HIGH PLACES 6 | DESTROYED BY

1. High Places

a) During Bible History, high places were usually natural (e.g. hills and mountains) but sometimes man-made (e.g. towers) places where people worshiped or made sacrifices. 

b) The only True God often appeared, or was sometimes worshiped, atop mountains (e.g. Mount Sinai) or hills (1 Samuel 9:19).

c) The Canaanite "high places" were notorious for pagan worship where various heathenistic idols, altars or buildings were located, and where some of the most wicked and horrendous behavior imaginable went on. As such, when the Israelites entered the Promised Land they were commanded by God not only to have nothing to do with high places, but to destroy them because they would be corrupted by their presence - a command that was largely disobeyed, to their regret.

2. Destroyed By 

a) Asa, partially.

2 Chronicles 14:3 
For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves:

2 Chronicles 15:17 
But the high places were not taken away out of Israel: nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect all his days.

b) Jehoshaphat.

2 Chronicles 17:6 
And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD: moreover he took away the high places and groves out of Judah.

c) Hezekiah.

2 Kings 18:4 
He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

2 Chronicles 31:1 
Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities.

d) Josiah.

2 Kings 23:8 
And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.

2 Chronicles 34:3 
For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.