Bamah

Bamah is the Hebrew term for a high place used for worship, preserved as a place name in Ezekiel's account of Israel's repeated return to unauthorized shrines.

The High Place and Its Name

In Ezekiel's rehearsal of Israel's rebellion in the wilderness, Yahweh confronts the people's continued going up to high places with a pointed question: "What is the high place to where you⁺ go? So its name is called Bamah to this day" (Eze 20:29). The rhetorical question challenges the practice itself, and the explanation that follows — that the place is therefore called Bamah — treats the name as a standing memorial to Israel's disobedience. The site's persistence under that name into Ezekiel's own day underscores how deeply the pattern of illicit worship had taken root in the nation's memory and landscape.