to loosen · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
LORD
יְהוָ֑הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
served
וַיַּעַבְד֥וּvai.ya.'av.Du
H5647
to work (in any sense) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
Baal
לַבַּ֖עַלla.Ba.'al
H1168
Baal · preposition with the article + noun, masculine singular absolute
Ashtaroth
וְלָעַשְׁתָּרֽוֹתve.la.'ash.ta.Rot
H6252
Ashtaroth · conjunction + preposition with the article + noun, common feminine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Judges 10:6 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of…
Psalms 106:36 And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them.
Judges 3:7 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgat the LORD their God, and served Baalim and the groves.
1 Corinthians 10:20-22 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fello…
Judges 2:11 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim:
1 Samuel 31:10 And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.
1 Kings 11:5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
1 Kings 11:33 Because that they have forsaken me, and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Judges 2:6–end
The beginning of this paragraph is only a repetition of what account we had before of the people's good character during the government of Joshua, and of his death and burial (Jos 24:29, Jos 24:30), which comes in here again only to make way for the following account, which this chapter gives, of their degeneracy and apostasy. The angel had foretold that the Canaanites and their idols would be a snare to Israel; now the historian undertakes to show that they were so, and, that this may appear the more clear, he looks back a little, and takes notice, 1. Of their happy settlement in the land of Canaan. Joshua, having distributed this land among them, dismissed them to the quiet and comfortable…
Ashtaroth--Also a plural word, denoting all the female divinities, whose rites were celebrated by the most gross and revolting impurities.
John Gill on Judges 2:13
And they forsook the Lord,.... The worship of the Lord, as the Targum; this is repeated to observe the heinous sin they were guilty of, and how displeasing it was to God:
and served Baal and Ashtaroth; two images, as the Arabic version adds; Baal, from whence Baalim, may signify the he deities of the Gentiles, as Jupiter, Hercules, &c. and Ashtaroth their female deities, as Juno, Venus, Diana, &c. the word is plural, and used for flocks of sheep, so called because they make the owners of them rich; and Kimchi and Ben Melech say these were images in the form of female sheep. Perhaps, as Baal may signify the sun, so Ashtaroth the moon, and the stars like flocks of sheep about her. Ashtaroth w…
Thus they forsook Jehovah, and served Baal and the Asthartes. In this case the singular Baal is connected with the plural Ashtaroth, because the male deities of all the Canaanitish nations, and those that bordered upon Canaan, were in their nature one and the same deity, viz., Baal, a sun-god, and as such the vehicle and source of physical life, and of the generative and reproductive power of nature, which was regarded as an effluence from its own being (see Movers, Relig. der Phnizier, pp. 184ff., and J. G. Mller in Herzog's Cyclopaedia). "Ashtaroth, from the singular Ashtoreth, which only occurs again in Kg1 11:5, Kg1 11:33, and Kg2 23:13, in connection with the Sidonian Astharte, was the…
The Church Fathers
And they served Baal and the Astartes. It is often said that the name of Baal among the people of those regions corresponds to that of Jupiter, and that of Astarte to that of Juno, which seems to be demonstrated also by the Punic language. In effect, the Punic seem to designate Baal as the Lord; from where it is thought that they call Baalsamen as the Lord of heaven; because Samen, for the Punic, means heavens. And without a doubt they call Astarte to Juno. And since these languages do not differ much from one another, it is rightly believed that the Scripture here says that the children of Israel served Baal and the Astartes, because they served Jupiter and the Junos. And we should not be surprised if he did not say to Astarte, that is, to Juno, but that he has put this word in the plural, as if there were many Junos. The Scripture wanted to indicate in this way a great amount of images, because each image of Juno was called Juno. And that's why he wanted to say that there were so many Junos how many were the images of the goddess. And I think he wanted to use the singular for Jupiter and the plural for Juno because of variety. Because if I had done so because of the number of images, I could also have spoken in the plural of the Jupiter. Now, the plural name of the Junos is found in the Greek text. In the Latin texts, on the other hand, it was in the singular. In the text that is not based on the version of the Seventy, but in the Hebrew, we read Astarot and not Baal, but Baales. And if by chance these names mean something else in the Hebrew or Syriac language, it is certain that they were strange and false gods, whom Israel was not to serve.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Fast — The sole fast required by the law of Moses was that of the great Day of Atonement (q.v.), Lev. 23:26-32. It is called “the fast” (Acts 27:9). The only other mention of a periodical fast in the Old…
Ashtoreth · Worshiped by Israelites — Worshiped by Israelites
Baal · .The Israelites wickedly worshiped in the time of the — .The Israelites wickedly worshiped in the time of the
Idolatry · Idols, mentioned in Scripture: Ashtoreth — Idols, mentioned in Scripture: Ashtoreth
Jews, The · Often subdued and made tributary — Often subdued and made tributary
Polytheism · 24:2,23; — 24:2,23;
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
At Timnas Cheres. So entitled because a likeness of the sun11‘Timnas Serach’ is literally translated as ‘The likeness of the sun’. was placed over his grave, as if to say, "Alas, that a man who halted the sun12Yehoshua ordered the sun to stand still, and the sun obeyed. (Yehoshua, 10:12,13.) lies in the grave."
