This is a difficult subject, very easy to misconstrue and arrive at a real mess.
1. There were many people, Jews by cultural association (ethnicity?), who were polytheist in Canaan, quite popularly until the time of the Maccabees, but even still in Jesus' time (who do you suppose were throwing sacrifices into Gehenna).
2. Most of these referred to their gods as "ba'al" or "lords", of which there were many, and these competed often, not only for followers, but between themselves, in a manner akin to egyptian, greek or roman pantheons. To christian understanding these were all demons, notably the "lord of Tyre" in Ezekiel 28, Ba'al Melqart, which is probably the eidolon for our modern understanding of Satan (capital S, as a personality, not just one of many "accusers").
3. At least one particular contention of this mythos held a chief god named "El". The word "El" has a sort of generic meaning, as we might call God, "God", or as Arabic christians, speaking Arabic, might call God, "Allah", if they're speaking native dialect. This doesn't mean they're referring to Islam, just as "El" in 900BC wasn't necessarily referring to "Elohim". Truely, these, and even the tet "YHWH" are not the "name of God", which is not pronounceable, and a very bad issue to even try.
4. Just as we now have pulp fiction writers of religious dogma, like rapture, thousands of years ago people trying to seem important would embellish stories and tradition. In one of these, "YHWH" had a wife, Asherah, or Ashtaroth. Now, Solomon had built many temples to foreign (false) gods, the ba'als, but subsequent kings also erected dedications to false beliefs, such as Manasseh a "totem" or "shrine" to Asherah, which was later destroyed by his grandson, Josiah.
5. Many asherah poles were fashioned in this false premise after Josiah. Considering the context of false idol worship (including but not limited to asherah poles) several kings "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19) and ultimately this was a contributing factor to God's allowing of the Babylonian exile.
So, no, God (real God, capitol G) did not "have a wife", and the punishment for years of teaching he had such, led to calamity. A proper teaching would be, "False teachers taught that God had a wife, and when the people had believed it for such a time, God punished them all horribly".