High place

This is what the Lord God says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys.

I'm about to bring a sword against you and I will destroy your high places.

Verse 13 says, Then you will know that I am Lord when they're slain lie among the idols around their altars on every high hill and all the mountaintops.

Keep those in mind.

And under every green tree and leafy oak, the places where they offered fragrant incense to all their idols, I will stretch out my hand against them.

And wherever they live, I will make the land a desolate waste from the wilderness to Dibla.

Then they will know that I am the Lord." So the way this starts out, God commands Israel to face these mountains, hills, ravines, and valleys of Israel and prophesy against all of these pagan high places where the Israelites and the surrounding people were setting up shrines and idols.

And God promises to bring the sword and demolish the altars, like it said in the verses, and lay the dead bodies of the people directly in front of their useless idols.

But of course, uh, Asa, uh, was guilty of one major difficulty.

We see in Pasuk Gidalat, as we will hear throughout the most of Malchus Yehuda, [Hebrew] Uh, uh, they didn't get rid of the Bamot.

Rashi and the Rabag explained that the Bamot that we're talking about here, which means that there were people who had their own private break lentils, they had their own private Mizbachot, and they were built to Shem Shamayim at the time of the Cheter Bamot.

There was a Gemara describes at the end of Zevachim that there was a period of Cheter Bamot between the destruction of Shiloh, uh, uh, the time period of the Mishkan, until Beis Olamim, until the Beis Hamikdash was built.

And so these were there at that time.

And Bnei Yisro used to bring Karbanot to Hashem, private Karbanot, even though they were in violation of an Isur Kareis.

Why? Because when there is a Beis Hamikdash, we have a problem called Shchitas Chutz and Hala'ot Chutz.

That is to say, when there is a Beis Hamikdash, you're not allowed to bring Kochim outside of the Beis Hamikdash.

They're looking to fight each other constantly as well, um, which is quite interesting and fascinating.

I think at the end of the day when we come back to this Genesis 11 and, and Babel, and them building this tower, it's also like, but, like, why a tower? You know what I mean? [laughs] Like, who cares about building this high tower? Well, this is a really important thing that, again, as you start to read your Bible, you'll see throughout the Bible that high places matter.

Mountaintops matter.

There's, there's a reason why ziggurats were constantly being built or pyramids were constantly being built.

Like, now we start to understand the architecture all around the world, well, at least a little bit of it.

[laughs] Um, we start to understand why God was constantly telling them to clean up the different high places, right? Because high places matter, and it's this point of convergence between heaven and Earth.

And this is what they were looking to do, was to create this high tower, um, and have this convergence of heaven and Earth to reach the heavens, right? This was a very strategic...

To open up a portal.

Here are the counts against the king.

Count one: he rebuilt the high places his father had destroyed.

Those are, of course, the altars, the local altars to other gods.

Count two: he raised altars to Baal and made an Asherah.

The sky gods were definitely present in Judah, and they were on the seals of the elite, and they were in the temple courtyard.

The text isn't making that up at all.

Count one is about the high places, if you remember.

Those are the provincial shrines outside Jerusalem that Hezekiah supposedly closed when they say Manasseh reopened.

This is phrase.

The phrase that we keep seeing is the high places.

However, we're not removed.

The people continue to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.

Um, and just in our faith, like we just came off of Kairos and this is constant pursuit of freedom.

Like, like we're never done.

And, but if you approach your walk with the Lord, like as though, like I checked these boxes and now I'm done, you end up with high places that never get removed.

Yeah.