Joseph's Blessing Echoes Asherah in a Sinai Inscription

... The Blessing God and His Asherah. The pairing of the god and goddess has an important reflex in the now famous Kuntillet ’Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inscriptions. The standard collections of inscriptions offer abundant notes on the readings and bibliography. Mentioned here is simply the information pertinent to the concern of this study, namely blessing by male and female powers. The Kuntillet ’Ajrud inscriptions contain four similar references along these lines. ... If this interpretation of Genesis 49:24-26 is correct, then El and Asherah were Israelite deities distinguished from Yahweh, who is invoked separately in verse 18. This chapter might then represent a tradition or early stage in Israel’s religious history in which El and Yahweh were not identified and Asherah stood as an identifiable goddess. ...