Tribe of Asher

“ That Manasseh likewise had cities with their appurtenances in the tribes of Issachar and Asher (v. 11) , God so ordering it, that though every tribe had its peculiar inheritance, which might not be alienated from it, yet they should thus intermix one with another, to keep up mutual acquaintance and correspondence among the tribes, and to give occasion for the doing of good offices one to another, as became those who, though of different tribes, were all one Israel, and were bound to love as brethren. ”

“ Levites.
Chapter VII. 1‒40.
Genealogies of Six Remaining Tribes.
The treatment of the several tribes in this chapter is very unequal. In the case of Issachar (1‒5) , Zebulun (6‒12, see note verse 6) , and Asher (30‒40) , genealogies are given and the number of fighting-men of each tribe is stated. To Naphtali is devoted a single verse (13) , giving only the names of his sons. For Manasseh and Ephraim (14‒29) genealogies are given and their possessions are shortly enumerated. The mention of Dan is obliterated, owing to the state of the text of verse 12. ”

“ The men of this tribe appear to have placed themselves under the supremacy of the Canaanites, for they loved a peaceful life, and, as they found the land fertile, they readily bore the imposition of tribute. Zebulon, the twin tribe of Issachar, was more active, and appears to have conquered for itself a safe settlement in the north of Mount Tabor. The remaining two tribes, Asher and Naphtali, seem to have met with greater difficulties in gaining a firm footing among the neighbouring Canaanite population, who were more combative and also more closely united. ”

“ Asher, a son of Jacob, and the tribe descended from him, with its territory; also a place in Palestine:--Asher
837 אֹ֫שֶׁר (o'-sher) : from אָשַׁר; happiness: happy.
838 אֲשׁוּר (aw-shoor') : or ashshur; from אָשַׁר in the sense of going; a step: going, step.
839 אֲשֻׁרִים (ash-oor') : contracted for תְּאַשּׁוּר; the cedar tree or some other light elastic wood: Ashurite.
840 אֲשַׂרְאֵל (as-ar-ale') : by orthographical variation from אָשַׁר and אֵל; right of God; Asarel, an Israelite: Asareel. ”

“ The Asheri family suffered great privations but remained faithful in their devotion to the Talmud. Jacob ben Asher is known as the Ba‘al ha-ṭurim (literally “Master of the Rows”) from his chief work, the four Ṭurim or Rows (the title is derived from the four Ṭurim or rows of jewels in the High Priest’s breastplate) . In this work Jacob ben Asher codified Rabbinic law on ethics and ritual, and it remained a standard work of reference until it was edited with a commentary by Joseph Qaro, who afterwards simplified the code into the more popular Shulḥan Aruch. ”

“ Along with Gad Reuben possessed a splendid country, but these two faded away into a sort of barbarism, scarcely maintaining their separateness from the wild races of the desert. Asher in like manner suffered from the contact with Phœnicia and lost touch with the more faithful tribes. So it is always. Those who shirk religious duty lose the strength and dignity of religion. Though greatly favoured in place and gifts they fall into that spiritual impotence which means defeat and extinction. ”

“ Asher was the supreme god of the Assyrians, 20the Vedic Mahadeva, the emblem of the human male structure and creative energy. The same idea of the creator is still to be seen in India, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Denmark, depicted on stone relics.
To a rude and ignorant people, enslaved with such a religion, it was an easy step from the crude to the more refined sign, from the offensive to a more pictured and less obnoxious symbol, from the plain and self-evident to the mixed, disguised, and mystified, from the unclothed privy member to the cross. ”

“ The emigration of Asheri or Asher from Germany to Spain inaugurates an unhappy period for the Spanish and Provençal Jews in their efforts for the progress of culture.
Asher ben Yechiel (born about 1250, died 1327) of the Rhine district, sprang from ancestors who centered their whole world in the Talmud. A disciple of the celebrated Meïr of Rothenburg, Asher acquired the acute Tossafist method, composed35 Tossafist works, but had a finer sense of system and order than this school. ”

