9 Sacred Sites of the Hebrews
In order to pass in review the sites selected by the Israelites for places of worship, it will be convenient to go back to the time when we find the tribes encamped at Gilgal, on their first entrance into the country.
That Mount Sinai should remain sacred after the giving of the Law was to be expected; and we have just now seen that its sacredness could attract Elijah after many centuries. The Israelites, when they left the wilderness, and came to sojourn in the outskirts of Moab, were attracted by the shrine of Baal-Peor; but they were made to feel that this was wrong, and the ambassadors of the western tribes refer to it as a warning when they expostulate with their brethren about the altar called Ed (Joshua xxii. 17). In passing over into Canaan, they carried the Lord’s tabernacle with them; where that rested was holy ground, and it was not intended that any rival site should be tolerated.
The ark of the covenant—the chest which contained the agreement or treaty between Jehovah and his people—was set down at Gilgal, the tabernacle or holy tent was erected over it, and Gilgal became a sacred place. Afterwards, when the hill country had been conquered, the ark and tabernacle were brought to Shiloh, and then Shiloh became a sacred place. Shiloh is now called Seilun, and here the ruins of a modern village occupy a sort of tell or mound. The position of the place is remarkably retired, shut in between high, bare mountains. A deep valley runs behind the town on the north, and in its sides are many rock-cut sepulchres. “The site being so certainly known,” says Conder, “it becomes of interest to speculate as to the exact position of the tabernacle. Below the top of the hill, on the north of the ruins, there is a sort of irregular quadrangle, sloping rather to the west, and perched above terraces made for agricultural purposes. The rock has here been rudely hewn in two parallel scarps for over 400 feet, with a court between, 77 feet wide and sunk 5 feet below the outer surface. Thus there would be sufficient room for the court of the tabernacle in this area. From the Mishna we learn that the lower part of the tabernacle erected at Shiloh was of stone, with a tent above. There are, however, two other places which demand attention as possible sites, one being, perhaps, a synagogue, the other a little building called the ‘Mosque of the Servants of God.’”
According to the Jews, the ark and tabernacle remained at Shiloh three hundred and sixty-nine years—so long that Shiloh was regarded as only second to Jerusalem in sanctity. In the disastrous days of Eli the ark was sent into the battlefield and captured by the Philistines, who carried it to Ashdod, to the temple of Dagon. When Dagon fell down before it they sent it away again, and it was, after some adventures, recovered by the men of Kirjath Jearim. Eventually David brought it to Mount Zion, and then Zion became a sacred place. Solomon said, “the places are holy whereunto the ark of the Lord hath come” (2 Chron. viii. 11), and on that account he brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the City of David (which is Zion, 1 Kings viii. 1), unto the house that he had built for her. The ark never went back to Shiloh after Eli sent it away. The tabernacle, however, appears to have remained there for some time, and so Shiloh remained sacred in some degree.
Soon, however, even the tabernacle would appear to have been removed from Shiloh, for although we have no direct mention of its removal, we seem to find it in other places. Samuel, the successor of Eli, judged the people, and on important occasions called the solemn assembly and offered sacrifices. He was accustomed to do this at three different places, which in his day were revered as sacred. One of these was Gilgal, rendered sacred by the first resting of the ark: and although the ark and tabernacle had been removed, and sanctity was to be transferred along with them, yet it is not easy to obliterate the sanctity of a place from the tradition and practice of the people. Another of these three places was Bethel, where Jacob had seen his vision of the ladder with angels ascending and descending, and had been constrained to say, “This is the house of God and the gate of Heaven.” The third place at which Samuel called assemblies and offered sacrifices was not Shiloh, as we might suppose it would be, but one of the many places called Mizpeh. We do not know where this Mizpeh was. Conder is inclined to identify it with Neby Samwil—the Mount of the Prophet Samuel, a conspicuous conical hill, 4 or 5 miles north of Jerusalem; and as Mizpeh means a watch-tower, there is plausibility in this suggestion. We do not know whether the tabernacle was pitched at either of these three places in Samuel’s day: we do not know why Samuel should be content to regard three different places as holy; but it is not altogether impossible that the tabernacle was carried from one meeting-place to another, and made each one holy in turn.
A little later we seem to find the tabernacle nearer to Jerusalem. When David is fleeing from King Saul, and taking the road from Rama in Benjamin to Gath in the land of the Philistines, he comes to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest, and is permitted to eat the shewbread (the holy bread exhibited before the Lord in the sanctuary), and to carry off the sword of Goliath, which had been laid up as a trophy. So here we have the priests, the shewbread, and the tabernacle at Nob. As to the locality of Nob, Dean Stanley follows Mr Thrupp in fixing it on the northern summit of the Mount of Olives, and Mr Thrupp reminds us that David brought the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, before the city itself was captured (1 Sam. xvii. 54). David, in fleeing from Rama to Gath, could hardly find a shorter or more convenient route than that which took him past Jerusalem.
This position for Nob is confirmed by Isaiah’s graphic and detailed description of the advance of the Assyrian invader (Isaiah x. 28):—
He comes to Ai, passes through Migron,
At Michmash deposits his baggage;
They cross the pass, Geba is our night station:
Terrified is Ramah, Gibeah of Saul flees.
