oses promoted loyalty to Yahweh by advocating the centralization of worship, the policy that Yahweh could only be worshiped in one place. This would have had two purposes. One would have been to eliminate the myriad local shrines dedicated to the ancestors and to traditional Canaanite deities. The other would have been to supervise all legitimate worship practices, and not coincidentally reap the material benefits for the support of the priesthood that accrued when Israelites came to perform their duties.
2 "You must completely eradicate all the places where the nations you are dispossessing used to worship their gods, places on the high mountains, on the hills, and those under lush trees. 3 Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and cut down the idols of their gods. Eradicate their name from that place. 4 Do not worship YHWH your Elohim in the same way as they did theirs. 5 Rather, you shall seek out the place that YHWH your Elohim will choose out of all your tribes to put his name, where he will dwell. You should go there. 6 Bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and donations, your pledges and contributions, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 7 There you shall eat in the presence of YHWH your Elohim, you and your household, rejoicing in everything you undertake, in whatever YHWH your Elohim has blessed you." (12:2-7)
The phrase "the place YHWH your God will choose" is an indefinite way of referring to Jerusalem. The exact place could not be named because the surface setting of Deuteronomy puts it at a time before Jerusalem had been founded as Israel's capital. The various types of sacrifices and offerings in this passage indicate that all forms of worship and the payment of all dues were to be made at this central sanctuary. The phrase "to put his name, where he will dwell" has been taken as an indicator of the attempt of Deuteronomy to change the common Israelite belief that God really lived in an earthly sanctuary (see von Rad 1966; challenged by Wilson 1995). By referring instead to the name of God rather than God himself as what dwells in the sanctuary, Israel was to acquire a less physical and a more transcendent understanding of the nature of God's presence.
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The Western Wall, Jerusalem
The Western Wall in Jerusalem is the closest point of contact to the ancient site of Solomon's temple, though nothing of this temple remains. Here, before an ancient retaining wall of the temple mount, Jews from around the world gather to pray and remember. Deuteronomy implies that this place shall be the only place Israel's God may properly be worshipped.
Photo by Barry Bandstra |
Worship centers traditionally were located on hills or other high places, frequently in forests and groves. That goes for the Canaanites and other inhabitants of Palestine ("the nations you are dispossessing") as well as for the Israelites. Both of the places on which Israel's God revealed himself were mountains. The covenant was given on Mount Sinai, and Israel's chief sanctuary was located on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
The Israelites were warned against using traditional Canaanite high places because of the danger of syncretism, blending Yahwism with Baalism, or some other foreign religious element, even in unintentional ways. The experience of the Northern Kingdom suggested that a variety of worship centers could be dangerous to the faith of the people. In the north, before its destruction, many cities contained shrines. Usually they were located in places where Baal and Asherah used to be worshiped, and aspects of Baal worship were frequently assimilated to Yahwistic worship at those places. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between the two. Prophets frequently condemned such worship places (Hosea 8:11; Jeremiah 11:13). According to the prophets the attraction of such shrines was one of the major reasons why the Northern Kingdom fell.
The writer of Deuteronomy, called the Deuteronomist, knew all too well the price of such disloyalty. He was probably a Levite from the north, and after its destruction in 721 B.C.E. he fled south and brought a message of warning to Judah in the hope that its people might avoid Israel's fate. The centralization of worship in Jerusalem mandated in this text was initiated during the reign of Hezekiah (715-687 B.C.E.). He abolished the offering of sacrifices anywhere but in the capital. Josiah (640-609 B.C.E.) went even further by abolishing all sanctuaries and temples throughout the land, except for the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem. In this way stricter control over the religious practices of the people could be maintained.
Archaeological excavations at Arad, a Judean city in the south of Palestine, support the biblical description of these religious reforms. Arad contains the remains of a temple structure and altars dating to before the time of Hezekiah, all built according to the specifications of the Jerusalem temple and its altars (see Figure 5.2). It was destroyed during Hezekiah's reign and rebuilt during the time of Josiah, but the temple itself was not redone. These changes at Arad are consistent with Josiah's centralization efforts, as mandated in Deuteronomy.
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Figure 5.2 Arad Sanctuary
The temple in Arad matches the general structure of the Jerusalem temple described in the Hebrew Bible. It proves the existence of sanctuaries outside Jerusalem during the monarchy until the time of Hezekiah.
Photo by Barry Bandstra |
