Imagine being Jacob’s eighth son Asher and your Dad tells you in front of your brothers that you’re going to be the rich one. “Asher my boy,” he says in Genesis 49:20, “your food will be rich and you will provide delicacies fit for a king.”
The tribe of Asher got the same good news from Moses too: “Asher is the most blessed of (Jacob’s) sons,” Deuteronomy 33:24, “let him be favoured by his brothers and let him bathe his feet in oil.” Again, it sounds like the Asherites are destined for a life of plenty and luxury.
Their destiny was set the moment Asher was born too, when “Leah cried out, ‘How happy I am. My women friends call me happy too.’ So she named him Asher,” Genesis 30:12-13 – Asher meaning “happiness.” The hint was there right from the start, then, that God had a great life in mind for Asher. He’d be rich, happy and “favoured by his brothers” too, suggesting that Asher was also generous, happily sharing his bounty with the rest of Israel.
The Asherites were well positioned to be generous too, because they were given some of the richest soil in all Canaan in a narrow but beautiful strip of land along the coast from the city of Sidon in the north (in southern Lebanon today) down to the slopes of Mount Carmel in the south (in northern Israel today). These well watered lowlands were perfect for vines, olive trees and wheat fields, producing wine, oil and wheat of the highest quality. The ten mile long valley of Asher was so fruitful it was called the ‘fat valley’. Not only, then, would the Asherites be totally self-sufficient, they would also provide rich foods and delicacies “fit for a king” (Genesis 49:20).
Fit for two kings too, according to 1 Kings 5. In a trade between king Solomon and king Hiram of Tyre, Hiram “kept Solomon supplied with all the cedar and pine logs he wanted” (10), and in return “Solomon gave Hiram 20,000 measures of wheat (125,000 bushels)….and 20,000 baths of pressed olive oil (115,000 gallons) year after year” (11). Such quantities and quality of wheat and olive oil “fit for a king” would suggest the Asherites as the source. The “baths” of olive oil would also tie in with the olive oil being so plentiful the Asherites could “bathe their feet in it” (Deuteronomy 33:24).
Their land produced enough to keep them rich and happy and in favour with both the king and their peers. So “What more could one wish for?”….(next blog)
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