1 Kings 15:13 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

An idol in a grove. — The original word for “idol” — peculiar to this passage and its parallel (2 Chronicles 15:16) — appears to signify a “horrible abomination” of some monstrous kind; and instead of “in a grove,” we should read “for an asherah,” the wooden emblem of the Canaanitish deity (on which see 1 Kings 14:22). There seems little doubt that some obscene emblem is meant, of the kind so often connected with worship of the productive powers of nature in ancient religions, substituted as a still greater abomination for the ordinary asherah. Clearly the act of Maachah was one of so flagrant a kind, that Asa took the unusual step, on which the historian here lays great stress, of degrading her in her old age from her high dignity, besides hewing down her idol, and burning it publicly under the walls of Jerusalem.