by Brian Godawa
at the mount that God desired for his abode,
yes, where the Lord will dwell forever?
17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
thousands upon thousands;
the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
18 You ascended on high,
leading a host of captives in your train
and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there…
21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies…
22The Lord said, “I will bring them back from Bashan,
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.”
In this psalm, God takes ownership of Bashan with his heavenly host of warriors, but then replaces it and refers to Mount Sinai (soon to be Zion). It isn’t that God is making Bashan his mountain literally, but conquering its divinities and theologically replacing it with his new cosmic mountain elsewhere.
In verse 18, Yahweh leads captives in triumphal procession and receives tribute from them as spoils of war (v. 18). Paul quoted this very verse to be a reference to Christ’s ascension and his victory over the spiritual powers.
Ephesians 4:8–10:
8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.”
9 (In saying “he ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
Yahweh will own and live where once the rebellious ruled (v. 18). He will strike his enemies’ heads and bring them all out from the sea of chaos, that wilderness where Leviathan symbolically reigns.
This battle of cosmic mountains is the foundation that finally gives meaning to the famous passage about Jesus building his Church upon a “rock” in Matthew 16.
Matthew 16:18:
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Ironically, both Roman Catholics and Protestants are wrong when they interpret this passage. Roman Catholics think that Jesus is referring to Peter as the first pope, as though he was making a word play with Peter meaning “stone” like a “rock.” But of course it would be complete and utter nonsense, not to mention blasphemy, for Jesus, the Son of God, sinless God in the flesh, to build his glorious kingdom Church upon a sinful human being rather than upon himself as sinless high priest and savior of that Church.
But Protestants are equally wrong to argue that the “rock” is Peter’s confession of Christ’s Sonship, for the location where they were standing when Jesus uttered those words was at a sacred place literally called “The Gates of Hades” believed to lead down to the Abyss.[174]
The rock Jesus was referring to was Mount Hermon, in whose foothills they were standing. Jesus was fulfilling the promise of Psalm 68 noted above that Yahweh would conquer the cosmic mountain of Bashan, Mount Hermon, the mountain that was God’s rival, the cosmic mountain that represented spiritual rebellion. By creating his Church, the spiritual Mount Zion and its heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22), Jesus was then building his victorious kingdom upon the spiritual ruins of that wretched, rebellious “rock” before which they were standing.
With his resurrection and ascension, Jesus as Messiah took back Mount Hermon and was installed as “king upon Zion, God’s holy mountain” (Psalm 2:6). Read more detailed exposition of that theological victory of Christ at the Gates of Hades in my book When Giants Were Upon the Earth (paid link).
Chapter 5:
Cultic Practice
High Places
When the Israelites first entered the Promised Land to dispossess the Canaanites, Yahweh told them to destroy the altars where the pagans worshipped their gods “on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree” (Deuteronomy 12:2-6). This phrase would become a meme for what was called “high places” (Hebrew: bamah; plural: bamot).[175] The Israelites were told to tear down the altars and chop down and dash into pieces the images of the gods that Canaanites worshipped.
Archaeological digs have uncovered some of these high places throughout the land. They were usually locations of cultic sacrifice that were elevated, either naturally on a hill or artificially on large open-air stone platforms with stairs. Some had large sacred pillars called massebot in Hebrew (to be discussed below), asherim poles, and other images of gods. Some were simple sanctuaries. Others were entire complexes of worship that included a courtyard and a dining hall for sacred meals (1 Samuel 9:25) as well as various side rooms, not unlike the temple complex in Jerusalem.[176]
Upon first entering the Land of Canaan, the Israelites were told to create their own high places to worship Yahweh with simple earth or unhewn stone rather than the large platforms that typified Canaanite worship (Exodus 20:24-26). Israel was to be different. Before the temple was built, Yahweh approved of the high places created exclusively for him. David worshipped Yahweh with a priesthood at the high place in Gibeon according to God’s own commands.
1 Chronicles 16:39–40:
39 And [David] left Zadok the priest and his brothers the priests before the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place that was at Gibeon 40 to offer burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar of burnt offering regularly morning and evening, to do all that is written in the Law of the Lord that he commanded Israel.
Solomon too served Yahweh at the main high place (out of many) in Gibeon. But once the king built the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, the high places were no longer legitimate locations to worship Yahweh (1 Kings 3:2-4). All worship was to be centralized in the single house of God in Jerusalem.
But the king and his people both failed to obey this command of God. Solomon himself built high places to the gods Molech and Chemosh just outside the walls of Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:7). When the kingdom split after Solomon, Jeroboam placed two golden calves in both Dan and Bethel in high place complexes (1 Kings 12:31).
The high places in both Israel and Judah were never destroyed until the time of King Hezekiah in the eighth century (2 Kings 18:4), over two hundred years after Solomon’s temple was built. Two hundred years of widespread usage of forbidden high places. And even then, many high places were left in Judah until King Josiah’s more thorough reforms seventy five years later. Josiah was the one credited with the most significant elimination of idolatry in Judah and Israel. He destroyed the high places outside Jerusalem along with all their constituent elements of altars, asherim, and sacred pillars, as well as the abominable Tophet of Molech in the Valley of Hinnom and the unholy vessels of idol worship in Yahweh’s temple (2 Kings 23).
