Deuteronomy 32:13

Hebrew Bible

11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, so the Lord spread out his wings and took him, he lifted him up on his pinions. 12 The Lord alone was guiding him, no foreign god was with him. 13 He enabled him to travel over the heights of the earth, and he ate of the produce of the fields. He provided honey for him from the cliffs, and olive oil from the hardest of rocks, 14 butter from the herd and milk from the flock, along with the fat of lambs, rams and goats of Bashan, along with the best of the kernels of wheat; and from the juice of grapes you drank wine. 15 But Jeshurun became fat and kicked; you got fat, thick, and stuffed! Then he deserted the God who made him, and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt.

Amos 4:13

Hebrew Bible

11 “I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel. Because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel!” 13 For here he is! He formed the mountains and created the wind. He reveals his plans to men. He turns the dawn into darkness and marches on the heights of the earth. The Lord God of Heaven’s Armies is his name!

 Notes and References

"... The open-air altar shrine, called a bamah, is known through several books of the Biblical canon—but none more so than the Book of Kings, where they play a prominent role in assessing the performance of a king. Often referred to as “high places” in translations of the Bible, bamot were worship sites that usually contained an altar. A general understanding about the bamah and how it functioned can be gained by using evidence from the Biblical text as well as archaeology. The term bamah can mean back, hill, height, ridge or cultic high place. In the Biblical text it is used to mean “the back of one’s enemies” (Deuteronomy 33:29), “heights” (Deuteronomy 32:13; Isaiah 58:14; Micah 1:3; Amos 4:13; Haggai 3:19; Psalm 18:34), “back of clouds” (Isaiah 14:14) or “waves of sea” (Job 9:8). Because of this, eminent scholar Roland de Vaux said, “The idea which the word expresses, therefore, is something which stands out in relief from its background, but the idea of a mountain or hill is not contained in the word itself.” This could explain why this word is used even though some of the shrines were not located on hills. The Ugaritic and Akkadian cognate usually means an animal’s back or trunk. The Akkadian can also mean land that is elevated. In the text of the Bible they can be found on hills (2 Kings 16:4; 17:9-10; 1 Kings 11:7), towns (1 Kings 13:32; 2 Kings 17:29; 23:5) and at the gate of Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:8). Ezra 6:3 says they were in the ravines and valleys. The position of a bamah in the valley can also be seen in Jeremiah 7:31; 32:35 ..."

White, Ellen High Places, Altars and the Bamah (pp. 1-6) Biblical Archaeology Society, 2023

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