Endnote 18 – What’s a Bamah? How Sacred Space Functioned in Ancient Israel

The story of Abimelech ben Jerubaal (Judges 9) takes place in 12th-century Shechem, a city that remained under Canaanite control. The Temple of Baal-berith/El-berith (Judges 9:4, 27, 46–49), which Abimelech and his supporters destroyed, has been identified with the Canaanite Fortress Temple 2b of Temenos 9, well known from excavations at Shechem. See Lawrence E. Toombs and G. Ernest Wright, “The Fourth Campaign at Balatah (Shechem),” BASOR 169 (1963), p. 29; Toombs, “Shechem: Problems of the Early Israelite Era,” in Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1900–1975), ed. F.M. Cross (Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979), p. 73. The scale of this Canaanite sanctuary stands in contrast to contemporaneous Israelite places of worship, which were, by comparison, quite small.