The Scripture sings praise of Josiah.
2 Kings 23:25:
25 Before [Josiah] there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.
Yet in spite of this momentary righteousness of Josiah, all the next four kings of Judah “did evil in the sight of the Lord,” bringing a return to the abominable worship of Canaanite gods and polluting Yahweh’s house in Jerusalem that had previously been cleansed (2 Chronicles 36:14).
The ancient Jews simply wouldn’t give up their high places and addiction to the spiritual infidelity of worshipping other gods.
Standing Stones
We’ve already discussed the wooden poles called asherim above. These were ubiquitous images related to the goddess Asherah that were closely linked with altars of both Baal and Yahweh at high places throughout Israel and Judah.
Another common element of the high place were sacred pillars, or massebot (singular: massebah). These were standing stone slabs from a few feet to ten feet tall that stood upright. Though pillars like this, also called stela, were used for various purposes such as boundary markers and victory memorials, Canaanites also erected such stela as markers for the p
resence of deified ancestors.[177] In the Old Testament, the term massebah, when used for cultic purposes, was nearly always a reference to standing stones “erected to commemorate the appearance or presence of a deity.”[178]
Archaeologist Ziony Zevit describes the language related to these standing stones or pillars. They were “made from stone” (Genesis 22:18; 31:13; Exodus 31:45) and were “constructed” (Exodus 24:4; 1 Kings 14:23), “placed” (Genesis 28:18), “raised high” (Genesis 31:45), “stood up” (Leviticus 26:1; Deuteronomy 16:22), “set erect” (Genesis 35:14; 20; 2 Kings 17:10), and “artificially dressed” (Hosea 10:2).[179]
Some of these stone slabs have been found in several excavations of Israelite cities from this time period (Arad, Lachish, Tirzah, and Hazor). Five standing stones were uncovered surrounding a stone altar in the outer gate plaza of the Israelite city of Dan.[180] Standing stones could also be found in city gates. One such massebah was unearthed from the gate of the Jewish city Bethsaida. It contains an engraved image representation of a bull-headed icon of Baal.
In the Bible, Solomon was reported to have constructed sacred pillars for Baal and possibly Molech and Astarte (2 Kings 23:13-14) in the high places of Jerusalem. King Ahab of Israel is reported to have set up a pillar of Baal in the temple in Samaria (2 Kings 3:2; 10:27), as described in the novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel.
Zevit explains the rhetorical connection of massebot standing stones with the sacred tree and high place.
Finally, there are the blanket statements about massebot “on every high hill and under every green tree,” an expression that is often taken as a rhetorical idiom signifying “everywhere.” However, as noted above in the discussion of peak sanctuaries, it most likely refers to locations of two different types of cult places. One Tyrian coin illustrates two side-by-side massebot under a single leafy tree while a second illustrates two massebot flanking a leafy tree whose branches overhang each of them.
The Bible provides no explicit details regarding the cultic rituals involved with the standing stones. But based on the Jacob narrative at Bethel, Zevit speculates that there was an intentional and silent setting up of the stone, an anointing with oil, followed by a performance declaration of promises and obligations. This ritual most likely established a bond between the person and the deity, whose power allegedly indwelt the stone, as Jacob called the stone itself the “house of God” (Gen 28:18-22; 31:13). This is not equating the deity with the image, but rather the belief that the presence of the deity was within and yet separate from the stone. “Both physically and metaphysically, they represented, expressed, and guaranteed a continuous, immanent presence.”[181]
The fact that Yahweh prohibited images of himself (Exod 20:4-5), yet spoke positively of pillars for Yahweh (Isaiah19:19) while condemning pagan pillars to other gods (Exod 23:24; 34:13), suggests that pillars for Yahweh didn’t have images on them, but rather represented Yahweh’s presence in the abstract as a boundary marker or memorial.
Once the house of God was completed in Jerusalem from the time of Solomon onward, it would seem even properly crafted pillars for Yahweh were no longer acceptable since Yahweh claimed his house was on Mount Zion alone.
Psalm 132:13:
For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place.
Psalm 87:2:
The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
Masks
I describe the use of masks in a Tyrian ritual of Astarte worship in Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel. This wasn’t an element of creative license. It was based upon a fascinating discovery of the use of masks in religious ritual on the island of Cyprus, a Phoenician colony like Tyre. As it happens, the temple of Astarte in Kition was the most dominant on the island and provided a plethora of mask artifacts for consideration.
Scholar Erin Averett examined the masks, which consisted of both animal and human faces: “Bull, lion, horse, stag, also monsters, cattle skulls.”[182] She concluded several purposes for them. Some were used as magical devices (“apotropaic “) in graves to scare away the spirits. But they were also used by royal and priestly elite in libation ceremonies as well as “religious rituals designed to showcase their privileged access to the divine realm, legitimizing their sacred authority.”[183] The context and types of Cypriot masks seem to reflect the patterns of masked initiation rites into secret societies of restricted membership.
