Biblical Hebrew Blog by ClassicalHebrew.com

Animals and Humans

Statistically, animal forms in Israel predominate those of human shape, and the majority of human forms are those of females. These female figurines have been labeled as the “Mother-goddess” or “Astarte” and since they go against the principal of aniconism (aversion to the use of icons) that the book of Deuteronomy describes, scholars have often placed the use of these figurines into the ‘popular’ religion of the common folk of Israel.

Religious Difference amongst the Israelites?

Many assumptions underline this idea. The first is that human figurines are representative of deities. The other, is that the presence of figurines in ancient houses is evidence of popular Israelite worship. This is contrasted by scholars with the official religion of Israel that claims to hate the production and use of such items as religious icons. Did such a religious divide exist in Israel?

The Bull and the Cherubim

One often cited example of unofficial versus official religion in Israel, is the worship at Dan and Bethel of the Bull that was installed by Jeroboam been Nebat, the first king of Israel. These bulls are interpreted as an image of worship, opposed to the Cherubim inside the Jerusalem temple that served as the throne of the invisible God, for the bible says God is “seated upon the cherubim”. So, from the biblical perspective, worship was different in Jerusalem than in Dan and Bethel.

Religious Ways Begin to Change

When we learn of the religious reform of Hezekiah, King of Judah - how he tore down the standing pillars and removed the Asherim from his land, we also hear how he removed an image of worship from the Jerusalem Temple. It was a bronze serpent and was called the Nehushtan which “the people of Israel burned incense to” (2 kings 18:4).

The bible clearly acknowledges that the worship of images and icons (such as the snake) existed at one time in Israel, and that a King who believed it a breach of proper worship took on the task of removing their presence.

The Call to Worship the Invisible God

The Bible tells us that the prohibition of religious images in Israel dates back to the times of Moses. However, the long use of the Nehushtan (the snake) in the Temple shows that either the Jerusalem priests ignored this religious stance against icons, or that the prohibition had not yet taken root in Judahite worship. What does seem to be sure is the growing awareness and introduction of worship of the invisible God alone, soon after the actions of King Hezekiah. Perhaps words like these drove him in his actions, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Deut 5:8).

In conclusion, we see that the official religion in Judah did, at one time, acknowledge the use of images in their worship, and thus one does not see the necessity of classifying figurines and such like icons into the ‘popular’ religion category. It was only a process of time that brought the use of icons to an end.

Jerusalem’s Origins

We know that from the beginning when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob entered and dwelt in Canaan, Jerusalem did not feature on their religious map. It was other places such as Bethel that became important places where the presence of God was felt, be it in a dream with angels and a ladder, or in other ways (Genesis 18). Jerusalem instead was a small town fortunate to make its living off the trade routes that passed east and west, and north and south through the town. She was established and lived as a Canaanite city.

The bible mentions that for a brief time there was some healthy connection with this city and Abraham- through his meeting with Malchizedek the king of Salem (Jerusalem) (Genesis 14:18-20). Later however, in the period of Joshua and the Judges we see that Jerusalem was an inhospitable place, one that Israelites feared to lodge in at nights (Judges 19:10-12). This status of Jerusalem continued only until David attacked the stronghold and made it his own. The beginning of Jerusalem’s sanctification began with David.

Jerusalem As Capital

David a man of Judah ruled his growing kingdom from his tribal city of Hebron. In many regards this was a disadvantage to the king who increasingly wanted to unite the tribes that lay spread out between the Mediterranean and east across the Jordan river; the tribes of Israel. For this reason and others, he turned Jerusalem a city that did not belong to Judah, and had no historical connections with any of the tribes, into their new capital. So now when coming to visit the king one did not have to enter the heartland of Judah, but rather instead go up to Jerusalem a place that now represented all the tribes. David wanted everyone to know that his kingdom was not a kingdom for Judah, but one for Israel.

Jerusalem As a Holy Center

Making Jerusalem historically relevant to the people of Israel was relatively easy when he gave it the status of capital for his new kingdom- however making it religiously significant was a more difficult matter. To rectify this spiritual void that Jerusalem represented he decided to introduce to the city the symbol of the presence of God, the ark, that had almost been left forgotten at Kiriath-jearim (1 Sam 7:1-2). He organized a welcoming ceremony and procession to accept the ark into Jerusalem where he erected a tent to cover it and made plans to build a permanent structure to house the presence of Yahweh. It was this move that immediately put Jerusalem on the religious map for all the Israelites.

Even when the kingdom split in the time of David’s grandson we see that Jerusalem had become a site of great veneration. The northern kingdom thus decided to establish their own religious sites such as Bethel, to distance them from the power that the religious center of Jerusalem had over the hearts of all the Israelites.

However Jerusalem’s identity as the invincible stronghold of the Lord was truly forged many centuries later when she withstood and survived a terrible siege from the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BCE (2 Kings 18). This event cannot be underestimated. Not only did it launch Jerusalem into the status of a safe haven, but she also became a symbol of God’s salvation and his protective presence in the city. The theological ramifications of this historical event and the people’s spiritual reaction and interpretation of it, only helped further to fix Jerusalem’s character as the religious center for the people of Israel, a process that David had began many centuries earlier.