A Piece of Wood

2 Kings 23:6 KJV

And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.

Because of the common usage I view a grove as a stand of trees consisting of several acres. (Abraham planted one of those - an entirely different Hebrew word[1]). This was obviously not the use of the word in this case, or in almost every mention of a grove in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word is Asherah, a goddess. When groves were cut down in the Old Testament, they were not speaking of orchards or trees; they were speaking of idols set up either in high places or inside sanctified buildings.

The use word grove signifies the lifelessness of the idol. It is vain and useless in any sense of the word. Wycliffe's translation just calls it wood. It is certainly not a living green tree.

We do damage to the Word of God when we interpret it according to our own ideas and not through honest study of the text.

[1] Genesis 21:33 KJV

And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.