Tribe of Israel
Tribe of Asher in the Bible אָשֵׁר
Asher receives rich blessing imagery but often stands at the edge of Israel’s national narratives. Its story includes incomplete conquest, moments of passivity, later humility in worship, and Anna the prophetess in the New Testament.
Start here in Scripture
Key Bible passages for the tribe of Asher
These passages provide the quickest route into Asher’s identity and trajectory. The fuller reference index below is designed for deeper study.
Origin story
Asher is Jacob’s second son through Zilpah. Leah names him with the language of happiness or blessedness (Genesis 30:12–13).
Promise, blessing, and calling
Jacob associates Asher with rich food, while Moses speaks of favor, oil, and enduring strength (Genesis 49:20; Deuteronomy 33:24–25).
The tribe’s biblical trajectory
Asher receives a fertile coastal allotment but fails to drive out several Canaanite populations and instead dwells among them. Deborah’s song criticizes Asher for remaining by the coast while others fought. Later, however, some from Asher humble themselves and come to Hezekiah’s Passover despite ridicule from others.
Famous stories, milestones, and lessons
Genesis 49:20; Deuteronomy 33:24–25
Abundance blessed
Material abundance is a stewardship, not a spiritual verdict.
Judges 1:31–32
Incomplete conquest
Living comfortably alongside entrenched compromise can normalize what should have been confronted.
Judges 5:17
Absence from Deborah’s battle
Security and commerce can become excuses for disengagement.
2 Chronicles 30:10–11
Humility at Hezekiah’s Passover
Some from Asher reject cynicism, humble themselves, and return to worship.
Luke 2:36–38
Anna the prophetess
A seemingly quiet tribal line is represented by faithful prayer, worship, and recognition of Messiah.
Faithfulness, failure, and repentance
Asher’s story contrasts abundance and disengagement with later humility. The tribe’s New Testament representative, Anna, embodies the opposite of complacency: long faithfulness in worship, fasting, prayer, and witness.
Ending story and later biblical horizon
The New Testament unexpectedly gives Asher a personal face in Anna the prophetess, a woman of the tribe who worships, fasts, prays, and recognizes the child Jesus. Ezekiel and Revelation also retain Asher in later tribal lists.
Deep Bible study
Bible reference index for the tribe of Asher
Designed to be exhaustive for tribal identity and trajectory: patriarch/lineage, censuses and camp order, inheritance, major tribal actors, corporate faithfulness/failure, exile/restoration texts, and explicit later tribal references. Excludes unrelated homonyms and routine geographic uses that add nothing to the tribe's story.
Show the book-by-book reference index
- 1 Kings
- 4:16
- 2 Chronicles
- 30:10–11
- Exodus
- 1:4
- Ezekiel
- 48:2–3,34
- Joshua
- 17:7,10–11; 19:24–31,34; 21:6,30–31
- Luke
- 2:36–38
- Revelation
- 7:6
Read in context: a tribal name can identify the patriarch, descendants, territory, a political kingdom, or a later restoration/symbolic setting. The surrounding passage determines which sense is in view.
