Charles Ellicott Commentary Deuteronomy 12

These are the statutes and judgments. —The word Mitzvah—commandment, or duty—is not used here. Particular institutions and requirements are now before us.

You shall utterly destroy. —First of all these requirements is the destruction of every vestige of idolatry. In the land of Jehovah there must be no trace of any other god but Him. The non-fulfilment of this command in the early history of Israel has led some to suppose that the command itself belongs to later times. But it must be observed that the destruction of these things is inextricably connected with the conquest of the country in detail. It was part of the work assigned to the several tribes of Israel when the land had been divided by Joshua. His work was to conquer the Canaanitish armies, and give Israel possession of their chief cities. He then assigned the land to the several tribes, to make it their own throughout.

Obviously, if every tribe had insisted upon destroying all monuments of idolatry in its own territory, one of two results must have followed: either the remnant of the Canaanitish nations must have been excited to fresh acts of rebellion and hostility, resulting in their extermination, or else they must have yielded themselves entirely to the worship of Jehovah. But Israel disobeyed the order. They did not themselves yield to idolatry in Joshua’s time. The disturbance made respecting the altar Ed is quite sufficient of itself to prove the strictness of the law against strange altars.

But the Canaanites being left undisturbed after they ceased to resist openly, and their objects of worship being left unmolested, there were constant temptations to idolatry, to which Israel yielded. And thus it was not until the times of Hezekiah and Josiah that these laws were carried out. But this does not prove the law to have come into existence then, any more than the present condition of the human race proves that man was not made in God’s image in Paradise.

Destroy the names. —The substitution in later times of bosheth for baal in the names Jerubbaal (Jerubbesheth), Eshbaal (Ishbosheth), Meribbaal (Mephibosheth), is a curious example of the literal fulfillment of this command, or, perhaps, rather of the command in Exodus 23:13, of which the spirit and purport agree with this.

You shall not do so—that is, you shall not serve Him on the high mountains and hills, and under every green tree, after the manner of the nations.

But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes. — The very form of the order proves its antiquity. No one who was acquainted with the removal of that “place” from Shiloh to Nob, from Nob to Gibeon, and from Gibeon to Jerusalem, could have written with such utter unconsciousness of later history as these words imply. It is noticeable that in the reading of this precept in the time of our Lord, the Jews seem to have arrived at the same state of unconsciousness.

They could not conceive of the presence or worship of Jehovah anywhere but at Jerusalem. (For this topic, see Saint Stephen’s speech in Acts 7, and the incidental proofs it contains of God’s presence with Israel in many places, in reply to the accusation made against Stephen of preaching the destruction of the one idolized seat of worship at Jerusalem.)