Exodus 34:12-16
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
12 (A)Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land that you are to enter; lest they become a snare among you. 13 Tear down their altars; smash their sacred stones, and cut down their asherahs.[a] 14 You shall not bow down to any other god, for the Lord—“Jealous”[b] his name—is a jealous God. 15 Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land; else, when they prostitute themselves with their gods and sacrifice to them, one of them may invite you and you may partake of the sacrifice. 16 And when you take their daughters as wives for your sons, and their daughters prostitute themselves with their gods, they will make your sons do the same.
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- 34:13 Asherah was the name of a Canaanite goddess. In her honor wooden poles (asherot) were erected, just as stone pillars (massebot) were erected in honor of the god Baal. Both were placed near the altar in a Canaanite shrine.
- 34:14 Jealous: see note on 20:5. Some, by a slight emendation, render, “The Lord is jealous for his name.” Cf. Ez 39:25.
Deuteronomy 7:2-6
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
2 and when the Lord, your God, gives them over to you and you defeat them, you shall put them under the ban. Make no covenant with them(A) and do not be gracious to them. 3 (B)You shall not intermarry with them, neither giving your daughters to their sons nor taking their daughters for your sons. 4 For they would turn your sons from following me to serving other gods, and then the anger of the Lord would flare up against you and he would quickly destroy you.
5 But this is how you must deal with them:(C) Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, chop down their asherahs,[a] and destroy their idols by fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord, your God; the Lord, your God, has chosen you from all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people specially his own.(D)
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- 7:5 Sacred pillars…asherahs: cut or uncut stones and wooden poles or trees (cf. 16:21) that had some cultic function. Fairly common religious artifacts, their association with the non-Israelite cults of Canaan and perhaps with Canaanite gods and goddesses, specifically the goddess Asherah, led to their condemnation in the Deuteronomic reform and possibly earlier.
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