Re: Naked Bible 115: Ezekiel 6; supplementary papers on High Places and Idols
Basic principle: God will get what He wants. He made it painfully obvious from the very start that He would have a human family to represent Him in this world. Whether or not the descendants of Israel will be involved depends on their willingness to embrace faithful adherence to His Covenant. The Covenant of Christ assumes this as the foundation; it need not have been restated at the Last Seder because it was the fundamental law from the beginning of divine revelation back in the Garden of Eden. At the very least it became painfully obvious when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Even if you feel you are being jerked around, you must remain loyal and act on what He says. It has not changed; His sovereignty is absolute.
The Covenant with the Nation of Israel was conditional for them. There were ample warnings of what would happen if they strayed. Both the blessings and the curses were manifested in OT History. Eventually, they were kicked out of the land and into exile. Once they were there, Ezekiel declared to them why this had to happen. The problem was idolatry; Israel did not stay faithful to Jehovah alone as He very plainly insisted.
The linked podcast turns into a study of two issues that lack clarity for most western Christians: high places and the idolatry that took place at them.
The term typically translated as “high places” (Hebrew: bamot pl. and bama sing.) was a generic term referring to places that had been modified for use in ritual devotion. It wasn’t always pagan. There was a period of time prior to the Monarchy when it was appropriate to seek Jehovah at high places devoted solely to His name. It was during David’s reign that a singular location was selected as the place where Jehovah would “put His name”. This made all those high places obsolete. Thus, a primary activity of any King of Israel/Judah would be to destroy those places regardless who was worshiped there.
Thus, in the OT narrative in the Book of Judges, the Tabernacle was not the sole place to seek Jehovah. From the time of the Patriarchs, those who worshiped Jehovah might put up an altar wherever they lived. Nothing in the narrative condemns this up through the time of David. However, once the Temple was built, it was declared the only location. The problem Ezekiel points to is that even Solomon himself then went back and constructed high places for his wives to worship foreign deities.
Thus, prophets keep prodding the succeeding kings to take down the high places because there was no good reason for any of them. In the end, King Josiah finally obeyed this command, destroying the high places still left over from Solomon’s reign, along with the shrines of Jeroboam.
In passing, Heiser notes that the Hebrew term (qaṭ•ṭə•rîm) is typically translated as “incense altars”. However, it’s more likely referring to the structures built to protect the pagan shrines. He chases down the etymology of the Hebrew word, if you are interested, but most English translations get this wrong.
Equally controversial is the term Ezekiel uses (ḡil•lū•lîm) usually translated as “idols” because of the context, but the etymology is uncertain despite what you might read from the usual layman study sources. Most of those sources guess that there is a Hebrew word (galol “stele”) behind it that no one has found anywhere, to be honest, neither in Hebrew nor any other Semitic language. Some have wondered if it is one of those words where the Hebrews switched up some letters from a shaming word and combined the two to make a propaganda term. For example, the name Ishbaal (“man of Baal”) was changed to Ishboseth (“man of shame”) in the Scripture text to shame the name of Baal. Jewish scholars insist gillulim comes from a combination of words, one of which refers to feces.
Ezekiel is notorious for that kind of blunt, and sometimes even obscene, language.
The big thing about idolatry is not so much that random people here and there go after false gods. Ezekiel and the other prophets specifically condemn what Heiser calls “state-sponsored” idolatry. This is the stuff the kings ignored or even supported. Heiser refers to an article by Jacob Milgrom that I found on Z-Library if you are interested.* The article notes that after the Northern Kingdom was exiled, the prophets became even more insistent about idolatry. The reason is that there was simply no longer any excuse.
Samaria didn’t have the Temple; Judah did, along with the Davidic Dynasty. The big problem is that the population during 700s and 600s BC didn’t find things like worship of Moloch or communication with the dead against the Covenant. They could go to the Temple along with those other things and there was no problem. This was a serious mistake the prophets sought to correct. The leadership of Judah felt that they had God backed into a corner. He couldn’t destroy Jerusalem without damaging His reputation; the Temple and Davidic Dynasty were there.
Ezekiel reminds his audience in Babylonian Exile that the only God ever cared about was loyalty. The people in and around Jerusalem didn’t hide their idolatry because the leadership didn’t make it a priority to squelch it. Thus, during the reign of Manasseh, he completely reverses all the work of Hezekiah. Manasseh didn’t just let stuff go bad; he paid for pagan idolatry shrines to be built and maintained in the Temple courts. What people did in private was bad enough, but not enough by itself to bring God’s wrath. Rather, it was the leadership of the nation that broke everything. Worst of all, they did all of this knowingly, poking God in the eye.
* “The Nature and Extent of Idolatry in Eighth-Seventh Century Judah” by Jacob Milgrom; Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. 69 (1998), pp. 1-13
