In this
respect matters after the building of Solomon's temple continued to
be just as they had been before. If people and judges or kings
alike, priests and prophets, men like Samuel and Elijah, sacrificed
without hesitation whenever occasion and opportunity presented
themselves, it is manifest that during the whole of that period
nobody had the faintest suspicion that such conduct was heretical
and forbidden. If a theophany made known to Joshua the sanctity
of Gilgal, gave occasion to Gideon and Manoah to rear altars at
their homes, drew the attention of David to the threshing-floor of
Araunah, Jehovah Himself was regarded as the proper founder of all
these sanctuaries,--and this not merely at the period of the
Judges, but more indubitably still at that of the narrator of
these legends. He rewarded Solomon's first sacrifice on the great
Bamah at Gibeon with a gracious revelation, and cannot, therefore,
have been displeased by it. After all this, it is absurd to speak
of any want of legality in what was then the ordinary practice;
throughout the whole of the earlier period of the history of
Israel, the restriction of worship to a single selected place was
unknown to any one even as a pious desire.
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