Deuteronomy 12:3

Scatter their altars and break their statues. Burn their sacred groves with fire and crush their idols. Abolish their names from those places.

Catholic Public Domain Version

In The King James Version

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.

In Context

2Overturn all the places where the nations, which you will possess, worshipped their gods on lofty mountains, and on hills, and under every leafy tree.

4But you shall not do the same to the Lord your God.

Read all of Deuteronomy 12

Cross References

Exodus 23:13Preserve all that I have said to you. And by the names of foreign gods you shall not swear; neither shall these be heard from your mouth.

Deuteronomy 7:5So instead, you shall do this to them: overturn their altars, and break their statues, and cut down their sacred groves, and burn up their graven images.

1 Kings 15:13Moreover, he also removed his mother, Maacah, from being the leader in the sacrifices of Priapus, and in his sacred grove which she had consecrated. And he destroyed his grotto. And he shattered the very indecent idol, and he burned it at the torrent Kidron.

2 Kings 23:14And he crushed the statues, and he cut down the sacred groves. And he filled their places with the bones of the dead.

2 Chronicles 14:3And he broke apart the statues, and he cut down the sacred groves.

2 Chronicles 31:1And when these things had been celebrated according to ritual, all of Israel who had been found in the cities of Judah went forth, and they broke apart the idols and cut down the sacred groves. They demolished the high places and destroyed the altars, not only out of all Judah and Benjamin, but also out of Ephraim as well as Manasseh, until they utterly destroyed them. And all the sons of Israel returned to their possessions and cities.

Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 12:2-5

Relics of Idolatry to Be Destroyed. ( b. c. 1451.) 1 These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. 2 Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: 3 And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye… Read the whole commentary →

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