Ash´ima (2 Kings 17:30), only once mentioned in the Old Testament as the god of the people of Hamath. The Babylonian Talmud, and the majority of Jewish writers, assert that Ashima was worshipped under the form of a goat without wool; the Talmud of Jerusalem says, under that of a lamb. Elias Levita, a learned Rabbi of the sixteenth century, assigns the word the sense of ape. Jurieu and Calmet have proposed other fanciful conjectures. The opinion that this idol had the form of a goat, however, appears to be the one best supported by arguments as well as by authorities.