Tribes of Israel
Asher
Asher got the richest farmland in Israel and did the least fighting for it. The tribe blessed with oil, wheat, and a sheltered coast settled comfortably among the Phoenicians, sat out Deborah’s war, and produced not one judge, king, or prophet — and then, at the very end, produced the old woman who recognized the Messiah.
On this page
At a glance
The man behind the tribe
Asher was Zilpah’s second son. Leah named him out of satisfaction rather than struggle: “Happy am I! For women have called me happy” (Genesis 30:13). The man leaves no other trace; the tribe’s character is written entirely in its land.
The blessings
Jacob: “Asher’s food shall be rich, and he shall yield royal delicacies” (Genesis 49:20) — the tribe that supplied the king’s table.
Moses is even warmer, and gives Asher one of the most quoted lines in Deuteronomy: “Most blessed of sons be Asher; let him be the favorite of his brothers, and let him dip his foot in oil. Your bars shall be iron and bronze, and as your days, so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:24-25). Olive oil was the region’s wealth, and “as your days, so shall your strength be” has comforted readers ever since — strength issued daily, matched to the day it is needed for.
Territory
Western Galilee: the fertile coastal strip and the hills behind it, from Mount Carmel north toward Sidon and Tyre (Joshua 19:24-31). Twenty-two towns, olive groves, grain, and access to the sea.
It was also the most Phoenician stretch of the allotment, and Asher never cleared it: “Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco, or the inhabitants of Sidon or of Ahlab or of Achzib... so the Asherites lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for they did not drive them out” (Judges 1:31-32). Note the reversal in that sentence — Asher lived among the Canaanites, not the other way round.
History in outline
c. 1906 BC — Born
Zilpah’s second son (Genesis 30:12-13).
c. 1400 BC — Western Galilee allotted
Asher receives the coast and hills as far as Sidon (Joshua 19:24-31).
c. 1390 BC — Living among the Canaanites
Acco, Sidon, Achzib, and Aphek are never taken (Judges 1:31-32).
c. 1250 BC — Sitting still
Deborah’s song: “Asher sat still at the coast of the sea, staying by his landings” (Judges 5:17).
c. 1180 BC — With Gideon
Asher does answer this call, joining the pursuit of Midian (Judges 6:35; 7:23).
c. 1000 BC — With David
40,000 men of Asher “ready for battle” come to Hebron (1 Chronicles 12:36).
c. 950 BC — Solomon’s provisions
Asher’s territory falls in the district of Baana son of Hushai, one of the twelve officers who supplied the king’s household a month each (1 Kings 4:16).
c. 950 BC — Twenty towns given away
Solomon gives Hiram of Tyre twenty cities “in the land of Galilee” in payment for cedar and gold; Hiram is unimpressed and calls them Cabul (1 Kings 9:11-13).
c. 715 BC — A remnant comes south
Hezekiah’s couriers invite the northern remnant to Passover in Jerusalem; most laugh, but “some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 30:10-11).
733-722 BC — Exile
Galilee is annexed and deported by Assyria (2 Kings 15:29; 17:6).
c. 5 BC — Anna
“There was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher,” eighty-four years a widow, worshiping night and day in the temple — and she recognizes the infant Jesus and speaks of Him “to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:36-38).
Israel or Judah?
Israel — the north. Asher’s territory was in Galilee, well inside Jeroboam’s kingdom, and the tribe stayed there for the whole life of the northern kingdom. Its land was part of what Solomon had already been trading away to Tyre, and it was among the first regions Assyria annexed in 733 BC.
But Asher is also the best-documented case of the northern tribes not vanishing entirely. Some Asherites came south to Hezekiah’s Passover in about 715 BC, joining the worship at Jerusalem while their own kingdom collapsed (2 Chronicles 30:11). And seven centuries after the deportation, Luke can still identify a woman in the temple as “of the tribe of Asher” — proof that tribal identity survived the exile in individual families even where the tribe as a political body did not.
Notable people
Asher produced no judge, no king, and no writing prophet. Its named figures are quiet ones: Pagiel son of Ochran, the chief who led the tribe in the wilderness (Numbers 1:13); Sethur, its spy, who came back with the bad report along with nine others (Numbers 13:13); and Anna.
Anna is worth the whole tribe. A widow of eighty-four from a tribe that had been scattered for seven hundred years, she “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day” — and she was there on the day a poor couple came in with a baby and two pigeons. She is the only person in Luke’s Gospel called a prophetess, and the first woman to preach Christ.
Christ connection
Asher is a warning and then a mercy. The warning is comfort: given the richest land, the tribe settled among its neighbors, kept its landings, and stayed home when Israel went to war. Prosperity is the quietest way to lose a tribe.
The mercy is Anna. Moses had promised, “as your days, so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25), and the last Asherite in Scripture is an old woman whose strength held for eighty-four years of widowed waiting until she saw what she had been waiting for. The tribe that dipped its foot in oil ends with someone who had nothing but the temple and got the Messiah in her arms.
Key passages
- Genesis 30:12-13 — Asher’s birth and name.
- Genesis 49:20 — “He shall yield royal delicacies.”
- Deuteronomy 33:24-25 — “As your days, so shall your strength be.”
- Joshua 19:24-31; Judges 1:31-32 — The allotment, and living among the Canaanites.
- Judges 5:17 — “Asher sat still at the coast of the sea.”
- 1 Kings 9:11-13 — Solomon gives twenty Galilean towns to Hiram.
- 2 Chronicles 30:10-11 — Men of Asher humble themselves and come to Jerusalem.
- Luke 2:36-38 — Anna, of the tribe of Asher.