One possible interpretation of an inscription found on a limestone tablet from Kition may indicate temple ministers wore animal costumes in the cult of Astarte.[184]
Though the precise nature of their usage is unclear, Averett concludes that these religious masks …
… play a social role by identifying maskers with high profile ritual performances. Thus, individuals or groups became associated with divinities as attendant figures in rituals, which in turn provided these maskers with divine protection and the power and characteristics of the deity… masks thus become visual manifestations of rituals that affirm existing power structures. As multimedia public events, religious ceremonies established and confirmed social structures through the use of monumental architecture, sacred space, and symbolic objects.
Qedeshim
One of the cultic functionaries in high places and temples that appear throughout the novel Jezebel are the qedeshim, a Hebrew word somewhat ambiguous and undetermined in meaning, though some Bible translations render it as male or female cult prostitutes (male: qedesh; female: qedesha). The word “cult” means used in sacred service or worship of a deity.
In the Bible, it isn’t entirely clear exactly what the responsibilities of the qedeshim are. But some things can be surmised from the few passages where the term appears. Its first occurrence is in Genesis 32 where Judah has sexual relations with his daughter-in-law Tamar, who is disguised as a prostitute or zonah (v. 15). When he returns to pay her with a pledge (v. 18), he asks, “Where is the cult prostitute (qedesha)?” Two words used of the same woman having paid sex with Judah. So what’s the difference? Deuteronomy spells it out.
Deuteronomy 23:17–18:
None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute [qedesha], and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute [qedesh]. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute [zonah] or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God.
From these two passages, there seems to be a difference between a normal prostitute (zonah) and a cultic prostitute (qedesha), where the qedesha is tied directly to the temple and the zonah is most likely not. Another passage in Hosea affirms this separation of secular and sacred prostitution when the prophet declares, “for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes (zonah) and sacrifice with cult prostitutes (qedeshot)” (Hosea 4:14), again delineating secular from sacred prostitution. Amos described sacred prostitution that occurred “beside altars on garments taken in pledge” also connected to temples (Amos 2:7-8).
During the time period of my novel in the ninth century, there were special rooms set aside for male prostitutes in the Jerusalem temple (2 Kings 23:7). Shocking, but true. The priesthood of the holy temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem had prostitution within its walls for much of its existence.
But what exactly were the temple duties of qedeshim? The Bible is not explicit. Karel van der Toorn has argued that it was a common custom of Israelite women to make good on unpaid vows to God by means of prostitution for the temple. A citizen would go to the temple or high place, engage the services of the qedeshim, whose wages would then go into the temple treasury as payment for the Israelite’s vow.[185] Though this sacred prostitution is prohibited by Yahweh in the Torah at Sinai (Deuteronomy 23:17-18), it clearly went on with impunity for hundreds of years in the temple of Jerusalem and on “every high hill and under every green tree.”[186]
Ugaritic literature describes qedeshim like those in Tyre with a bit more detail. Since the story of Ahab and Jezeb
el describes the cross-fertilization of Israel with Canaanite customs, it wouldn’t be inappropriate to assume parallels in purpose between the two cultures. In Tyre, the qedeshim included non-priestly personnel of the temple dedicated to the deity who performed menial tasks in the temple as well as sexual activities. The Israelites most likely engaged their qedeshim in like manner.[187] Raphael Patai explains the possible functions of qedeshim:
The function of the qedeshim had something to do with the fertility cult centering in the figure of the mother-goddess Asherah. Possibly, their services were made use of by childless women who visited the sanctuary in order to become pregnant. Such pilgrimages to holy places for the purpose of removing the curse of barrenness have remained an important feature of popular religion down to the present day among Moslems, Jews, and Christians alike in all parts of the Middle East. The qedeshim may have also functioned in rites of imitative magic in the fertility cult, whose purpose was to ensure fruitfulness in nature, the coming of the autumn rains, the growth of the crops, the multiplication of domestic animals, etc. Fertility goddesses had male attendants or priests in ancient Near Eastern religions, and in the case of the qedeshim in the Jerusalem Temple, one of their tasks seems to have been to supervise the work of the women weaving linens for Asherah, which, therefore, was done in the chambers of the qedeshim.[188]
Sacred Marriage
A religious sexual ritual that shows up in Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel is Sacred Marriage. The religious rite has its origins thousands of years earlier in ancient Sumer. It was called “heiros-gamos” in Greek, and it usually occurred at the New Year’s celebration. In it, the king would “marry” the goddess of fertility Inanna (later, Ishtar) in a ritual ceremony wherein he would consummate the marriage by having sexual intercourse with a priestess of Inanna as surrogate.[189] This was a cultic drama that performed the mythical love-song cycle of Inanna marrying a human king, Dumuzi.[190]
