Ashima

Ashima was a deity introduced into the territory of Samaria by the Hamathite colonists settled there after the Assyrian deportation of the northern tribes of Israel (c. 722 BC). When the Assyrian king repopulated the vacant Israelite territories with peoples from various nations, each group brought its own gods: "The men of Hamath made Ashima" (2 Kings 17:30). This statement appears in the catalogue of foreign gods — alongside Succoth-benoth, Nergal, Nibhaz, Tartak, Adrammelech, and Anammelech — that the biblical narrator uses to illustrate the religious corruption of the mixed population in the former northern kingdom.

The identity and nature of Ashima remain obscure. Some scholars connect the name with an Aramaic word for "guilt" or "transgression"; others have tentatively identified Ashima with a goat-deity or with a figure resembling the Greek Pan. The biblical text's primary concern is not the precise character of Ashima but what it represents: the syncretism that resulted when foreign settlers combined the worship of the LORD with their own national cults, "fearing the LORD but also serving their own gods" (2 Kings 17:33). This is the same pattern of faithlessness the author of Kings had condemned in the northern kingdom, now replicated by its foreign replacements on the same land.