In tree-worship pure and simple as in Arabia, the tree is adored at an annual feast (? May), when it is hung with clothes and women’s ornaments (p. 169).
The tree at Mecca to which offerings are made is spoken of as a “tree to hang things on.”
The references to “groves” given in the Bible as associated with temple worship are misleading, “groves” being a wrong translation of the word Asherah, which was a pole made of wood which the Jews adopted from the Canaanites. It was ornamented and perhaps draped, and was most probably originally a tree. It may have been used in the “high places” because single trees would not grow there in the East any more than on the moors in Devon and Cornwall.
The antiquity of this emblem is proved by Smith’s statement (p. 171) that in an Assyrian monument from Khorsābād an ornamental pole is shown beside a portable altar. “Priests stand before it engaged in an act of worship and touch the pole with their hands or perhaps anoint it with some liquid substance.”
The draping of the tree seems to be proved by the passage which suggested the mistranslation to me before I wrote to some Hebrew scholars among my friends who allowed me to consult them. The passage is as follows (II. Kings, xxiii., 6, 7):—
“And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
“And he brake down the houses of the Sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove.”
To show how little variation there was in the Semitic practices to those recorded in British folklore I may state that one of my friends—one of the revision committee—informed me that his impression was that the Asherah was furnished with pegs or hooks, so that the garments, &c., might be easily hung on it.
I next come to the sacred waters. A sacred fountain, as well as the sacred tree, was a common symbol at Semitic sanctuaries (p. 183). Nevertheless, they were sometimes absent, the main place being given to altar worship. Further, Robertson Smith was of opinion that this altar worship did not originate with tree [? or water] worship (p. 170); but still, sacred wells are among the oldest and most ineradicable objects of reverence among all the Semites, and were credited with oracular powers (pp. 128, 154). The fountain or stream was not a mere adjunct to the temple, but was itself one of the principal sacra of the spot (p. 155).
Undoubtedly there were ordeals among other things at these wells (p. 163). One case is given in Numbers, v., 17, where the words “holy water” occur, and other water “that causeth the curse” is referred to. Ordeal by water is not unknown among British customs.