The Hebrew text of Deut 16:21 reads: לֹא־תִטַּע לְךָ אֲשֵׁרָה
כָּל־עֵץ אֵצֶל מִזְבַּח יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשֶׂה־לָּךְ (“You shall not
set up [lit. plant] for yourself an Asherah of any kind of wood beside the
altar of YHWH your God, which you make for yourself.”) The difficulty here is
the ambiguity of the Hebrew word עֵץ, which can rendered “tree” (Gen 1:1; Exod
10:15; Lev 19:23; Deut 20:19) or “word” (Lev 11:32; Num 31:20; Deut 10:1;
29:16), respectively. Much has been said about the figurative use of “plant” (נטע)
in the Hebrew text (see Wiggins, “Of Asherahs and Trees,” 166-68; Park, “The Cultic
Identity of Asherah,” 535-36; Joan Taylor, “The Asherah, the Menorah,” 38;
Binger, Asherah, 122-23), thus, leading one to conclude the text is prohibiting
the “setting up” of a wooden cult object next to an altar. The grouping of “alter,”
“asherah,” and “pillar” (maṣṣēbâ, מַצֵּבָה) in Deut 16:21 and 22,
highlights the key components of worship at the בָּמָה (bāmâ, “high
place”). 1 Kings 14:23 and 2 Kgs 17:10 give indication that the high place was
constructed by building a pillar and an asherah under what would have been a
separate tree from the asherah. While it is certainly possible that the asherah
was a small tree planted beneath an already existing tree, this seems
improbable. Therefore, since Deut 16:21-22 reflects the ritualistic components of
the high place, it is unlikely that v. 21 refers to planting a living tree
beside an altar. Larocca-Pitts argued that Deut 16:21 referred to a living tree
next to the altar but read this conclusion against the latter texts in Kings
and Jeremiah, which she believed indicated a small cultic object placed under a
living tree. Her overall conclusion, largely confirmed here, is that trees were
incorporated into Israel’s worship in various ways through the biblical period.
It does seem that there was something of a transition from the use of live
trees earlier in that history and an apparent transition to more stylized,
fashioned cultic objects later on (Elizabeth L. Larocca-Pitts, “Of Wood and
Stone”: The Significance of Israelite Cultic Items in the Bible and Its Early
Interpreters [HSM 61; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001[, 168-85) (William
R. Osborne, Trees and Kings: A Comparative Analysis of Tree Imagery in Israel’s
Prophetic Tradition and the Ancient Near East [Bulletin for Biblical Research
Supplement 18; University Park, Pa.: Eisenbrauns, 2018], 90-91 n. 51)