Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 2:13

"And they forsook Jehovah, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth." — Judges 2:13 (ASV)

Baal and Ashtaroth. —Literally, “the Baals and the Ashtareths.”

Ashtaroth. —This is the plural of the feminine word Ash-tareth, or Astarte, “the goddess of the Sidonians” (1 Kings 11:5), the Phoenician Venus. She was identified sometimes with the moon (for example, in the name Ashtaroth Karnaim, “the city of the two-horned moon,” the name of Og’s capital, Deuteronomy 1:4), and sometimes with the planet Venus (2 Kings 23:4; compare Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3:23; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1:10).

She is called the “queen of heaven” in Jeremiah 7:10 and Jeremiah 44:17, and was called Baalti (“my lady”) by the Phoenicians. The plural form, Ashtaroth, may be, as Ewald thinks, a plural of excellence or, like Baalim, an allusion to the different forms and attributes under which the goddess was worshipped. The worship of Baalim and Ashtaroth naturally went hand in hand (1 Samuel 7:4; 1 Samuel 12:10).

Ashtaroth is not to be confused with the Asheroth (rendered “groves” in the English Version) mentioned in Judges 3:7. The words resemble each other less in Hebrew, as Ashtaroth begins with ע (ayin), not with א (aleph). Milton’s allusions to these deities are not only exquisitely beautiful but also very correct, as he derived his information from Selden’s learned Syntagma de Dis Syris:

“With these in troop
Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Zion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple.”

(Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 439).

The derivation of the word is very uncertain. It probably has no connection with the Greek Aster, or the Persian Esther.