Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

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.