Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HIGH PLACE

Most commonly a sacred site, although a precise description remains elusive. Heb. bāmâ (pl. bāmôṯ) is most commonly found in the condemnatory lists of illegitimate worship practices by Israelite and Judean kings and their subjects, but in those many instances the hated bāmâ is not described. The most complete description of an Israelite bāmâ is found in 1 Sam. 9–10, but that description is frustratingly incomplete. Because bāmâ was translated into Latin as excelsus, it is often rendered in English as “high place,” a term that has itself led to confusion about what the biblical bāmâ actually was.

The Hebrew root bmh has cognates in several Semitic languages. In Ugaritic it means the back of a body. In Akkadian the singular likewise means “back,” while the plural refers to terrain, possibly hilly. Despite the fact that bmh has no sacred association in any Canaanite dialect, most scholars have thought of the bāmâ as an originally Canaanite place of worship.

Four interpretations of the bāmâ are common to the scholarly literature. They are: an outdoor hilltop installation which included some combination of ʾăšērâ (“sacred pole”), maṣṣēḇâ (“standing stone”), and mizbēaḥ (“altar”); an artificially raised platform upon which religious rites were enacted; a sacrificial altar; or a mortuary installation. The first has been the most widely accepted, although neither it nor its alternatives correspond well with the rather scant biblical evidence for the bāmâ and the religious activities which took place there.

More recent work suggests that the bāmâ was a multi-roomed structure located in an urban setting. Built on an elevated site, it would have included an area in which animal sacrifice and the burning of incense could take place. Cultic furniture, including sacrificial and incense altars, would have been kept within the bāmâ. Among its several rooms might be a liškâ, in which cultic personnel and worshippers could sit to eat meals.

The most complete biblical description of the bāmâ comes from the tribal period, the era of the judges. 1 Sam. 9:11-25 describes religious rites at a bāmâ in an unnamed city within the district of Zuph, and 10:5 describes a processional of prophets leaving the bāmâ in Bethel. Legitimate use of the bāmâ by Israelites continued until the construction of the Jerusalem temple, as Solomon and the Israelites worshipped at many bāmôṯ, including the great bāmâ in Gibeon where Yahweh appeared to Solomon (1 Kgs. 3:2-5), and were not condemned for it.

During his reign, Solomon also built bāmôṯ for his non-Israelite wives and for the gods of Sidon, Ammon, and Moab (1 Kgs. 11:4-8). In this context, the Mesha stela is intriguing, since this late 9th-century inscription makes reference to the Moabite king Mesha’s restoration of Moabite bet bamot. Moabite worship at bāmôṯ is also mentioned in Isa. 16:12; Jer. 48:35, indicating that the bāmâ was an Iron Age, but not exclusively an Israelite, place of worship.

Once the nation of Israel split in two late in the 10th century, Jeroboam, the first northern king, constructed royal sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan (1 Kgs. 12:25-30). To further ensure the loyalty of his people, he also built bāmôṯ throughout his kingdom and created a new nonlevitical priestly group, drawn from men of all social classes, to officiate at them (1 Kgs. 12:31). The fealty of these new bāmôṯ priests was reinforced by the fact that they also were required to serve at the royal sanctuary in Bethel (1 Kgs. 12:32).

In Judah, too, the religious needs of the population at large were not fulfilled through worship in the royal sanctuary in Jerusalem. Therefore, alongside the Jerusalem temple, Judean monarchs established a bāmôṯ system similar to that developed by Jeroboam in Israel (2 Kgs. 23:5). Its legitimacy is underscored by the suggestion made by officers of the late-8th-century Assyrian king Sennacherib that the Judean king Hezekiah had himself undermined loyalty to Yahweh by destroying his bāmôṯ. Hezekiah’s ministers recognized the devastating nature of these charges and asked the Assyrians to speak in Aramaic, so that nearby Judeans could not follow the conversation (2 Kgs. 18:17-37; 2 Chr. 32:9-19).

The biblical evidence thus indicates that religion in Israel and Judah was a two-tiered affair. Royal cults in Jerusalem, Bethel, and Dan were used by the kings, their ministers, and the levitical priesthood. The many Israelite and Judean bāmôṯ were royally sanctioned regional sanctuaries used concurrently for worship by nonlevitical priests and by the population at large.

Initially a legitimate place for Israelite and Judean worship, the bāmôṯ later became the subject of Deuteronomistic diatribes accusing the kings and their subjects of lack of loyalty to Yahweh. In fact, the majority of biblical references to the bāmâ are found in these condemnatory pieces (e.g., 2 Kgs. 12:3; 14:4; 15:4, 35) and in their prophetical counterparts (e.g., Amos 7:9).

According to the Deuteronomistic historians, in the late 8th century Hezekiah destroyed bāmôṯ, along with maṣṣēḇôṯ and the ʾăšērâ (2 Kgs. 18:4). Hezekiah’s reforms notwithstanding, the bāmôṯ priesthood grew increasingly independent, so nearly a century later Josiah waged campaigns against them (2 Kgs. 23:5), hoping to eradicate their power base.

From all of this, it is apparent that the bāmâ was for the most part an accepted place for Israelite worship, one which met the needs of both the Israelite and Judean monarchs and of the local citizenry. At the same time, certain elements within the population, particularly the priestly and prophetic group whose ideas and traditions culminated in the work of the Deuteronomistic school, opposed this decentralizing institution and waged an ultimately successful campaign advocating the primacy of the Jerusalem temple.

Bibliography. W. B. Barrick, “What Do We Really Know About ‘High-places’?” SEÅ 45 (1980): 50-57; A. Biran, ed., Temples and High Places in Biblical Times (Jerusalem, 1981); B. A. Nakhai, “What’s a Bamah? How Sacred Space Functioned in Ancient Israel,” BARev 20/3 (1994): 18-29, 77-78; P. H. Vaughan, The Meaning of “Bama” in the Old Testament. SOTSMS 3 (Cambridge, 1974).

Beth Alpert Nakhai

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HIGH PLACE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)