by Brian Godawa
Michal kissed an amulet and lit incense. She brought in bread cakes that she baked for Ashtart, the Queen of Heaven. Ashtart and Asherah were both goddesses of fertility. Michal had been following the moon cycle ritual because she was having trouble getting pregnant with David.
David detested the goddesses. Though they were popular throughout Israel, he didn’t like it when Michal prayed to them and sought their help. He seemed quite mean-spirited about it to her. He would call them both “Ashtoreth,” which was an insulting compilation of the word for “shame,” bosheth, with the name Astarte. He would recite the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one.” Then he would say that the Ten Words, written by Yahweh’s own finger, forbid the worship of any gods before him. That was fine with Michal; she would not put the goddess before Yahweh, but after him. Asherah was only his consort. She even had an image that she kept hidden from David with the inscription, “For Yahweh of Gibeah and his Asherah.”
The other saying he would repeat with annoying redundancy was that they should make no graven image to worship. But she would tell him that she was not worshipping the images, they were simply an aid through which she gave the goddess honor and supplication. His complaints seemed excessive to her. Especially since Yahweh was male and he just did not understand the womanly issues like a goddess could.
In order to avoid the inevitable confrontation that occurred, she would abstain from her visits to the room when David was home and only paid her homage at times like this, when he was absent.
But this evening had an additional concern for her. She had found out from her brother Jonathan that her father had planned to betray David again. She prayed to Yahweh and Asherah to protect her beloved husband from her despised father.
When they first married, Michal had felt so close to David. They sang their music together as they did before marriage, and they had wild lovemaking sessions for his insatiable desires. She could barely keep up with him. They had connected with such profound depth.
But now, it seemed that life and duty had torn them apart. David was always gone. He had been going out and coming in from battle for the king. He had so many victories that his reputation grew. It seemed everything he put his hand to succeeded, except one thing: his relationship with the king. With each success, her father only got more angry and envious of David’s rising glory and greatness. He would still have his fits of madness that required David’s heavenly music to calm his spirit.
Between battles and royal duties, David was never home anymore. Michal was growing bitter. She felt that he had baited her with all his seductive music and passionate songs of love to her, but now that they were married, he switched and moved on to other things. That was why she turned to Asherah more often. She wondered if he was with another woman or if his royal work was that other woman. Maybe he had never been in love with her to begin with. Maybe he had just seduced her, in order to get a foothold in the royal family so he could take the throne one day. Her head swirled with confusion, loneliness and despair.
The sound of David arriving home drew her from the shrine room. She closed the door and quickly went to meet him.
“My love,” she said. They hugged and kissed, but his mind was elsewhere.
“What is wrong, David?”
“I came home from a victory against the Philistines, and the king tried to kill me again with a spear.”
“Again? It seems to be increasing, these episodes.” They had gotten used to Saul’s extreme swings between glorious favor and murderous hostility by blaming it on the evil spirit that tormented him. David would say that his music was Yahweh’s only means to soothe the anointed chosen one. Michal thought David had too high a view of himself. But then, it was better than David mounting a rebellion and overthrowing her own father’s kingdom.
David said, “On the way home, I noticed spies watching our house. Two out front.”
She added, “There are others as well. My brother has alerted me that they are not spies, they are assassins. My father is planning on killing you in the morning as you sleep.”
David said, “This time he has gone too far. It is as if this demon does not merely overtake him temporarily, but is colluding with him in a premeditated plan.”
David began to gather his weapons and a small pack for travel.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“To Samuel the Seer at Ramah.”
He snuffed out their lamps to make it completely dark in the room. He said, “I have an idea.”
She followed him into her shrine room. He moved over to the life sized Asherah teraphim and said, “Help me bring this into the bed chamber.”
He picked up the bulky bottom of it and she held the head.
“What are you going to do?”
“Put it in the bed and cover it with sheets. You can get some goat hair and put it on the head.”
She smiled knowingly. He was using it as a decoy.
He grumbled, “Finally this abominable thing is good for something.”
“Thank Asherah,” she said with an impish smile.
They got it into the bed and she went to get some goat hair.
They were putting the finishing touches on their decoy when they heard a loud rapping on the entrance door of the first floor. They stopped.
A voice bellowed from outside the door, “Open in the name of the king!”
Michal asked David fearfully, “What should we do?”
“Go answer the door.”
“What do I tell them?”
“Tell them I am sick and that is why it took you so long.”
She was frozen in fear.
“Go!” he said.
She closed the door and went to let the king’s guard in. She yelled as she advanced on the door, “I am coming! Please have patience!”
She opened the door and four guardsmen pushed their way inside. Behind them stood Saul.
“Why did you take so long to answer the door?”
“My David fell sick and I was caring for him.”
Saul nodded to the guards. They moved up the stairwell to the bed chamber. Saul pushed past Michal. She followed him up the stairs.
When she arrived in the room, she saw that David was gone. The window was his obvious escape route.
