1 Samuel 7:3

ISRAEL GETS RID OF THEIR FALSE GODS

"Then Samuel said to all the house of Israel, "If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you, and direct your heart to the Lord, and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. So they put away the Baals and the Ashteroth, and they served the Lord only."

"Then" (1 Samuel 7:3). This does not mean "after twenty years," but refers to the time when Israel was `lamenting after the Lord,' probably at once following their terrible defeat.

Philbeck marveled that the Philistines did not follow up their victory at Ebenezer at once and completely subjugate Israel. He wrote, "For some reason the Philistine advance stalled, and little effort was made to follow up their victory."[4] In all probability their experience with the bubonic plague was the all-sufficient reason!

"The ... Ashtaroth" (1 Samuel 7:3). "This is the Hebrew plural of [~Ashtoreth], the name of the goddess of the Babylonians called Ishtar, and by the Greeks Astarte. She was the oldest and the most widely distributed of the Semitic deities; and among the western Semites she was the goddess of fertility and sexual relations. Rites of a most licentious nature were associated with her worship."[5]

It is amazing that Israel needed a prophet to tell them anything like this. Ordinary common sense should have revealed it.

"So they put away the Baals and the Ashteroth, and served the Lord only" (1 Samuel 7:4). These pagan deities were worshipped by all the Phoenicians, including the Philistines; and, "This casting off of the false deities was equivalent to a rebellion against Philistine supremacy"[6] Due to the abbreviated nature of this narrative, we are not told exactly how Israel rejected the false gods.

"It must have been done by a public act, by which at some previously arranged time, the images of their Baals and Ashteroths were torn from their shrines, thrown down and broken into pieces."[7]