Regarding the usual sacrificial transaction we have information in the very word for altar, namely mizbéah, t.e. ‘place of slaughter.’ This shows that the victims, as is presupposed also in Gn 222, were slain upon the altar itself. The horns of the altar, which afterwards played a réle in connexion with the application of the blood (Ly 47 e¢ al.) and the function of the altar as an asylum (1 K 1°°F- 2°8), should in all probability be traced back to the custom of spreading the skin of the victim, horns and all, over the altar. This custom can be proved also in the case of heathen cults, and is thus presumably older than Jahwism. Apart from other considerations, the latter supposition is favoured by the circumstance that in the earliest times altars were composed either of large flat stones (Jg 67° 131, 1 S 614 144) or of piles of turf or unhewn stones (Ex 20%), The introduction of artificial horns would follow after altars came to be constructed of different materials. The ex- planation of the horns as symbols of strength in connexion with the worship of Jahweh as a bull: God could thus, in any case, have been introduced only at a later period. The circumstance that the number of horns required by the Priests’ Code (Ex 272, cf. Ezk 43" 2°), which no doubt embodies here a long-established usage, is four (one on each corner of the altar), proves nothing against the view that the horns were originally only two in number.
2. The essentials of a place of worship in the earliest times probably always included a mazzébah (73¥2) and a sacred tree, or, in default of the latter, a sacred tree-stump or pole. Itis true that Ex 23% 34 and Dt 7° 12° convey the impression that in Israel the mazzébah was first introduced in imita- tion of Canaanite modes of worship; but such a notion is contradicted by the prevailing belief (see above, p. 616%) that the mazzébah was the abode of the nwmen loci. This belief had its origin as far back as the period of Polydemonism, and Jahwism retained it to this extent, that even in this religion the mazzébdh was viewed as the symbol and pledge of the nearness of Jahweh. It
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
is thus all the more readily comprehensible that down even to the late monarchical period no offence was taken at the mazzébah. In Gn 31%. the mazzéba@h serves as a witness of the agreement between Jacob and Laban. Moses himself erects at Sinai not only an altar to Jahweh but twelve mazgzeboth, ‘ according to the number of the tribes of Israel’ (Ex 244). These stones cannot possibly have possessed for this narrator the same signifi- cance as the sacred stone of Bethel had for the narrator of Gn 28, The two brazen pillars at the entrance to Solomon’s temple (1 K 7/°"-) should also, no doubt, be regarded as representing a form of mazzébah. According to 2 K 12” ®) [read, with the LXX, ‘by the mazzebah’ instead of ‘ by the altar’] a mazzebah stood in the forecourt of the temple; in Hos 34 the mazgzebah is taken for granted as part of the materia sacra of the regular worship of Jahweh; and in Is 19% the maggebah spoken of is not an obelisk, but a stone which serves along with the altar to mark a spot conse- crated to the worship of Jahweh. We are told in 2K 18+ that the mazzebéth had already been destroyed by Hezekiah, but this should probably be set down as an antedating of the cultus reform of Josiah (2 K 23") ; for the first [unless Mic 51? @) is as early as the time of Manasseh] prohibition of the mazzgébah appears in Deuteronomy (16%; cf. also Jer 2" [if the mockery of the prophet has for its objects *dshérim (see below) and mazzébdth] and Ly 261). As with the worship on high places,
. the erecting of ’dshérim and mazzebéth by the
kings prior to Josiah is imputed to them as a fault by the Deuteronomistic redactors of the Book of Kings (1 K 14%, 2 K 17%),
Like the mazzébah, the *dshéradh (ax, plur. ows), ae. the sacred tree-stump or pole, must also be reckoned among the survivals of the pre- Jahwistic cultus, although it likewise held its place for centuries unopposed beside the altars of Jahweh (as in Jg 6%*: it appears beside an altar of Baal). It is, without doubt, a substitute for the sacred tree (see above), which was not available everywhere (especially, for instance, in the case of hastily erected altars in the desert). But, as the regular sanctuaries on the high places would always have green trees in their neighbourhood, there was less occasion for the mention of the *dshérim [in 1 K 14” and 2 K 17" they are a super- fluity, due probably to the eagerness of the Deuteronomist to condemn alike the trees and the ’dshértm). That the ’dshérah said to have been eut down by. Hezekiah (2 K 18) and restored by Manasseh (21°) stood in the temple down to the time of Josiah, is shown by its removal and burn- ing in the Kidron Valley (2 K 23°). In like manner an *dshérah (according to 1 K 16%, first set up by Ahab) stood in Samaria (2 K 136; cf. also 1K 14%, 2K 17'%). The command to cut down (Ex 348, Dt 75) or to burn (Dt 12°) heathen ’dshérim implies at the same time, of course, a repudiation of their use in Israel. They are expressly for- bidden in Dt 167 (cf. also Mic 5% (2), where it is prpcintoe that they are to be plucked up; Jer 172,