One of the guards whipped back the covers to show the Asherah teraphim laying in the bed.
Saul walked over to Michal and grabbed her hair in his hand. He yanked her head back. She squealed and tried to protect her hair from his grip.
“Why have you lied to me, daughter?”
“Father, I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
She didn’t know what to say. But she knew he would probably punish her greatly for this betrayal.
She blurted out, “He said he would kill me if I did not!”
Saul looked in her eyes.
He released her hair. She nursed her head from the stinging pain.
“That would make him a bigger fool than I thought. Killing you would ruin his chances for succession to the crown.”
Saul walked over to the window and stared out into the night. He knew David would be too difficult to catch now.
“But I can still accomplish the same result with a different tactic.”
Michal stared at him, confused.
He said, “I can marry you to another man.”
Michal filled with shock. “Father, you cannot do that. I am married to David.”
“I can do whatever I want. I am king. And I will marry you to another man.”
Chapter 36
Asherah breathed a sigh of great relief. What freedom it was to be out in the open air amidst her sacred grove of trees, instead of in that dreary, dank dungeon of Dagon. Though the gods had chosen to operate with less visible presence amidst mortals, there was ample acreage and foliage for her to stroll through her garden without being seen. If she was spotted from a distance, she was often mistaken for one of the chief priestes
ses anyway.
In antediluvian days, the Watcher gods had been more bold and conspicuous in their appearance. Unfortunately, that had given the archangels who hunted them easier access to them. She knew too many of her comrades in the assembly who had been bound in the earth by Mikael, Gabriel and the others.
After the flood, the gods sought to be less conspicuous and save their presentations for more strategic effect. They restricted their encounters more to earthly principalities and powers than to the plebeians. The rarer their visible presence, the more heightened the anticipation, exalted the honor, and exaggerated the fear. And the fewer opportunities for those irksome archangels to trap them. As heavenly host, the gods could still operate within both worlds seen and unseen, but they chose to limit their involvement mostly to the veiled shadows of the unseen.
But there were exceptions, and this was one of them. Asherah had made a trip to Gibeah and lodged at her temple amidst the sacred grove of terebinth trees. The grove stood a distance away from the city on a hillside, where the Israelites made their high places of sacrifice and worship. She had such freedom in her visitation because the Israelites had a weakness for worshipping the goddess. And worship gave her power. It protected her.
Asherah was pleased with herself that of all the gods of Canaan, she was one of the few to gain a major foothold within the hearts and souls of the contemptuous little Israelite rodents. Though Yahweh had definitively prohibited images and jealously demanded singular devotion to his phallus alone, his human herd of lusty slaves were a pathetic lot. They simply had to have a consort for their bachelor god. And rightfully so. Behind every successful male deity was a longsuffering goddess who did all the work.
Of course, what these perverted little Israelites really wanted was their own sexual gratification. The temple of Asherah housed the Qedeshim, or sacred prostitutes, both male and female. Their income kept the temple funded, since the Israelite tabernacle and priesthood was the only cultus to receive entitlement funds from their theocratic government. And bring in income they did. Asherah’s boys and girls were as busy in Israelite towns as in any Canaanite town. Sometimes more so. The intensity of forbidden pleasure was no doubt a bigger draw for those bent on fighting their fleshly cravings. Ironically, it made them all the more wild in their abandon to her. Their surrender to illicit passions was like freeing a prisoner.
At least, that is what they felt it was. The reality was that they were imprisoning themselves to her. They were simply exchanging one form of slavery for another. These humans would never learn that they could not be truly free in the way they wanted to be, for to be their own master was the most foolish slavery of all.
Her temple was located in the terebinth grove because it was a tree of spiritual significance in the culture. It was where visions and revelations from the gods often occurred.
The tree was a symbol of Asherah. The grove was the location of her symbolic activity. Qedeshim would choose a favorite tree in the grove where they might find some privacy to engage in their illicit liaisons beneath its branches.
Meanwhile, just yards away, stood the high place where Israelites performed sacrifices to Yahweh. The elevated stone platform had a horned altar on top where the consumption by fire took place. The altar had images engraved all over the base. One was a naked Asherah depicted as “mistress of the animals,” with a lion held in the grip of each hand. There were lion-like Cherubim, and the Tree of Life with ibexes eating its fruit. An image of a bull with an inscription at the base of the altar said, “Yahweh of Gibeah and his Asherah.”
Beside the altar was an Asherah pole, a twenty foot wooden cult object carved from a tree and shorn of its branches. The bark had been stripped off and images of Asherah and her exploits carved around the tree like a cylinder seal. The poles were stained and varnished to make them more long lasting and durable in weather. They were referred to as Asherim and they accompanied most altars throughout Israel. Asherah thought it a nice touch of irony that her own erect phallic pole outsized Yahweh’s puny pudgy altar by comparison. Two incense pillars flanked the Asherim to offer fragrance to the goddess as they sacrificed lambs, bulls and goats to Yahweh.