“ This shows that thus early in Israel's history it had commenced to hold commercial relations with its neighbors. [A] The tribes whose inheritances bordered on the Mediterranean, commencing at the north, were Asher, Manasseh, Ephraim, Dan and Simeon. Asher's inheritance lay contiguous to the great ports of Tyre and Sidon, while Simeon's bordered on Egypt, and contained within its confines other seaports of the Philistines or Phoenicians, to whom, we think, profane writers have given credit for many of the commercial ventures undertaken by the Israelites. ”

“ Four of the less important tribes, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Zebulon, ventured as far north as the borders of Tyre and Sidon, behind the Phoenician littoral, but were prevented by the Canaanites and Amorites from spreading over the plain, and had to confine themselves to the mountains. All the fortresses commanding the passes of Tabor and Carmel, Megiddo, Taanach, Ibleam, Jezreel, Endor, and Bethshan remained inviolate, and formed as it were an impassable barrier-line between the Hebrews of Galilee and their brethren of Ephraim. ”

“ In general, the tribes warred with one another and with their neighbors, so that, for the purposes of foreign war, the Jewish race represented only two or three tribes at a time, or, say, ten thousand able men. Thus one tribe—as, for example, Judah—would have only from three thousand to four thousand men in all, supposing every man left his fields and home to fight, while Assyrian armies not unusually numbered one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand men. ”

“ A Palestinian patriarch was the last person Sir Asher, with his hovering lackeys, would have recalled to the sculptor, who, in so far as the patriarchs ever crossed his mind, conceived them as resembling Rembrandt's Rabbis. ”

“ Asher is somewhat strange. The parallel with verse 10 alone suggests that we should read of Ephraim; and this is the more probable if the real significance of the reference is for the Chronicler’s period (see the head-note, and xv. 9) . It is not likely that Judaism at that time could claim many adherents in the old territory of Asher (see Hölscher, Palästina, p. 32) . ”

“ It is probable that the eastern portion of the northern boundary of Issachar, towards Naphtali, ran in a north-easterly direction from Tabor through the plain to Kefr Sabt, and thence to the Jordan along the Wady Bessum. It is not stated how far the territory of Issachar ran down the valley of the Jordan (see the remarks on Jos 17:11) .
The Inheritance of Asher. - Asher received its territory along the Mediterranean Sea from Carmel to the northern boundary of Canaan itself. ”

“ Sir Asher was recovering his serenity.
'All right so long as we're under others!' gasped the artist. 'Do you realize what you're saying, Sir Asher? The Boers against whom you equipped volunteers fought frenziedly for three years not to be under others! And we—the thought of Jewish autonomy makes us foam at the mouth. The idea of independence makes us turn in the graves we call our fatherlands.'
Sir Asher dismissed the subject with a Podsnappian wave of the hand. ”

“ The pantheon of the north, as we have seen, was derived from the south. Not that all the gods of the south are worshipped in the north, but those that are worshipped [Pg 415] in the north are also found in the south, and originate there. The distinctive features of Ashur are due to the political conditions that were developed in Assyria, but the unfolding of the conceptions connected with this god which make him the characteristic deity of Assyria, indeed, the only distinctive Assyrian figure in the Assyrian pantheon, does not preclude the possibility, of the southern origin of Ashur. ”

“ Beside the [Pg 104] tribes of Issachar and Zebulun, between Mount Tabor and the Kishon, dwelt a part of the tribe of Manasseh. The family of Abiezer, belonging to this tribe, possessed Ophra. In an incursion of the Midianites the sons of Joash, a man of this family, were slain; [199] only Gideon, the youngest, remained. ”

“ They, however, live most secludedly from their neighbours, retaining their own habits and customs; and it is to be feared that a long period of time will elapse before they amalgamate or assimilate themselves with the Assamese population. Eventually, should the whole body of this discontented, restless, intriguing tribe return to their allegiance under the British Government, their past history would not warrant the most sanguine mind to expect from them, permanently, either a cheerful submission to our rule or a readiness to pay revenue, without an exhibition of force. ”

