Where Does God "Place His Name?"

The Principle of the Placement of God's Name is a difficult one—almost as difficult as remembering the difference between principle and principal. My beloved editor tells me that way you remember the difference is that the vice princiPAL is your pal. She never met the vice principal at my school.  

The phrase "the place where God has placed his name," in the old King James terminology, will be foreign to many of my readers. Here is the principle as outlined in Deuteronomy 12:

¹¹ Then to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name—there you are to bring everything I command you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the LORD. ¹² And there rejoice before the LORD your God—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns who have no allotment or inheritance of their own. ¹³ Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. ¹⁴ Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.

So the passage is clear, no properly sanctioned sacrifice can be made anywhere except where God has placed his name. The assumption most people have is that this place is Jerusalem, and only Jerusalem. Therefore, they claim, no one can observe the feasts. The assumption that most commentators have is that this is only one place, and that place moved from time to time—ultimately from a place called Shiloh to Jerusalem. I think that both of these ideas are wrong. 

This is not an idiosyncratic idea of my own, it is in a few commentaries. They, like me, are forced to conclude it by the scriptures. Here is what the Jewish Encyclopedia says:

In the period covered by the books of Judges and Samuel sacrifice was offered in many places as in the book of Genesis; especially where a theophany occurred (Judges, vi. 11et seq., xiii. 3et seq.; II Sam. xxiv. 16et seq.).

The New World Encyclopedia says:

According to the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelite patriarchs and early prophets established altars and sacred pillars at high places, such as Bethel, Shechem, and Gilgal. Both prophets and Levite priests attended altars at these and other high places until at least the period of the ministry of the Elijah and Elisha. A movement against the use of high places developed as the Temple of Jerusalem emerged as a central sanctuary and the exclusive place of sacrifice to the Hebrew God.

This gives us several possibilities to the interpretation of Deuteronomy 12. One is that it was written after the establishment of the monarchy and reflects the custom of that later time; another is that everyone, including men like Samuel, knew it was forbidden and did it anyway; or the term where God has placed his name was not intended to imply only one location. I think this latter explanation is the most likely. This fits with one of the interpretive tools I use. If my interpretation of a section of the Bible contradicts the history we see in the Bible (and to a degree outside the Bible) then our interpretation is incorrect. I think that the examples of the Bible tell us that the place was wherever the representatives of God said it was. There are also examples of God setting a place, as he did with David in II Samuel 24:16. 

God's name was placed in many places. 

Why are these alternative sites (called high places) condemned by the prophets? The reason is that they tended to became centers of apostasy and false religious custom. So it was decided to concentrate all the sites into one site, which was Jerusalem. This failed of course, as Jerusalem became as corrupt as the "high places" it was to replace. The Temple was on occasion turned into a place of religious homosexual and heterosexual cultic religious prostitution. And before the Temple's destruction in 486 BC idols to Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods were placed there (see Ezekiel 8). 

What does this mean for us today? The principle is that the feasts were to be far enough away to require a pilgrimage of sorts. We are to take our family and go. Of course this must be tempered with another principle I have said before—DTBYC, Do The Best You Can. God does not expect anyone to do what is impossible for them. It honors God if you are unable to travel, and there are lots of valid reasons, if you celebrate the feasts the best you can, using the principles I have been writing about for this series and will write more about soon, after a little break—DTBTYC.