Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
The Place He Will Choose
Deuteronomy 12:1-32
1 These are the statutes and the ordinances which you shall observe to do in the land which Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess all the days that you live on the earth. · WEB
One altar replaces every hilltop shrine, and the reason given is not tidiness but that borrowed worship always borrows more than it means to.
The code opens with demolition. Every place the previous inhabitants worshiped is to be destroyed — on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree Deuteronomy 12:2.
Then a sentence of four words that does the real work: you shall not do so to Yahweh your God Deuteronomy 12:4. The pattern is not to be reused. Israel is not to take over the shrines and change the name on them.
Instead, one site: the place which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there Deuteronomy 12:5. The formula recurs through the chapter and through the code, and it never names anywhere. The choosing is God's, and it is future.
The reason for centralizing is given in a phrase that has become a proverb. At present, every man whatever is right in his own eyes Deuteronomy 12:8 — which is precisely how the period after the conquest is later summed up Judges 21:25. Worship scattered across a hundred local sites becomes a hundred local versions.
What is prescribed at the one place is not solemnity but a meal. There you shall eat before Yahweh your God, and you shall rejoice in all that you put your hand to, you and your households Deuteronomy 12:7. The word rejoice recurs three times in the chapter, and the guest list is spelled out: sons, daughters, male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you Deuteronomy 12:12.
The landless man is invited by name. He has no field to bring produce from, so somebody else's rejoicing has to include him, and the point is repeated: be careful that you don't forsake the Levite Deuteronomy 12:19.
A practical concession follows. Ordinary meat may be killed and eaten anywhere, without a sanctuary, after all the desire of your soul Deuteronomy 12:15. Centralized worship does not mean centralized butchery, and a family far from the chosen place is not required to travel to eat.
One restriction stands over both: only be sure that you don't eat the blood; for the blood is the life Deuteronomy 12:23. The prohibition is older than Israel Genesis 9:4 and it is grounded in what blood is rather than in a ritual rule.
The chapter closes on the danger it began with, stated as a question somebody will actually ask: how do these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise Deuteronomy 12:30.
That is curiosity rather than apostasy, and it is treated as the entry point. The answer given names where it leads — they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods Deuteronomy 12:31. Nobody adopting a neighbor's practice intends to arrive there. The warning is that methods carry their own logic.
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