“Break down their altars, smash their standing-stones to pieces, burn up their sacred poles completely and cut down the carved images of their gods. Exterminate their name from that place. “But you are not to treat Adonai your God this way. Rather, you are to come to the place where Adonai your God will put his name. He will choose it from all your tribes; and you will seek out that place, which is where he will live, and go there.”-Deuteronomy 12:3-5
In terms of the worship practices of the ancient Middle East, one of the things we should have a good understanding of by now is that anybody was allowed to build their own altar and shrine to their own god and set it up wherever they liked.
If it were somehow possible to take a jeep tour through ancient Canaan prior to the Israelites invading it, one would have found scattered throughout the land a ton of altars and poles and sacred groves all dedicated to the various gods.
It was complete chaos.
Single families would build their own private shrines and set them up inside their homes or in their backyards.
Towns would construct communal altars to the gods they believed were ruling over whatever location they were settled in.
Kings with their maniac egos would have elaborate altars and shrines constructed just for them and their gods.
Heck, I betcha in some cases, the king would declare himself a god and have an altar dedicated just to him.
Obviously, it was typical to make sure all of these shrines and altars were set up at convenient locations so everyone had easy access to them.
Again, understand this was the standard practice of the whole entire known world at the time.
Not only were the Israelites fully aware of these pagan worship practices, they themselves were practitioners of these customs.
That is why the Lord through Moses had to make it clear to the children of Israel that they were NOT to follow after the worship practices of the world.
The Israelites would have assumed without giving it one second thought that it would be business as usual in terms of how they were to carry out their worship practices.
They would have assumed it would be fine and dandy to build altars, groves and shrines at a bunch of different locations in whatever area they ended up settling in and worship HASHEM wherever and however they felt it best (does this situation sound familiar to you?).
The Lord is saying…NO WAY JOSE!
Verse 4 makes it clear that Israel is NOT to plant groves and trees or erect totem poles etcetera after the manner of the Canaanites.
Instead, there is to be ONE CENTRAL PLACE OF WORSHIP.
The one central place is where the Tabernacle (later the Temple) was to be set up and where sacrificing was to take place.
All of the 12 Tribes of Israel were to make a journey to the one designated area of worship and there offer up their sacrifices and tithes etcetera.
Another practice the Lord commanded the Israelites to immediately stop was the practice of rededicating an altar to a new or different god.
In the beginning, an altar was considered a place dedicated to just one specifically named god or goddess.
One wasn’t allowed to just randomly pick an altar or shrine and just willy nilly decide to which god they were paying homage to…
…like a rent-an-office for a set period of time where you could use the facilities in any manner you pleased.
However, over time that practice changed.
Why?
Because it was a serious pain-in-the-neck to construct and then set up a full-blown altar or shrine.
It took a heck of a lot of time and manpower.
In addition, one had to deal with the reality of people moving in and out of different locations.
Or in some cases, some warring tribe with their own set of gods and beliefs would suddenly show up and take over another area.
In such cases, rather than start from scratch and build a new altar or shrine, what usually happened is the newcomers would just re-dedicate their gods to whatever existing altar or shrine had already been set up.
Well, the God of Israel said NO to all of this.
Israel was not to engage in such practices towards Him.
Now one interesting takeaway that came to me when I was typing up this post is how similar the world is today to the heathen worship practices of the ancient world.
Think about it.
The state of the world today is literally every man for himself.
“Belief whatever you want and worship however you want” seems to be the philosophy of the world today.
Look at Christianity with only God knows how many different denominations it has.
There appears to be no consensus on anything.
This is totally opposite to what the Lord is promoting in His Torah which teaches there is to be…
…ONE WAY OF DOING THINGS…
…FOR ONE UNITED ISRAEL…
…AT ONE CENTRAL LOCATION.
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