Shriek with thy voice, daughter of Gallim;
Listen, O Laish! Ah! poor Anathoth!
Madmeneh escapes, dwellers in Gebim take flight.
Yet this day he halts at Nob:
He shakes his hand against the mount, daughter of Sion,
The hill of Jerusalem.
“In this passage” (says Sir Charles Wilson), “if it has a meaning—and I cannot suppose that it has not—the prophet describes, in such detail that it is difficult to believe he is not describing an actual event, the march of an Assyrian army upon Jerusalem; and we may be quite certain that, with his knowledge of the country, and writing as he did for those who were equally well acquainted with it, he would describe a line of march, which, under certain conditions, an army would naturally follow if its special object were the capture of Jerusalem. The conditions to which I allude are the passage of the great ravine at Michmash, and encampment for the night at Geba; why this route was selected in preference to the easier road along the line of water-parting we have no means of ascertaining, and it does not affect the question.”
“Of the places mentioned by Isaiah, we know, with a considerable degree of certainty, the positions of Michmash, Geba, Ramah, Gibeah, and Anathoth; of the others nothing is known. From Geba to Nob was evidently a day’s march in the progress of the army; and the order in which the villages are mentioned leads us in the direction of Jerusalem. If, as I believe, the passage means that the Assyrian warrior was leading an army from Geba against Jerusalem, and that his progress was suddenly arrested at Nob, we must seek a site for Nob on the road between these two places, and I cannot imagine a more natural one than some place in the vicinity of that Scopus whence, in later years, Titus and his legions looked down upon the Holy City.”
Doeg, the Edomite, who happened to be present when Ahimelech gave David the sword, informed Saul, and Saul, who was mad with suspicion, slew all the priests and utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Nob. But even after the destruction of the sanctuary by his violence the sanctity of the summit of Olivet was still respected. It was necessary, however, to remove the tabernacle from the scene of so much bloodshed, and perhaps it was immediately removed to the high-place of Gibeon, where we find it in the early part of Solomon’s reign.
The state of things at the beginning of the reign of Solomon is described in 1 Kings iii.—“The people sacrificed in the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place.” We learn from 2 Chron. i. that at Gibeon was the Tent of Meeting (the tabernacle) which Moses had made in the wilderness. Moreover, the brazen altar made by the inspired artist in the wilderness was there before the tabernacle, and Solomon and the congregation sought unto it, and offered a thousand burnt offerings upon it.
Thus far, then, we have at least half a dozen sacred places, venerated in turn, and more or less acknowledged simultaneously,—namely, Gilgal, Bethel, Shiloh, Mizpeh, Nob, and Gibeon. To these we must add Zion, to which David brought the ark, setting it up in the tent which he had prepared for it, though the tent, time-honoured and sacred, was at Gibeon (2 Sam. vi. 17; 1 Chron. i. 4–6).
The ark, however, did not remain in “the city of David, which is Zion;” for when the temple was built upon Mount Moriah, the ark was brought up into the oracle of the house, with much sacrificing of sheep and oxen, and the Tent of Meeting was brought along with it (1 Kings viii.). Mount Moriah was now God’s holy mountain, and it was intended to concentrate all public worship at the Temple. Even previously it had been the law that the high places of the heathen should be discarded, and irresponsible sacrifice in the open field should be discountenanced, and that every man who had sacrifices to offer should bring them to the tabernacle, wherever the tabernacle might be located at the time (Levit. xvii. 1–6; Deut. xii. 1–6). So, now that the permanent temple had superseded the wandering tent, it was ordered, of course, that all sacrifices and public worship should take place on Mount Moriah. “For in my holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them, serve Me in the land: there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the first fruits of your oblations, with all your holy things” (Ezek. xx. 40).
Nevertheless, during the years of David’s reign, and until the temple was built, the ark resting on Zion conferred sanctity on that mountain. Psalms of David, and others written at that time, would of course make reference to Zion and not yet to Moriah.
“In Salem also is his tabernacle,
And his dwelling-place in Zion.”
Psalm lxxvi. 2.
And even after the ark had been carried up to the Temple, Mount Zion would retain its sanctity by tradition; or perhaps the name Zion would be extended so as to include Moriah, as they may in truth be related as the slope and the summit of the same hill.19
His foundation is in the holy mountains,
“The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.”
Psalm lxxxvii. 1.
So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain. (Joel iii. 17 and Zech. viii. 3).
Human nature would not be what it is if theory and practice always went hand in hand. Laws may be good, but universal obedience to them cannot always be secured. Solomon himself, who had built the temple, and by bringing the Tent of Meeting into it, had disestablished Gibeon, set the example, in his later years, of recognising afresh other high places and the gods of the heathen. Having married “women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites,” besides the daughter of Pharaoh, he doubtless thought it only an enlightened toleration to let them worship in their own way, and as a logical consequence he supplied them with the means, and perhaps occasionally accompanied them to their respective places of worship. “For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians,” and “did build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And so did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods” (1 Kings xi.).
