The Hebrew word bamah (H1116) refers primarily to a high place — an elevated site used for worship, often outside the Jerusalem Temple. High places were typically located on hills or ridges and featured altars, standing stones, and sometimes asherah poles. While originally some high places were used in legitimate Yahweh worship before the Temple was built, they became associated with Canaanite fertility religions and unauthorized worship, and the prophets and reforming kings consistently condemned them.
The bamoth (plural) represent one of the central recurring tensions in Israel's history: the pull between centralized, covenant-regulated worship at the Jerusalem Temple and the popular desire for local, syncretistic religious practice. The repeated refrain 'but the high places were not removed' in the books of Kings signals a king's incomplete reform (1 Kings 15:14; 2 Kings 14:4). Kings Hezekiah and Josiah were praised specifically for removing the high places (2 Kings 18:4; 23:8). The New Testament fulfillment transcends geography entirely — Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that true worshipers will worship 'neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem' but 'in spirit and in truth' (John 4:21-24).