2. The IsraelitEs, on occupying Canaan, must have found the land covered with the places of ido latrous worship. During the troubled period of the Judges, they were mainly confined to the three mountainous tracts separated by the plain of Es draelon and the Jordan valley, the territory of the northern tribes, three of which rose at the call of Barak ; that of which Judah and Ephraim formed the great rallying points ; and, beyond Jordan, hilly Gilead. The plain of Esdraelon was held by the Canaanites, the coast of the Mediterranean, by fix Phcenicians and the Philistines, the great pasture lands on the east of Jordan, mainly by wandering tribes of Abrahamic descent. Thus confined to the hilly parts of the country, the Israelites lived where the associations of the old idolatry were strongest. Worship at high places was thus adopted by them, and in their subsequent history we find it practised among them, both by believers, up to a certain period, and by idolators. It was, perhaps, on this account that the servants of Benhadad counselled him to fight Israel in the plain, arguing : Their gods [are] gods of the hills ; therefore they were stronger than NIT ; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they' (1 Kings xx. 23). [See PHCENICIA.] In the Law it was distinctly commanded that no sacrifices should be offered except at the one place of worship. It is indeed said that the offerings were to be brought to this place after the people had rest from. their enemies (Dent. xii. to, t) ; but this injunction seems to refer to the rest after the first conquest, and certainly does not allow of the use of otber altars. That this law was clearly understood at the first is' evident from the history of the altar of witness built by the two tribes and a half when they de parted to their inheritance (Josh. xxii. to-34). Nothing can be more explicit than the words of these tribes--‘ God forbid that we should rebel against the LORD, and turn this day from following the LORD, YO build an altar for burnt offerings, for meat offerings, or for sacrifices, beside the altar of the LORD our God that [is] before his tabernacle' (ver. 29). There is therefore no possibility of ad mitting the theory that the prohibition was not to come into force until the Temple had been built, when it was thus understood in the lifetime oi Phinehas.
Not long after this, the custom of sacrificing else where than at Shiloh appears to have commenced, for we read how, evidently in the earliest days of the occupation of Canaan, the people were reproved by an angel at Bochim, and sacrificed there unto the LORD' (Judg. 5). It is still more remarkable to read that Gideon built an altar to the LORD, and afterwards that he was commanded to destroy the altar of Baal, and build an altar to the LORD (Vi. 24, 25, 26). So, too, Manoah sacrificed where the angel appeared (xiii. to). This worship seems to have been occasioned by the disturbed state of the country and the difficulty of uniting in journeys to Shiloh for the great feasts, and it may perhaps have been permitted as a recurrence to the patriarchal system. The local idolatrous worship adopted from the heathen was carried on at the same time. We hear, however, nothing of high places until the time of Samuel, when the sacrificing and worship in high places seems to have been usual, and was sanctioned by the practice and approval of the priest-judge (I Sam. ix. 12 ; X, 5, 13). In the time of Solomon this worship still obtained, for it is said of the beginning of his reign, Only the people sacrificed in high places, because therc was no house built unto the name of the LORD, until those days' (I Kings iii. 2). Solomon accordingly went to Gibeon to sacrifice there ; for that [was] the great high place' (ver. 4). That his sacrificing was not disapproved is evident from tbe dream which God there granted to him. At this time the Tabernacle was at Gibeon, though David had removed the Ark to Jerusalem (2 Cbron. 3-6, comp. Chron. xvi. 37-4o). The separation of the Ark- from the Tabernacle, and the pitching the latter at a high place, are very remarkable points.
3. After the completion of the Temple them must have been no excuse for worship at high places, and it was probably for a time discontinued. When they are again mentioned it is in connection with idolatry. Solomon made a high place, or high places, for the idols of Moab ancl Ammon (1 Kings xi. 7). Jeroboam, to prevent his subjects from going to Jerusalem, established a series of high places. At Dan and _Bethel lie raised houses of high places, and throughout his kingdom (xii. 26-31 ; xiii. 32). The Levites having left their cities in his dominions, and gone to Rehoboam, the king of Israel appears to have made use of Shishak to capture those cities, and established a spurious priesthood (2 Chron. xi. 13, 14, 15 ; Kings xii. 31 ; xiii. 33. ; comp. Brugsch, Geop-. Inschr. pp. 70, 7i). The system set up hy Jeroboam was partly an imitation of tbe national religion, partly of the idolatry of Egypt and Canaan [ID0LATRY]. From this time we find high places used either for idolatrous worship, or, apparently, for an inde pendent and unlawful practice of the national rites. In general, the former use seems to have obtained in Judah, and the latter in Israel, though this rule cannot be strictly applied in either case. Al ready in Rehoboam's time the people of Judah had set up idolatrous high places (t Kings X1V. 23).
