Thoughts - 2 Chronicles 33:17

I was reading in 2 Chronicles last night, and came across a fascinating little note. Chapter 33 describes the reign of King Manasseh in Judah. Manasseh is known as one of the worst kings, because he re-introduced the many forms of idolatry his father Hezekiah worked to eliminate from Hebrew life. Usually, his story is read in 2 Kings, where the story ends with God giving notice that Manasseh's sin was the last straw, and Judah would fall just as Israel had already. However, 2 Chronicles gives the other part of the story: Manasseh was taken to Babylon in chains, truly repented there, was restored, and returned to Judah to attempt to undo his apostasy. He was largely successful, but the chronicler, in verse 17, offers that he failed in one place: “Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the Lord their God.”

Based on past history, especially before Hezekiah, this seems pretty darn good. After all, the people were worshiping the true God for once! In fact, one could potentially argue if it was a problem. After all, even Samuel, that great prophet of God, had sacrificed on high places in his time, as did other prophets (1 Samuel 9, 10). And David said, “The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). Further, the Law nowhere mentioned Jerusalem or the Temple as places for worship. So, as long as Jehovah was worshiped, were they not free to worship Him in their own villages, instead of much-less-convenient Jerusalem?

The Bible student will quickly realize that the preceding argument is a bit of a straw man, but it isn't hard to imagine it being offered in earnest. The problems with it, though, are many and, I find, extremely thought-provoking. As such, I thought I would share them, in the hope that they might be applied to today.

First, the high places contravened the specific word of God, notably Deuteronomy 12, 14, 26, and 31, where God said that He would choose a place for His name, and that all worship was to happen there. This is not a minor issue, and unfortunately it wasn't isolated: the more-famous story of King Josiah and the discovery of the Law in the temple, only 20 years after Manasseh's death, indicates that they were off the mark in many more areas, due to ignorance of God's commands. Of course, the Law was there for the finding and reading long before then, but they instead chose the expedient of relying on their own ideas. This is sad, not just because of the spiritual state it indicates, but because God's commands exist, not for their own sake, but to demarcate the best and safest way of doing things.

In this case, the most direct problem God's plan would have saved them from was that the high places emulated heathen religious practices. High places weren't a Hebrew invention, but a holdover from the peoples driven out of the land before. As such, they represented a visible connection with the paganism the Israelites had found to be a particularly strong temptation. It was a snare they should have been well aware of, but apparently they either didn't recognize it or thought themselves strong enough to resist it. Either way, they embraced, rather than shunned, the temptation, and history repeated itself yet again..

This temptation is even more dangerous because the high places splintered the faith community, cutting them off from one of their strongest God-given defenses. Since each village and city had its own high place, there was no need to gather into a larger body. By leaving off from that, however, they lost two important things. First, they lost the positive motivation of seeing themselves as a part of the whole. The gatherings at Jerusalem were an opportunity to understand oneself at part of the totality of the Chosen People, to be encouraged and energized by affirming the common faith and practice shared with a host of other people. It was, if you'll excuse the term, sanctified peer pressure to orthodoxy. Second, the larger community could also exert negative motivation – watching and stepping in to correct divergences from the Law. The communities, being on their own, had no such control. In short, they had placed themselves on the wrong side of the “divide and conquer” methodology - conquering by sin, well before any human invader.

Finally, and most surprisingly to me, the logic in Deuteronomy 12 shows that perhaps their greatest problem was that the high places made holiness incomprehensible. The simplest meaning of “holy” is “separate”, and there was a clear distinction made between things that could be done at home and things that had to be done in “the place the Lord your God will choose.” (vv. 5, 11, 14, 18, 26) A clear line was drawn between common life and sacred times – not that God was to be removed from everyday life (see, e.g., Deuteronomy 6:4-9), but that His fullest worship required one to move from where they were to where He was. A “high place” outside of town wasn't the equal of “going up” to the place of the transcendent God! But, further, until they were separated to a distinct place (and, consequently, time) of God, they could not understand fully what being in His presence meant: a place, in fact, not of somber hardship, but of exuberant joy.

So, in the end, what seemed, at worst, a harmless shortcut in returning to God, demonstrated and furthered the corruption of the foundations of God's people. Judah was already in decline, and heroic attempts to repair and restore it from the top came too late. Judgment was around the bend, but their reactions left open a path for that final, condemning decline.

I think there are applications to the present day, but these are left as an exercise to the reader. Preferably, via the comments. ;)