Scripture Daily

Context No. 238 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 12:1-14: in context

1These are the statutes and the ordinances which you shall observe to do in the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess all the days that you live on the earth. 2You shall surely destroy all the places in which the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods: on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree. 3You shall break down their altars, dash their pillars in pieces, and burn their Asherah poles with fire. You shall cut down the engraved images of their gods. You shall destroy their name out of that place. 4You shall not do so to the LORD your God. 5But to the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there, you shall seek his habitation, and you shall come there. 6You shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the wave offering of your hand, your vows, your free will offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock there. 7There you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice in all that you put your hand to, you and your households, in which the LORD your God has blessed you. 8You shall not do all the things that we do here today, every man whatever is right in his own eyes; 9for you haven’t yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the LORD your God gives you. 10But when you go over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the LORD your God causes you to inherit, and he gives you rest from all your enemies around you, so that you dwell in safety, 11then it shall happen that to the place which the LORD your God shall choose, to cause his name to dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the wave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which you vow to the LORD. 12You shall rejoice before the LORD your God—you, and your sons, your daughters, your male servants, your female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you. 13Be careful that you don’t offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see; 14but in the place which the LORD chooses in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you.

This is one of the defining laws of Deuteronomy, given as Israel stands at the edge of the land it is about to enter. God tells them how worship will work once they are inside, and the instruction is deliberately unlike the religion of everyone around them.

There are two commands, and they pull in opposite directions. The first is destruction. Tear down the shrines of the nations you are dispossessing, the altars on the high mountains and the hills and under every green tree, break the pillars, burn the poles, wipe the names of those gods off those places. The second command is the surprising one. You shall not worship the LORD that way. Where the nations scatter worship across every hilltop, doing whatever seems right at each one, Israel is to bring its offerings to a single place, the place the LORD himself will choose to put his name. Twice the passage warns against sacrificing in every spot you happen to see, and once it names the alternative with a loaded phrase: they must not each do what is right in his own eyes.

That phrase is the same one the book of Judges uses to describe its worst days, when everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Worship here is not meant to be improvised wherever it feels right to me, but brought to a place I did not pick, shared with people I did not choose. Where have I quietly turned worship into something I do on my own terms, in the spot that suits me, rather than the one I was given?

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