They set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles at the top of every hill and under every green tree.
Parallel translations
- WEB and they set up for themselves pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill, and under every green tree;
- KJV And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree:
- BSB They set up for themselves sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.
- NKJV They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree.
- NASB And they set up for themselves memorial stones and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree,
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
They set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every hill and under every green tree. The land was filled with Canaanite-style idols.
Overview
Israel adopted the standing stones and Asherah symbols of Canaanite fertility religion, the very objects God commanded them to destroy. Placed on high hills and under leafy trees, these idols marked sites of false worship across the land. Their proliferation reveals how completely the nation had abandoned the worship of the one true God.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- 1 Kgs 14:23For they also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.
- Mic 5:14I will uproot your Asherah poles out from among you; and I will destroy your cities.
- Exod 34:13but you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and you shall cut down their Asherah poles;
- 2 Kgs 16:4He sacrificed and burned incense in the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.
- Isa 57:5you who inflame yourselves among the oaks, under every green tree; who kill the children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?
- Deut 16:21You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside Yahweh your God’s altar, which you shall make for yourselves.
- Deut 12:2–3You 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.
- Lev 26:1“‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up an engraved image or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am Yahweh your God.
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Christ at the center
Amid the long decline toward exile, the promise to David's house refuses to die; the flickering lamp kept burning anticipates the coming King who will not fail or be cut off.
How 2 Kings 17:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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