Ps. 78.58 (pinnacle of rebellion)

They provoked him / with their high places
and with their idols / they made him jealous. 

We now reach the pinnacle, or nadir, of Israel’s rebellion-in-the-land: idolatry. In chiasm, the psalmist draws attention to this horror: A) provoke him B) with high places; B1) with idols A1) made him jealous. These ‘high places’ and ‘idols’ become the enactment of rebellion of Israel-in-the-land. Here we must recall that the original act of God upon bringing Israel into “his territory” was to bring them to “his mountain”. There, we saw that this ‘mountain’ was largely what provided the context or source for the territory. In other words, the dwelling of God upon the mountain is what made the territory ‘his holy territory’. That ‘mountain’ referred, we concluded, to Shiloh, the place of his sanctuary. As such, Israel’s act of rebellion in the land acts in direct conflict with God’s possession and lordship over the land. They install in their ‘high places’ idols, in contrast to the mountain that God dwells upon (or, visits). What Israel is doing then is, in effect, transferring God’s territory, that they have been given ‘by lot’, over to the realm of other gods. While God apportions out the land for Israel, Israel apportions out the land for idols. This is why idolatry is particularly the sin of the land as it stands in such direct antithesis to the transfer of the land to Israel. In a way we could say that God planted ‘signs’ in Egypt and Zoan so as to bring Israel to his territory, and yet Israel plants idols in the territory so as to transfer it back to an ‘Egyptian’ idolatry. Their idols are the antithesis of God’s signs, desecrating what God had cleansed with his holy conquering power. Most importantly, however, is the fact that these idols become powerful by and through the liturgy they are established for. It is by constructing liturgical centers to foreign gods that Israel brings out its ‘rebellion-in-the-land’; liturgy transfers the land to gods by giving them a home/dwelling. Formally. The lines of Israel’s rebellion total 6. The lines of God’s responding wrath total 6. Israel’s rebellion begins in a turning away from God; God’s response will begin in a turning away (forsaking) from Israel. The pinnacle of Israel’s rebellion is the construction of “high places”; the pinnacle of God’s response will the removal of his ‘high place’ at Shiloh from Israel’s midst. What we see in this is the fact that Israel very much constructs its own doom. God’s response is, in other words, perfectly modeled on their rebellion. In a way God’s blessings are prodigally provided, with a clear disregard for boundaries (it is festive in this regard), while his wrath is a precise and systematic response to rebellion.  Or, God’s blessings come without precedent; his wrath emerges, utterly, from the precedent of Israel’s rebellion.