📖 Biblical Definition
A high place (Hebrew bamah) was an elevated cultic shrine — often on a hilltop, with altar, pillar, and Asherah pole — used by the Canaanites for fertility worship and tolerated, even adopted, by Israel after the conquest. Solomon worshipped at Gibeon’s high place before the temple was built (1 Kings 3:4), but after the temple every high place was forbidden. The faithful kings (Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18:4, Josiah in 2 Kings 23:8-9) tore them down; the wicked kings rebuilt them. The pattern is permanent: every generation of God’s people inherits high places — household idolatries, syncretistic compromises, "respectable" alternative altars — and is called to pull them down.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Hilltop shrines, often syncretistic, condemned by reformer kings.
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Elevated cultic shrines on hilltops or raised platforms, often used for syncretistic worship of YHWH mixed with Baal or Asherah; tolerated under early Israel before centralized worship in Jerusalem; systematically destroyed under Hezekiah's and Josiah's reforms.
📖 Key Scripture
1 Kings 14:23 — "For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree."
2 Kings 18:4 — "He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves."
2 Kings 23:8 — "And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Forgotten archaeology; missing how it teaches the perpetual danger of mixing worship of God with worship of idols.
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High places were not all pagan — many were sincere YHWH-worship done in the wrong place and in the wrong way. The lesson is that sincerity does not sanctify wrong worship. Centralized, regulated worship was God's command, not optional preference.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Hebrew bamah — high place.
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['Hebrew', 'H1116', 'bamah', 'high place']
['Hebrew', 'H1389', 'givah', 'hill']
Usage
"Tear down the high places of your heart."
"Sincere worship in wrong terms is still wrong."