The historian tells us that Hezekiah "removed the _bamoth_"--the chapels on the high places, with their ephods and teraphim--whether dedicated to the worship of Jehovah or profaned by alien idolatry. That he did, or attempted, something of this kind seems certain; for the Rabshakeh, if we regard his speech as historical in its details, actually taunted him with impiety, and threatened him with the wrath of Jehovah on this very account. Yet here we are at once met with the many difficulties with which the history of Israel abounds, and which remind us at every turn that we know much less about the inner life and religious conditions of the Hebrews than we might infer from a superficial study of the historians who wrote so many centuries after the events which they describe. Over and over again their incidental notices reveal a condition of society and worship which violently collides with what seems to be their general estimate. Who, for instance, would not infer from this notice that in Judah, at any rate, the king's suppression of the "high places," and above all of those which were idolatrous, had been tolerably thorough? How much, then, are we amazed to find that Hezekiah had not effectually desecrated even the old shrines which Solomon had erected to Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom[482] "at the right hand of the mount of corruption"--in other words, on one of the peaks of the Mount of Olives, in full view of the walls of Jerusalem and of the Temple Hill! "And he brake the images," or, as the R.V. more correctly renders it, "the pillars," the _matstseboth_. Originally--that is, before the appearance of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes--no objection seems to have been felt to the erection of a _matstsebah_. Jacob erected one of these _baitulia_ or anointed stones at Bethel, with every sign of Divine approval.[483] Moses erected twelve round his altar at Sinai.[484] Joshua erected them in Shechem and on Mount Ebal. Hosea, in one passage (iii. 4), seems to mention pillars, ephods, and teraphim as legitimate objects of desire. Whether they have any relation to obelisks, and what is their exact significance, is uncertain; but they had become objects of just suspicion in the universal tendency to idolatry, and in the deepening conviction that the second commandment required a far more rigid adherence than it had hitherto received. "And cut down the groves"--or rather the Asherim, the wooden, and probably in some instances phallic, emblems of the nature-goddess Asherah, the goddess of fertility.[485] She is sometimes identified with Astarte, the goddess of the moon and of love; but there is no sufficient ground for the identification. Some, indeed, doubt whether Asherah is the name of a goddess at all. They suppose that the word only means a consecrated pole or pillar, emblematic of the sacred tree.[486]