We see in this passage that the site selected as the high place for Chemosh was on the Mount of Olives—perhaps the place where Nob had stood, a site which had the tradition of sanctity already.
Many later kings imitated Solomon, and declined to regard Jehovah as the only God, or the holy mountain at Jerusalem as the only high place possessing sanctity. It was hardly to be expected that the people should be more faithful than their kings; and the after history furnishes many examples of lapses into heathen worship, and periodical reforms attempted by such kings as Josiah and Hezekiah. It was not convenient for the more distant tribes north of Esdraelon or east of Jordan to come up to Jerusalem to worship. Added to this consideration there was the local shrine, and time-honoured tradition in its favour. Just as in our own country Ripon cathedral is built over St Wilfrid’s Saxon church, and St Paul’s cathedral on the site of a heathen temple, so on the part of the Israelites there was a disposition to keep to the old spots. What wonder if there was, besides, a frequent adherence to the old forms of worship?
The tribes east of Jordan worshipped eastern gods—Peor, Chemosh, Milcom. Gad worshipped the god of Fortune (Isaiah lxv. 11), and was named after that deity. Josephus spells the name of Reuben as Reubel (Ρουβελος), and Bel was one of the eastern gods. Manasseh had a sanctuary in the city of Golan. From the east of Jordan came Jephthah, who made a rash vow like a heathen, and kept it, although it involved human sacrifice.
Beyond Esdraelon we have Kadesh Naphtali, a heathen sanctuary adopted by the Israelites as a city of refuge, but apparently without any entire suppression of the original worship. The place is now called Kedes, and among the ruins found by the explorers are those of a temple with a figure of an eagle on the lintel, besides richly executed scroll-work of vine-leaves, bunches of grapes, a stag, and a bust (possibly of Baal). There were also places called Beth-shemesh (House of the Sun) scattered up and down the country.
At the disruption of the kingdom, Jeroboam, fearing that his subjects would be attracted to the religious festivals at Jerusalem, established two other centres. One of these was Bethel, convenient for the southern part of his kingdom, and sacred already, because there Abram had builded an altar, and Jacob had seen his vision, and Samuel had called solemn assemblies. The other was Dan, convenient for the northern part of his kingdom, and sacred again, already, for here, in the time of the Judges some colonists from the tribe of Dan had set up a graven image and established a priesthood. Besides, it was probably a sanctuary of the Phœnician inhabitants whom the Danites displaced; and, as we have seen in a previous chapter, the heathen god Pan came to be worshipped here. Thus we see that Jeroboam selected religious centres which combined traditional sanctity with geographical convenience.
When the tribes of the northern kingdom were carried into captivity, and the Assyrian conquerors brought people from Babylon, from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria (2 Kings xvii. 24), the foreigners, or the mixed population which sprung up, fixed upon Mount Gerizim as their sacred high place. But Mount Gerizim already possessed a traditional sanctity, for the ark and tabernacle had accompanied Joshua to Shechem; the tribes had assembled on the twin mountains to hear the reading of the Law; and in earlier time Abram had builded an altar hereabout, the first altar to Jehovah in all the Holy Land.
Thus there were many high places in Palestine, and there was much disputing as to which should have the pre-eminence, the jealousy reaching its height in the later centuries in the rival claims of Gerizim and Jerusalem. No final solution was possible excepting that which Jesus Christ gave to the woman of Samaria. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John iv. 23). Local centres lose their special sanctity because “every place is holy ground.” The Temple at Jerusalem might be destroyed—probably soon would be—but within a marvellously short period the spiritual temple would take form. For such true teaching Jesus Christ was crucified and Stephen stoned.
It was a matter of much interest to Major Conder to find out if possible where the mountain of the scape-goat was situated. According to the Law of Moses the scape-goat was led to the wilderness, and there set free. “This was not, however, the practice of the later Jews. A scape-goat had once come back to Jerusalem, and the omen was thought so bad that the ordinary custom was modified, to prevent the recurrence of such a calamity. The man who led the goat arrived at a high mountain called Sook, and there was at this place a rolling slope, down which he pushed the unhappy animal, which was shattered to atoms in the fall.” The district where this was done was called Hidoodim, and the high mountain Sook. Sook was 6½ English miles from Jerusalem, as reckoned by the ten tabernacles which divided the messenger’s path into stages of 2000 cubits. Conder identifies the place in the neighbourhood of the convent of St Saba. At the required distance from Jerusalem is the great hill of El Muntâr, the highest point of a ridge of mountains running north and south. The rest of the ridge is called El Hadeidûn; and beside the ancient road from Jerusalem is a well called Sûk. From this high ridge the victim was yearly rolled down into the narrow valley beneath, at the entrance of the great desert, which first unfolded itself before the eyes of the messenger as he gained the summit half a mile beyond the well of Sûk.
[Authorities and Sources:—Colonel Warren, Colonel Wilson, &c., in the Quarterly Statements, P. E. Fund. “Tent Work in Palestine.” Major Conder. “Sinai and Palestine.” Dean Stanley.]