POLES AND STONES

“You are not to plant any sort of tree as a sacred pole beside the altar of Adonai your God that you will make for yourselves. Likewise, do not set up a standing-stone; Adonai your God hates such things.”
Deuteronomy 16:21-22

In looking back at Exodus 20:3-4, we read that one of the commandments given to the people of Isra’el was that no other gods were to be before Adonai. Whether carved out or not, or even representing Adonai or not, the fact remained that nothing was to be worshipped except for Adonai Himself. Here in Deuteronomy 16, we see again Adonai commanding His people that no pole or stone was to be used in any form of worship.
Right away my mind travels to Judges 6 and the account of Gideon. Although Gideon is not found within the Torah, we read of his tearing down his father’s altar to Baal and cutting down his Asherah pole (Jud 6:25). In the morning when the town awakes to see what has happened, they question the people and find that it was Gideon who caused the chaos. Livid, the people demand the father, Joash, to release his son to their punishment. However, Gideon’s father leaves the argument stating that if Baal is god, then he can defend himself (Jud 6:31).
But what happened? What was it that turned the people over time from agreeing to this command of no idols and gods, to what we read in Judges? I come up with two suggestions, and in all honesty I pray they never become our reasons. First, the people were swayed. We see this in the account of Solomon also. Just as Solomon allowed the women in his life to sway him from Adonai, so also Adonai’s chosen people swayed from their first love. As such, they began to serve sticks and rocks. The second suggestion, they did not see Adonai as all He proclaims to be. Because of the trial in the desert, because of the battles that had to be fought, because life was not served to them on a silver platter, the people began to question who Adonai was. Instead of remembering Him as the one who had parted the Red Sea, or the one who provided manna and quail in the wilderness, they began to see Him as the one who brought them there to die with a lack of water, or of a land of giants.
Let us be careful that in the times when things do not come handed to us, we do not turn our backs on Adonai. We are to worship the Creator, not the creation. Serving the rocks and sticks will only put us back in Egypt instead of the Promise Land that awaits us.

Deuteronomy 16:18 – 17:13