All this imagery and syncretism of Yahweh with Asherah was, of course, frowned on by the Levitical priesthood and made intolerant zealots like Samuel furious. Asherah smiled to herself. In truth, the elitist inner circle of Levites was quite small and unable to enforce its will across the innumerable rural towns and villages of Israel. The polytheistic folk religion of the common man was often out of tune with the official national cult of monolatry. But it was much more influential on the daily lives of citizens, who did what they wanted without repercussion.
Thus, Asherah had a stranglehold on Israel and could venture most anywhere she wanted, without much fear of being attacked by Yahweh’s evil minions. The people empowered her with their worship. Their idolatry protected her.
Two of those Israelite idolaters had just finished being serviced by a Qedesha named Kiana. She was a lovely siren of unusual animal beauty—quite literally. She had strange looking feline eyes and her skin had the pattern of a tigress, over her entire body. Her patrons were not sure if it was tattooed or was some kind of occultic magic. There were rumors that the Watcher gods still engaged in come miscegenation experiments, like those from antediluvian days, to create hybrid creatures of human and animal essence. Asherah would never clarify the truth, because rumors were helpful for exploiting mystery and fear.
Men would often use the common simile of a tigress or feline predator to express their desire for sexual adventure, but Kiana provided all that quite literally, making her a strong draw for the two gibborim warriors sharing her.
They were the brothers Joab and Abishai, members of Saul’s bodyguard who were inseparable. They shared everything together; their dreams, pursuits, and evidently, their sins. Abishai was the elder, but Joab was the leader. He was more aggressive, hot-headed and impulsive. Abishai considered Joab more calculating and ruthless. Joab considered Abishai weaker, because of his propensity for relationship. And he talked too much.
Abishai laid back against the tree and said, “Kiana, you are the finest harlot I have ever known. If only wives could be as erotic.”
“If your wife was as erotic, then you would want two of them. You men are never satisfied with what you have. You always want what you do not have and you always want something different.”
She purred and tickled him with her protracted claws. He chuckled. She was known for her passionate heat as well as her violent temper. Those claws could just as well castrate him as tickle him.
She said to him, “Tell me more about this fascinating captain of yours.”
Now Joab butted in scornfully, “You will not be able to seduce David to your embrace.”
Abishai added, “You are a feline, but they say his wife is a vixen.”
She countered, “For now at least.”
“Oh no,” Abishai protested. “He is passionately devoted to his wife. They are connected in their souls.”
She said, “Until he sees what he cannot have and desires to conquer something new.”
“You are drawn to such power,” said Joab.
“Are you not?” she challenged back.
Joab said, “I am drawn to him. He has the favor of Yahweh on him.”
“Is the rumor true, that he was anointed by Samuel to be the messiah king of Israel?”
Abishai sighed. “We are not supposed to speak of it. He is fiercely loyal to King Saul. And we are fiercely loyal to David. He is our cousin by blood.”
Joab gave Abishai an angry look. He was too loose-lipped.
Kiana asked, “Even though the king seeks to kill him and he has fled into hiding?”
Abishai said, “David believes the king is anointed by Yahweh to rule. So until Yahweh replaces him, David remains loyal to the Lord’s Anointed. To fight back would be defiance against Yahweh himself.”
“That is bullheaded loyalty,” said K
iana.
Joab said, “You do not understand such purity of godly devotion.”
“Neither do you,” Kiana replied. “For you are here with me.”
Joab could not rebut her. She was right.
Abishai thought that they were both pathetic examples of obedience to Yahweh with their regular visitation to her, a cult prostitute. Every time they did so, he hated himself for it and had to engage in guilt offerings for atonement. It was a betrayal of his wife and a betrayal of his god. Joab didn’t seem to be bothered, but Abishai would weep and vow to himself to never do it again. But the desire would build within his heart until he could stand the pressure no more. It was all he could think of until he satisfied the craving. Then the cycle would start all over again with guilt, repentance, and vows of change. It made him wonder if he was even worthy of being on the king’s guard.
Joab considered their weakness a danger that could be exploited one day in the favor of an enemy, if they could not get it under control.
Kiana broke into their thoughts, “Where is he now?”
Joab said, “That is privy information.”
Abishai added, “But suffice it to say it is too holy a place for you to go and sink your luscious claws into him.”
“My lips are sealed,” pleaded Kiana. “Until the next time you stick something in them.”
Joab chuckled. Abishai sighed. That was why he could not stop coming to her. She was for him what his wife was not; a nymph who craved his sexuality and seduced him with words, dress and behavior. He wondered why good women would draw in a husband and then when they married them, they would stop all erotic endeavors. It was as if the very thing that drew the man was turned off as soon as they were trapped in the marriage. It seemed that family killed the sexual drive of women. They became mothers with an inability to any longer be lovers. Men were fish caught and thrown into the boat, gills desperately sucking for the life-giving source of their simple and primal need. That was why Abishai felt it was so easy for him to go astray, because his vice seemed more primal than his virtue.
