semyaza

The God of the Old Testament was, by all accounts, quite easily
provoked and prone to fits of rage. He encumbered his hapless "chosen"
people with a bewildering laundry list of rules and regulations, many
of which seemed entirely arbitrary. (Most Christians would no doubt be
quite surprised to learn that eating lobster is just one of God's many
"abominations" - see Leviticus 11:10).

One of the things that the Hebrew God seemed to hate most of all was
upright stones.

What?

Yes - the word that is so often translated "image" in the KJV was actually
nothing of the sort. "Masseboth" (the
Hebrew word in question) in fact refers to stones raised and placed in
a ritual setting, a monument to the god, as it were.

The Divine Rulemaker made no secret of his displeasure with these
structures:

Leviticus 26:1 Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither
rear you up a standing image [massebah], neither shall ye set up any
image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD
your God.

While Leviticus seems to proscribe just the worship of the masseboth,
Deuteronomy is more forthright:

Deuteronomy 16:22 Neither shalt thou set thee up any image [massebah];
which the LORD thy God hateth.

As the Biblical narrative continues to unwind, we learn that a
frequent trespass of the much-maligned Northern Kingdom was their
habitual forays into pagan idolatry, characterized by the erection of
the masseboth.

II Kings 17:9-10 And the children of Israel did secretly those things
that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them
high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the
fenced city. And they set them up images [masseboth] and groves in
every high hill, and under every green tree

Pity the poor Israelites. Not only were they saddled with a completely
logic-free ethical system, they also had to put up with the deity’s
Multiple Personality Disorder. For the sacred record of the Patriarchs
is riddled with examples of apparently righteous men performing deeds
which now floated near the top of the Most Abominable list.

Indeed, the eponymous founder of the Israelites, Jacob himself, had
committed such a deed early in his career. After a curious dream in
the middle of the desert, the Bible goes on to relate that "Jacob rose
up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his
pillows, and set it up for a pillar [massebah], and poured oil upon
the top of it" (Genesis 28:18).

A reasonable follower of the later Law of Moses would no doubt at this
point expect the Hand of God to reach down from Heaven and turn the
hapless Jacob into a charcoal briquette. But no, instead we find that
the inscrutable Yahweh seems to be quite pleased with this turn of
events, and even goes on to identify himself with the massebah in a
later passage:

Genesis 31:13 I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar
[massebah], and where thou vowedst a vow unto me;

This action is all the more puzzling when we look to archeology to
shed light upon the use of the masseboth amongst the ancient Semites.
An eighth-century BC inscription from Sefire in Syria refers to stone
pillars described as the "house of god". A ninth-century Assyrian
document similarly says of King Ninurta that "he camped by the stones
in which the great gods are dwelling"[1].

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Look once again at the
twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis:

Genesis 28:19 And he [Jacob] called the name of that place Bethel
Genesis 28:22 And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be
God's house;

Verse 22 is very curious. Note that it is not the city itself (Bethel)
which is called the "house of God", but rather the actual stone that
is given this designation. It appears that Jacob, like the Semitic
ancients already mentioned, thought that the massebah itself housed
the spirit of Yahweh - a view that the later authors of the Pentateuch
regarded with horror.

And herein lies to the key to understanding this enigma. Like any
other religion, the Hebrew faith evolved gradually over time. Yahweh,
who was once a desert spirit able to be housed in a stone, became the
all-powerful creator of the universe, present throughout all space and
time. The author of Genesis 28 is obviously not the same person
responsible for Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The Old Testament is
tapestry woven from many different thoughts and ideas. Those who
continue to insist that it is a monolithic work will forever be unable
to comprehend it.

Footnotes:
[1] Biblical Archeology, Vol 27, No 3, pg 33.

Old Man

First, I don't think you have proved that Jacob ever considered that God lived inside the stone.

Second, the law did not come into existence until several hundred years after Jacob and was not retrospective in application. The law prescribed a revealed means of worship, which was until then unknown. No-one can be condemned for not adhering to a formalism before it was given (unlike the English law of marital rape which was retrospectively applied by an atheist judiciary in 1991 when it had neither been known, nor had it ever existed, in the entire previous history of the universe).

http://www.peterjepson.com/law/rape_duress.htm