“ It is a singular fact that history is exceedingly confused, or rather, I may say, dark, respecting the ultimate dispersion of the tribes among the cities of the Medes. The last notice we have of them is from the second Book of Esdras, which runs thus:
“Whereas thou sawest another peaceable multitude: these are the ten tribes which were carried away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea, whom Salmanazar, king of Assyria, led away captive, and he carried them over the waters, so they came unto another land. ”

“ It is reported that these Jews are of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, who were led away captives by Shalmaneser, king of Ashur, and who repaired into these mountainous regions, where they erected the above-named large and strong cities. They carry on war with many kingdoms, and are not easily to be reached because of their situation, which requires a march of eighteen days through uninhabited deserts, and thus renders them difficult of access. ”

“ Asher had the kingdoms of Aphek and Achshaph. Zebulun had the kingdoms of Lasharon, Shimron-meron, and Jokneam. Naphtali had the kingdoms of Madon, Hazor, and Kedesh. And Issachar had that of Dor. These were some of the great and famous kings that God smote, for his mercy endureth for ever; and gave their land for a heritage, even a heritage unto Israel his servant, for his mercy endureth for ever, Ps. ”

“ There is only one striking difference: the special protector of Assyria, Asshur, the god of the land, stands at the head of the gods in the place of El of the Babylonians. He it is after whom the land and the oldest metropolis is named, whose representatives the oldest princes of Assyria appear to have called themselves. The name of Asshur is said to mean the good or the kind; [62] which may even on the Euphrates have been an epithet of El, which on the Tigris became the chief name of the deity. ”

“ And thus they will continue ever more mixed up and intermingled among themselves, with all genealogies lost, and not one of them either east or west being able any longer documentarily to prove of what tribe or family he comes—until the day when He that scattered Israel will gather him, and by His own Divine power and omniscience separate them again into their tribes and families. ”

“ Many scholars [26] maintain that the Twelve Tribes of later history represent groups of ancient nomadic clans who wandered in Western Asia long before the time of Moses; that only a section of these groups went down into Egypt and escaped with Moses, and that these invaded Canaan at one period, while other kindred clans reinforced them at a later time. Israel and the Twelve Tribes, as we know them, arose in Palestine after the conquest, by the subdivision and regrouping of the invading clans, and their combination with the Canaanites. ”

“ It is not uncommon to find colonies more conservative in matters of religious thought and custom than the motherland, and there is nothing improbable in the interesting conclusion thus reached that Ashur, the head of an empire, so much later in point of time than Babylonia, should turn out to be an older deity than the chief personage in the Babylonian pantheon after the days of Hammurabi. ”

“ Although much beyond other mountain tribes inhabiting either side of the Assam valley, in the structure of their houses, in their clothing, in their language, and probably in their religion, they are inferior to them in other points. Thus their looms are perhaps really primitive, and of the most simple construction; neither in their weapons of defence are they at all superior. ”

“ Here you behold an ensign to be reared for the nations; not only for the dispersed of Judah, but the outcasts of Israel. The Jews are called dispersed, because they are scattered among the nations; but the ten tribes are called outcasts, because they are cast out from the knowledge of the nations, into a land by themselves. Now, the reader will bear in mind that the ten tribes have not dwelt in the land of Canaan since they were led captive by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. ”

“ Since the chief weakness of these tribes lies in a lack of unity which the subdivided nature of their country encourages, it must have caused no small concern to the Assyrians that, early in the ninth century, a Kingdom of Urartu or, as its own people called it, Khaldia, should begin to gain power over the communities about Lake Van and the heads of the valleys which run down to Assyrian territory. Both Ashurnatsirpal and Shalmaneser led raid after raid into the northern mountains in the hope of weakening the tribes from whose adhesion that Vannic Kingdom might derive strength. ”