StrongerBible

asher

אָשֵׁר

HebrewH0836Proper Noun“Asher”

Appears 43 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 30:13Gen 35:26Gen 46:17Gen 49:20Exo 1:4Num 1:13Num 1:40Num 1:41Num 2:27 (2×)Num 7:72Num 10:26
Word studyResearch-gradeah-SHAREproper noun

What asher means

Asher: the eighth son of Jacob, whose name means "fortunate", along with the tribe descended from him and the northern coastal land that tribe held

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Asher is one of the Hebrew names that is still a working word. The letters spell the ordinary term for good fortune, and the birth story says so out loud: Leah, whose servant Zilpah has just borne the boy, cries "in my good fortune" and "women will call me fortunate", and names him accordingly. The plain noun for that good fortune (אֹשֶׁר) and the verb for congratulating someone on it (אָשַׁר) both sit in the same sentence, so the name arrives with its meaning attached rather than as a bare label.

After Genesis the name does three jobs, and the text slides between them without warning:

  • it names the man himself, listed among Jacob's sons and credited with children of his own
  • it names the tribe descended from him, counted in the censuses, given a chief, mustered for war, and judged for what it did and failed to do
  • it names that tribe's stretch of country in the far north, running along the coast, used as a boundary marker for its neighbors

The two great tribal poems keep playing on the meaning. In Jacob's blessing Asher's food is rich and he supplies delicacies fit for a king; in Moses' blessing Asher is called most favored of the sons, with his foot dipped in oil. Both picture a fat, well watered coastal strip, and both are hearing the name as a promise of prosperity.

The tribe's actual record is more mixed than its name. Judges reports that Asher failed to drive out the people of Acco and Sidon, and Deborah's song scolds the tribe for staying by its harbors while others fought. Yet Asher answered Gideon's summons, sent forty thousand men to David, and was among the northerners who came south to Hezekiah's Passover. Ezekiel's closing vision gives Asher a portion in the restored land and a gate in the city wall, so the name that began as a mother's cry of good fortune ends as one of the twelve names carved over the gates.

Nuances

1aAsher the man: Jacob's eighth son, born to Zilpah, and the ancestor whose children the genealogies list
Gen 30:13Gen 35:26Gen 46:17Exo 1:4Num 26:461Ch 2:21Ch 7:30
1bthe tribe of Asher: the people descended from him, counted, led, mustered, blessed, and held to account as a group
Gen 49:20Num 1:13Num 1:40Num 1:41Num 2:27 (2×)Num 7:72Num 10:26Num 13:13Num 26:44Num 26:47Num 34:27Deu 27:13
1cthe land of Asher: the tribe's northern coastal territory, named as a region or a boundary line
TranslatabilityDirect
Jos 17:7Jos 17:10Jos 17:11Jos 19:341Ki 4:16Ezk 48:2Ezk 48:3

What scholars say about asher

The name אָשֵׁר is generally derived from the root אשׁר in its "well-being" sense, and Genesis 30:13 supplies an explicit double folk-etymology: Leah's בְּאָשְׁרִי ("in my good fortune", the noun אֹשֶׁר) and her אִשְּׁרוּנִי ("they will call me fortunate", the declarative use of the verb). Commentators in the JPS tradition, along with Sarna, Wenham and Westermann, read the naming as wordplay on that sense, and the tribal oracles of Genesis 49:20 and Deuteronomy 33:24 continue the play on prosperity and favor; Cross and Freedman classify Deuteronomy 33 as archaic poetry. The underlying lexical question is contested, though it does not touch the reference of the name: BDB (p. 80) and the older Gesenius tradition treat אשׁר as a single root, deriving "be happy, fortunate" from "go straight, advance", whereas HALOT and Gesenius (18th ed.) separate a motion root (compare Akkadian ešēru/ašāru and Ugaritic ʾṯr "place, step") from the "happy" material, for which they adduce a different etymon. Cazelles (TDOT 1:445-448) likewise finds no real semantic bridge between the two poles. A minority observation notes that Zilpah's other son Gad also bears a name with divine associations and raises the possibility of a theophoric background for Asher, but the text's own etymology is the fortune sense and the suggestion is not developed in the standard lexica. The goddess אֲשֵׁרָה is now generally detached from this root: the leading proposals derive her name from ʾṯr ("sanctuary, place" in the Albright and Day lineage, or "tread" in the later Albright, Cross and Olyan line), while Park (UF 42, 2010) argues for a passive participle "one followed by (the gods)"; the Proto-Semitic interdental that yields Hebrew שׁ makes a link with the "be happy" root phonologically awkward. On the wider root, Janzen's study of אַשְׁרֵי established that the formula is a macarism, a human congratulation, distinct from the blessing conferred by ברך. The Septuagint transliterates the name as Ἀσήρ, which is the form carried into Luke and Revelation.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אָשֵׁר and [אָשַׁר], p. 80lexicon
  • Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. אשׁרlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 1, s.v. אשׁרlexicon
  • H. Cazelles, "אֶשֶׁר ʾesher; אַשְׁרֵי ʾashrê," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament 1:445-448reference
  • Waldemar Janzen, "ʾAshre in the Old Testament," Harvard Theological Review 58 (1965)journal
  • Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989)commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary 2 (Dallas: Word, 1994)commentary
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985)commentary
  • Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, SBL Dissertation Series 21monograph
  • Sung Jin Park, "Short Notes on the Etymology of Asherah," Ugarit-Forschungen 42 (2010)journal
  • John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, JSOTSup 265 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of אָשֵׁר

m

אָשֵׁר

Gen 30:13, Gen 35:26, Gen 46:17, Gen 49:20, Exo 1:4, Num 1:13, Num 1:40, Num 1:41