Genesis 28:18 and Asherah

While Genesis is remarkably silent on the subject of goddess worship, we are told that Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba and called there on the name o the Lord, El Olam (Gen 21:33). The tree beside a place of worship of El can reasonably be construed as an asherah, and the stone that Jacob erects in Bethel is explicitly called a maṣṣēbâ (Gen 28:18). (John J. Collins, The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005], 124)