24 An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record My name I will come to you, and I will bless you. 25 And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. 26 Nor shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.
Comment:
These verses come immediately after a repeat of the earlier instruction not to make gods of silver or gold, and they lay out exactly what it is that YHWH does want His people to do when they are worshipping Him. But we hit a number of problems in trying to comply with these instructions now:
The first problem is the sacrificing of burnt offerings, peace offerings, sheep and oxen. We are still trying to work out the extent to which the commandments to sacrifice animals may have been superceded since they were given. And there are also issues surrounding how these sacrifices would need to be done if they were still required – we don’t have access either to an approved priestly class or to the correct location for an altar.
Which brings us on to another issue: where is the approved location to build an altar to YHWH? We know that YHWH caused His name to be mentioned in various places before the temple was built in Jerusalem, but are these places still valid today? And even if they are, what do we do when we find ourselves elsewhere?
None of the above issues put these instructions in the red category, but they do cause sufficient problems for these verses to be coded amber.
Our reading of the apparent contradiction first to build an altar of earth, and then to build one of stone is that earth will suffice, but stone (as long as it is uncut) is also acceptable.
Meanwhile the prohibition of steps up to the altar is explained as being one of decency, and we would follow that instruction if we were building an altar. But it also seems to emphasise that YHWH’s altar should not be compared to a “high place”, which would be used in worshipping a pagan deity.