So in our text we have several mentions of Asherah poles being built to satisfy the apparently unquenchable thirst of Israelites to worship something other than our protagonist. Asherah is one such common deity that seems to always end up alongside Baal, Molech, and a few others in this pagan swayed society. My question is why choose her/him/it? Also I am wondering why this particular deity gets a pole and not an altar or statue. I will attempt to answer these questions while also seeing what connections this deity has with our text’s characters.
First, what or who is Asherah? According to resources, Asherah was in fact a she. The deity was a representation of a “mother” goddess. Her name is crossed along many other literary and religious references also such as Phoenician “sanchuniathon” where her name is associated with Dione (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah). This is a possible link between the Phoenician text, which is of Greek origin, and Dionysus who was male, but associated with fertility. 
She is also given the name of rabat ʼAṯirat yam, or “she that treads on the Sea” (http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/asherah-and-the-asherim-goddess-or-cult-symbol/). Even in the Bible there are possible allusions to her supposed positional place in the deity hierarchy as the book of Jeremiah 7:18 mentions “Queen of Heaven” as part of the deity worship in Israel which goes on to provoke our protagonist (Bible). This could be because some scholars believe that she is in fact the first bride ever mentioned and was the bride of the protagonist (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2009/05/the-first-couple-yahweh-and-asherah/). I will refer to him as Wahyeh in lieu of Candace possibly reading this blog post.
In 2 Kings, we get the story of many individuals who cross paths with this deity either to follow her, or to destroy the remnants of her. I would like to focus just on Josiah’s reign in 2 Kings 23 just to use as reference. Here Josiah is made king (hopefully obvious), and begins trying to reform the Israelites back to their original service to the Lord (Bible). One thing he does while going around defiling all the pagan shrines, is “tears down the Asherah pole in the temple of the Lord.” My initial assumption was that this pole was similar to what the Native Americans had in a totem pole. Research however, tells a little less similar story. According to research, an Asherah pole could one of two things: an actual wooden totem dedicated to Wahyeh’s wife, or just a tree. Archaeological dig sites have supported that there is also a possibility of her having statues that were placed inside the home, but to keep this from getting out of hand, we will be trying to focus primarily on the one mentioned in the temple of the Lord.
Other than large and wood, there is not really a great description anywhere that I have been able to find of this specific totem. However I would like to take the time to analyze a trend in the text. Our text here is often used to set up these “false” deities. What I mean is, more specifically the protagonist tells who they are, and then goes to show how much greater he is than them. Since she is known as the one “who walks on water,” and we have NOT EVER seen or read in any way a sequel to this Old Testament, is it safe to assume that at some point walking on water would be a great sequel to our protagonist disproving this deity? I mean what better way to do so than to write a second half of this book and be like “you know what, I am walking on water this chapter.”
Dare to dream I suppose……. But anyway, my findings answered the “who” part of my question. I was only able to find the basic descriptions of the fact that she was in fact a she, often related to wood which may be an allusion to harvest, growth, and reproduction, and that she turns up in many other religions as the wife of whatever the big guy in that religion was at the time. She has been linked also to the wreath on Christmas day as a “womb” symbol, with the tree as a phallic symbol meaning….hopefully we are old enough to get that one (http://shatteredparadigm.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-tree-ancient-pagan-fertility.html). So yea Christmas is ruined for me now too. Thanks blogs!
nicholasweir1724 