Later we find it recorded as a flaw in thc reigns of pious kings of Judah that the high places yet re mained in use, the people still sacrificing and burn ing incense at them. It is said of Asa that he took away the high places (2 Chron. xiv. 5), but it ap pears that this reform was not successfully accom plished, at least in Israel (xv. 17 ; Kings xv. 14), of which he held cities (2 Chron. xv. ; xvii. 2).
Jehoshaphat, again, is said to have taken away the high places and groves out of Judah' (ver. 6, comp. xix. 3) ; but it seems that he was not fully successful, for we read in a later place that the high places were not taken away ' (xx. 33 ; Kings xxii. 43). Hezekiah appears, however, at the commencement of his reign, to have successfully suppressed the high places. They were destroyed not only in Judah and Benjamin, but also in Eph raim and Manasseh. This work, so far as it con cerned the Israelite territoiy, may have been spon taneously executed by the believing people, as seems implied in the account in Chronicles, but it is also possible that in the broken state of the Ismelite monarchy Hezekiah held a large portion of its more southern territories (2 Kings xviii. 4, comp. 2 Chron. xxxi. 1). But even this reform was not final, and, after the relapse into idolatry of Manasseh and Amon, there was another suppres sion of the high places by Josiah, apparently the st which was thorough. He destroyed and de filed the high place of Bethel which Jeroboam had made, the houses of the high places in the cities of the kingdom of Samaria, the high places which Solomon had built for foreign idols in the .Mount of Corruption, and those in the cities of Judah (2 Kings xxiii. 5, 8, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20 ; 2 Cht02. xxxiv. 3-7), Worship at altars not at Jerusalem seems to have been occasionally practised by believers after the building of the Temple, as in the remarkable in stance of Elijah on Mount Carmel, where he re paired the altar of the LORD [that was] broken down,' building it of twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of Israel, a cir cumstance which seems to make its much older origin probable (1 Kings xviii. 3o-32). Elijah also complained at Horeb that God's altars were overthrown (xix. Jo). Yet we have no ground for supposing that any general deviation from the worship at the one sanctuary was allowed after the Temple had been built. A prophet might have been commanded to sacrifice at an altar away from Jerusalem on a special occasion. But a gene ral practice, tending to a neglect of the feasts and their sacrifices, and to the formation of an unlawful priesthood, was evidently forbidden as wrong and dangerous. The increase of strength in the terms in which this practice is condemned, seems due to the increase of corruption which it caused. The sin of Jeroboam soon led to idolatry of various other kinds, and the high places, which probably were originally, save in the case of Solomon's, which, perhaps, were soon abandoned, intended for cor rupt worship, seem to have been used at last wholly for heathen rites. As they were opposed to the temple-worship, the high places probably never took an important position in the kingdom of Judah ; on the contrary', in the rival kingdom they Were adopted as a state-expedient to prevent the return of the people to their allegiance to the line of David, The passages relating to the high places furnish us with several interesting particulars. Jeroboam not only set up the calves as objects of worship at the houses of the high places of Bethel and Dan, but, as We have seen, he made a priesthood ot the lowest of the people, not Levites, and he also fixed an annual feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month (1 Kings xii. 28-33). It was when Jeroboam stood by the altar at Bethel that the prophet who came out of Judah fore told its overthrow (xiii. 1-3). It was at Bethel, in the time of the second Jeroboam, that Amos predicted the ruin of the high places, and was com plained of to the king -by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel (Amos vii. 9-13). The remarkable passage, And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Ismel shall be laid waste ' (ver. 9), is explained by a comparison with a pre vious enumeration of high places ; Seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer sheba' (ver. 5). The high places of Isaac would refer to Beer-sheba, and the sanctuaries of Israel to Bethel ; Gilgal was a place of worship at the time of Samuel (I Sam. xi. 15). Hosea, like Amos a prophet especially sent to Israel, like him condemns the worship at high places. He mentions their priests by the name Chemarim, 1:14-11aT, a word of Syriac origin, uscd only for ido • = : latrous priests, occurring as the designation of the priests of the high places of the citics of Judah (2 Kings xxiii. 5), and in Zephaniah as that of idolatrous priests (i. 4). We have no means of forming any idea of the character of the temples attached to the high places, but it is evident that they must have been too numerous to have been large, except perhaps those at Dan and Bethel. Probably the high place had frequently nothing on its summit but an altar, and this would account for the difficulty of destroying this worship. So long as the site was considered sacred, it little mattered that a fresh altar was to be built. Josiah's way of dealing with this. practice was evidently effectual.