Some forty times the King James says “grove” — a stand of trees. The Hebrew word is asherah: the name of a goddess, a great mother-figure of the older Levant, and the wooden pole that stood for her. Inscriptions from around the eighth century BC even set her beside the LORD — “YHWH and his Asherah.” Rendered into a clump of trees, she slips past the English reader again and again, unseen — a goddess folded down into scenery. She is one of the clearer places the older, wider picture of the divine narrowed to one.