insinuates) "you shall burn with fire the graven things of their gods."
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 13. Groves — Rather, Asherah, pillars, wooden images of…
13. Groves — Rather, Asherah, pillars, wooden images of Asherah. See notes on Jdg_2:13; Jdg_3:7; and 1Ki_19:15.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 13. The altars and religious emblems of the Canaanites…
13. The altars and religious emblems of the Canaanites to be utterly destroyed. Cf. Exo_23:24, with the references; and the almost verbal repetitions in Deu_7:5; Deu_12:3.
pillars] or standing-stones: see on Exo_23:24.
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Ashçrim] The plur. of Ashçrâh, the sacred wooden (see Deu_16:21, Jdg_6:26) post or column, which stood by the altar in Canaanite places of worship (cf. Jdg_6:25-30, by an altar of Baal), and was often by the unspiritual Israelites set up (2Ki_17:10), or (Deu_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 Ashçrâh: 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 Ashçrâhs; 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 Ashçrâh; and if this was the case, the ‘Ashçrâh’ of the OT. was probably her emblem: but the great difference in the Heb. (אשרה and עשתרת) makes it unlikely that she was the same as the Phoen. ‘Ashtôreth, or the Ass. Ishtar (Benz. Arch.2[220] 326 f.). On account of their heathen associations, the Ashçrîm, like the maẓẓçbâhs (see on Exo_23:24), were proscribed by the more spiritual Israelites. For other allusions to Ashçrâhs, see Deu_7:5; Deu_12:3 (repetitions of the present prohibition), 1Ki_14:15; 1Ki_14:23; 1Ki_15:13; 1Ki_16:33, 2Ki_13:6; 2Ki_18:4; 2Ki_21:3; 2Ki_21:7; 2Ki_23:4; 2Ki_23:6-7; 2Ki_23:14-15; and comp. Moore’s art. in EB. s.v.
[220] I. Benzinger, Hebr. Archäologie, 1894, ed. 2 (enlarged), 1907.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (13) Ye shall destroy their altars, break their images,…
(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” (Exo_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 (1Ki_16:32; 2Ki_21:4-5), sometimes separate from them (Num_23:1; Num_23:29; 2Ki_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.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Ye shall destroy their altars, etc. This command is…
Ye shall destroy their altars, etc. This command is more sweeping than the corresponding one in the "Book of the Covenant", (Exo_23:24) which expressly mentions only the "images." Here the destruction of idol-altars and idol-groves is further commanded. On idol-altars, see Num_23:1, Num_23:29; Jud_1:2:2; 1Ki_16:32 1Ki_18:26, etc. Groves are here for the first time mentioned. They appear to have been artificial constructions, either of wood or metal, or both, more or less imitative of trees, and regarded as emblems of the Oriental nature-deities, especially Baal and Astarte or Ashtoreth. The word translated "grove" (asherah) is a modification of the name Ashtoreth. The well-known "sacred tree" of the Assyrians is probably an asherah.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 34:13 Asherah was a Canaanite fertility goddess who would…
34:13 Asherah was a Canaanite fertility goddess who would continue to be a temptation throughout Israel’s history (see, e.g., Judg 6:25; 1 Kgs 14:15; 2 Kgs 23:15). • The poles seem to have been fertility symbols.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.