Deuteronomy 16:21

Examples of Legal Cases

16:21 You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole ¹  near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.

Deuteronomy 16:1

The Passover-Unleavened Bread Festival

16:1 Observe the month Abib ²  and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in that month ³  he ⁴  brought you out of Egypt by night.

Deuteronomy 14:23

14:23 In the presence of the Lord your God you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, ⁵  your olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the place he chooses to locate his name, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always.

Jeremiah 17:2

17:2 Their children are always thinking about ⁶  their ⁷  altars

and their sacred poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah, ⁸ 

set up beside the green trees on the high hills

[16:21]  ¹ tn Heb “an Asherah, any tree.”

[16:1]  ² sn The month Abib, later called Nisan (Neh 2:1; Esth 3:7), corresponds to March-April in the modern calendar.

[16:1]  ³ tn Heb “in the month Abib.” The demonstrative “that” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[16:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[14:23]  ⁵ tn This refers to wine in the early stages of fermentation. In its later stages it becomes wine (יַיִן, yayin) in its mature sense.

[17:2]  ⁶ tn It is difficult to convey in good English style the connection between this verse and the preceding. The text does not have a finite verb but a temporal preposition with an infinitive: Heb “while their children remember their altars…” It is also difficult to translate the verb “literally.” (i.e., what does “remember” their altars mean?). Hence it has been rendered “always think about.” Another possibility would be “have their altars…on their minds.”

[17:2]  ⁷ tc This reading follows many Hebrew mss and ancient versions. Many other Hebrew mss read “your” [masc. pl.].

[17:2]  ⁸ sn Sacred poles dedicated to…Asherah. A leading deity of the Canaanite pantheon was Asherah, wife/sister of El and goddess of fertility. She was commonly worshiped at shrines in or near groves of evergreen trees, or, failing that, at places marked by wooden poles (Hebrew אֲשֵׁרִים [’asherim], plural). They were to be burned or cut down (Deut 7:5; 12:3; 16:21; Judg 6:25, 28, 30; 2 Kgs 18:4).