Leviticus 26:30

26:30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, ¹  and I will stack your dead bodies on top of the lifeless bodies of your idols. ²  I will abhor you. ³ 

Numbers 33:52

33:52 you must drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images, all their molten images, ⁴  and demolish their high places.

Numbers 33:2

33:2 Moses recorded their departures ⁵  according to their journeys, by the commandment ⁶  of the Lord; now these are their journeys according to their departures.

Numbers 21:2-3

21:2 So Israel made a vow ⁷  to the Lord and said, “If you will indeed deliver ⁸  this people into our ⁹  hand, then we will utterly destroy ¹⁰  their cities.” 21:3 The Lord listened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites, ¹¹  and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. So the name of the place was called ¹²  Hormah.

Numbers 23:13-14

23:13 Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place from which you can observe them. You will see only a part of them, but you will not see all of them. Curse them for me from there.”

23:14 So Balak brought Balaam ¹³  to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, ¹⁴  where ¹⁵  he built seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

Psalms 78:58

78:58 They made him angry with their pagan shrines, ¹⁶ 

and made him jealous with their idols.

Ezekiel 20:28-29

20:28 I brought them to the land which I swore ¹⁷  to give them, but whenever they saw any high hill or leafy tree, they offered their sacrifices there and presented the offerings that provoke me to anger. They offered their soothing aroma there and poured out their drink offerings. 20:29 So I said to them, What is this high place you go to?’” (So it is called “High Place” ¹⁸  to this day.)

¹ sn Regarding these cultic installations, see the remarks in B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 188, and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:903. The term rendered “incense altars” might better be rendered “sanctuaries [of foreign deities]” or “stelae.”

² tn The translation reflects the Hebrew wordplay “your corpses…the corpses of your idols.” Since idols, being lifeless, do not really have “corpses,” the translation uses “dead bodies” for people and “lifeless bodies” for the idols.

³ tn Heb “and my soul will abhor you.”

⁴ tn The Hebrew text repeats the verb “you will destroy.”

⁵ tn Heb “their goings out.”

⁶ tn Heb “mouth.”

⁷ tn The Hebrew text uses a cognate accusative with the verb: They vowed a vow. The Israelites were therefore determined with God’s help to defeat Arad.

⁸ tn The Hebrew text has the infinitive absolute and the imperfect tense of נָתַן (natan) to stress the point – if you will surely/indeed give.”

⁹ tn Heb “my.”

¹⁰ tn On the surface this does not sound like much of a vow. But the key is in the use of the verb for “utterly destroy” – חָרַם (kharam). Whatever was put to this “ban” or “devotion” belonged to God, either for his use, or for destruction. The oath was in fact saying that they would take nothing from this for themselves. It would simply be the removal of what was alien to the faith, or to God’s program.

¹¹ tc Smr, Greek, and Syriac add “into his hand.”

¹² tn In the Hebrew text the verb has no expressed subject, and so here too is made passive. The name “Hormah” is etymologically connected to the verb “utterly destroy,” forming the popular etymology (or paronomasia, a phonetic wordplay capturing the significance of the event).

¹³ tn Heb “he brought him”; the referents (Balak and Balaam) have been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁴ tn Some scholars do not translate this word as “Pisgah,” but rather as a “lookout post” or an “elevated place.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “and he built.”

¹⁶ tn Traditionally, “high places.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “which I lifted up my hand.”

¹⁸ tn The Hebrew word (“Bamah”) means “high place.”