I was reading a post here on Blurt from new Blurt blogger @hebrew who discusses the Feminine aspect of God.
It seems in the Bible there are many names for God. Not all of them Masculin or even singular …
Is there one God with many Names or many gods?
YHVH
Elohim (plural gods)
El Shaddai
El ah (singular) similar to Allah
Why does God call himself, herself, themselves in the plural Elohim ?
When describing the Creation of Man/ women in Genesis … “Let us make mankind in our image …
Then God(s) said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
Genesis 1:26
So God has both male and female aspects or maybe there is a Divine Father and Divine Mother ?
A cohort of gods ???
YHVH and his Wife ??? …
Yes, her name was Asherah … there are many ancient texts that discuss Asherah, the wife of YHVH…
In the Temple there are Asherah Trees, erected in her honour, to honour the Divine Wife and Mother Creator.
In later years Asherah is purged from the Bible. There are only references to the destruction of her Asherah trees in the Temple.
Why was the Divine Mother destroyed ?
God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible -- Almost
God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.
Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.
"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife."
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42147912
Source: https://femminaclassica.com/in-search-of-asherah-the-lost-hebrew-goddess/
Luckily we have other names that are a reminder of the Divine Feminine … Wife, Mother and feminine aspect of the Gods (Elohim)
One name is Shekhinah ….
Shekhinah represents the feminine attributes of the presence of God, shekhinah being a feminine word in Hebrew, based especially on readings of the Talmud.
The shekhinah (Biblical Hebrew: שכינה šekīnah; also Romanized shekina(h), schechina(h), shechina(h)) is the English transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning "dwelling" or "settling" and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God.
Etymology
The word shekhinah is not present in the Bible, and is first encountered in the rabbinic literature.
The Semitic root from which shekhinah is derived, š-k-n, means "to settle, inhabit, or dwell".
In the verb form, it is often used to refer to the dwelling of a person or animal in a place, or to the dwelling of God.
Nouns derived from the root included shachen ("neighbor") and mishkan (a dwelling-place, whether a secular home or a holy site such as the Tabernacle.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekhinah
It is interesting that Jesus teaches us the Second most important Command is to Love thy neighbor (shachen) as thy Self.
Love the Divine indwelling as thy self. And Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your Soul and with all your Mind.
Matthew 22:36-40
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”