What more could one wish for?

In Deuteronomy 33:24, Asher is described as the “most blessed of sons.” And truly blessed his descendants were too. Physically they were given everything a human could dream of in the land they were allotted in Canaan. Rich soil for producing the finest wine, olives and wheat, access to the riches of the Mediterranean Sea, contracts with royalty for their exotic foods and the highly prized Tyrian purple dye, and a beautiful land of date palms and beaches. A paradise. 

What more could one wish for? Well, in verse 25 Moses did offer more, when he told the Asherites, “The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze, and your strength will equal your days.” This was a promise of security as well, pictured by the strength of the locking system on their city gates. To keep the gates firmly closed, a bar of wood or metal would slot into brackets held in place on the gates and gate posts by metal bolts – providing fortifications strong enough to give the Asherites security “equal to their days,” or as long as they were resident there. So not only were the Asherites promised prosperity, they had security to protect that prosperity too. 

Which was good to know because as a coastal tribe the Asherites were vulnerable to invasion from both sea and land, and the Phoenicians had already set up city states like Tyre and Sidon on their Asherite land too. And the Phoenicians were a power to be reckoned with. They were skilled shipbuilders and canny sailors that had enabled them to build a trading empire that reached as far as the Atlantic Ocean. 

But God had guaranteed Asher’s safety and their prosperity, so again, what more could one wish for? 

Well, there was one more thing: humility, because pride would wreck everything. Or as Moses phrased it in Deuteronomy 8:11, “Be careful,” because when life has been good (12-13) – as it certainly was for the Asherites – “then your heart will become proud” (14), and “You say to yourselves, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me’” (17). The danger then being that they’d lose their awareness of God as their provider (18) and “follow other gods and bow down to them” instead, to which God also says in verse 19, “I testify against you today that (if you do that) you will surely be destroyed.” 

And destruction came too, because in Judges 4:2, “the Lord sold the Israelites into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan,” but it’s in the Asherites’ response to God that we see just “What pride can lead to”….(next blog)