High Place

High Place, in the English version of the Old Testament, the literal translation of the Hebrew במה (bamah, plural במות bamot).

This rendering is etymologically correct, as appears from the poetical use of the plural in such expressions as to ride, or stalk, or stand on the high places of the earth, the sea, the clouds, and from the corresponding usage in Assyrian; but in prose bamah is always a place of worship. It has been surmised that it was so called because the places of worship were originally upon hilltops, or that the bamah was an artificial platform or mound, perhaps imitating the natural eminence which was the oldest holy place, but neither view is historically demonstrable. The development of the religious significance of the word took place probably not in Israel but among the Canaanites, from whom the Israelites, in taking possession of the holy places of the land, adopted the name also. In old Israel many towns and villages had their own place of sacrifice, and the common name for these places was bamot. It has been suggested that the plural of the word referred to places of sacred prostitution and pagan worhsip.