The name Ashima (אַשִּׁימָא) appears in 2 Kings 17:30 as a deity brought to Samaria by the people of Hamath, one of the foreign peoples resettled in the northern kingdom after the Assyrian deportation of Israel in 722 BC. Each relocated people group brought their own gods, worshiping them alongside the LORD in a syncretistic religious mix.
Second Kings 17:24–41 provides one of the Bible's most explicit condemnations of religious syncretism. The resettled peoples 'feared the LORD and also served their own gods' (v.33) — exactly the kind of compromised dual allegiance that God's covenant prohibited. Ashima represents the broader pattern of assimilating pagan deities into Yahweh worship. God's response was not acceptance but judgment. In every era, the temptation to blend the worship of the living God with cultural religious practices remains, and Scripture consistently calls God's people to exclusive devotion.