The idea of altars isn’t limited to the Bible. Altars have been used throughout history, by a wide range of religions. Making sacrifices to whatever gods they serve is a common attribute to religion, requiring altars for making the sacrifices on. An immeasurable amount of blood has been spilled on countless altars, throughout history.
The earliest use of an altar in the Bible was the one constructed by Noah, after the floodwaters had abated. He used that altar to worship God, in thanksgiving for his family having survived the flood.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. – Genesis 8:20
However, it is unlikely that this is the first altar ever built. God sent the flood due to the wickedness that was in men’s hearts (Genesis 6:5-7). The Bible is not specific about what that wickedness was, but there is a strong possibility that it included worshiping false gods. That is a common theme found throughout the Bible and one which God particularly loathes.
Throughout Old Testament history we see that the people of Israel waxed and waned in their devotion to God. We see something similar in the New Testament, as different “preachers” sought to bring other religions into the Early Church, mixing Christianity with them and creating an abomination. If we see this in the Bible, it is clear that much worse was happening amongst those who didn’t even know Jehovah God and his Son, Jesus Christ.
As Paul and the other apostles traveled in New Testament times, they encountered the altars erected by the people living in the various cities where they traveled to spread the Gospel. When Thomas traveled to India, he likely encountered lots of altars, as the Hindu religion has countless deities. When Paul was in Athens, he found an altar bearing the inscription “To the Unknown God.” Rather than condemn that altar, he used it as an opportunity to proclaim who the unknown God was, the creator of heaven and earth (Acts 17:23 and following).
Up until fairly recent times, animal sacrifices were made on altars in various parts of the world. Likewise, there have been a number of “primitive” people, like the Mayans and Aztecs of Mesoamerica, who made human sacrifices on their altars. One temple in El Tajin, Mexico, is called “el Pirámide de los Nichos” (the Temple of the Niches) for the 365 niches made into the face of the temple, each of which held the bones of a human sacrifice. The “Templo Mayor” (Main Temple), in what is now Mexico City, is said to have been dedicated with 20,000 human sacrifices. These are far from the only examples available.
During the 400 “silent years” between the book of Malachi and the Gospels, the nation of Judah was attacked by various different groups, including the Greeks and Romans. During the Greek conquest, which is talked about in the books of First and Second Maccabees (included in the Apocrypha, but not in our Bible), the conquerors offered pigs to their gods, on the Temple altar in Jerusalem to desecrate it. The Jewish feast of Hanukkah comes from the rededication of the temple, after the Greeks had been defeated.
This may be the only recorded case of other people group using the altar in the Temple for the purpose of desecrating it; but it’s not the only case of other people groups in the Bible building altars. For that matter, there was a serious problem in Old Testament times, with the people of Israel building altars to strange gods. While the term “evil altar” isn’t actually used in the translations I’ve checked, this is a subject that is talked about continually throughout the books of the Old Testament.
As far as God was concerned, that altar was sacred. Not only was the altar sacred, but the fire that burned within that altar was as well. Jewish tradition holds that the fire in the altar was ignited by God, at the Tabernacle’s dedication (Exodus, ch. 40). Once the tabernacle was erected, the cloud of God, which had led them out of Egypt, covered the Tabernacle and the presence of God was so strong that Moses was unable to enter. This is when the fire was likely kindled, which God commanded the priests to never allow to be extinguished.
And the fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it; it shall not be put out. And the priests shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering on it; and he shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings. 13 A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall never go out. – Leviticus 6:12-13
But even while the priests maintained the altar in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, there were always those amongst the people who were easily led astray to serve other gods, just as there are in the church today. These people would erect altars to other gods, often on “high places,” where they would make their offerings.
There are several things that contributed to the people of Israel following after other gods, such as them never fully destroying the idolatrous people of Canaan, as God had commanded them to. It was especially easy to get sucked into making offerings to those false gods during times when the worship of Jehovah God was not firmly established, such as the time at the beginning of King Solomon’s rule, before he built the Temple.
Meanwhile the people sacrificed at the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the Lord in those days. 3 And Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David, except that he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. – 1 Kings 3:2-3
We see two contradictory things here: the first is that King Solomon loved God and the second is that he gave offerings and burnt incense at the high places. These high places were likely where the altars to Baal and Asherah (the two most common deities of the Caananites) were erected. It is quite possible that Solomon gave offerings in these places, thinking that he was making those offerings to God, while being in the wrong place to do so. Since the Tabernacle was not erected during that time and he had not yet built the Temple, some confusion could have occurred.
Nevertheless, God made it clear that His people, Israel, were not to worship in those places and were in fact required to tear them down.
But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images – Exodus 34:13
You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. – Deuteronomy 12:2-3
These two passages of the Law give us some insight into the process of destroying those altars. Specifically, they were instructed to break sacred pillars, which were made of stone, as well as cut down and burn wooden images. But that wasn’t the altars; all it says for those, is that they were to destroy them.
Ancient cultures made altars in one of two ways; either by cutting and piling stones, fitting them together to build an altar or by carving an altar from one large piece of rock. These would clearly be altars, as they would have carvings on their surface.
I’ve spent time in the state of Tabasco, Mexico, where I saw stone altars by the Olmec people, the people who predated the Mayans. These people, who were in Mesoamerica from about 1600 BC to about 350 BC, are the ones who carved huge human heads out of basalt (a type of stone). Some of those heads were two feet tall. They also made their altars from basalt, some of which were more than a meter high, a meter deep and two meters long. That’s a stone weighing over 13,000 pounds, which was moved about 100 miles, probably by river.
Destroying an altar made by stacking stones would be easy. All one would need to do is take the stones apart and scatter them. To help ensure that the altar was not reconstructed, the stones would be scattered over a large area, with messengers sent many miles away to leave stones in random, hard to find places. On the other hand, destroying an altar carved from a single stone would be difficult, as that would require breaking up the stone of the altar, so that the pieces could be scattered.
Although God commanded destruction of these altars, erected to strange gods, the people of Israel were not very faithful to follow through, fulfilling that commandment. Some kings dis a partial work, cutting down pillars and burning idols; but few went the extra mile to destroy the altars. One who did was King Josiah.
When King Josiah took the throne of Judah at eight years of age, he decided to do what was right in the sight of the Lord, unlike some of the other kings of Israel and Judah. To start with, he ordered repairs done to the Temple of God. While those repairs were underway, the scrolls of the Law were found and read to Him. This led to Josiah starting a revival in Judah, including destruction of the idols and altars erected by previous kings.
And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priests, the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the Temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven (other false deities); and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. – 2 Kings 23:4
This entire chapter narrates what King Josiah did in destroying idolatry in Judah, which ended up being much more extensive than what we see described anywhere else in the Bible. He understood that it was not enough just to destroy the altars, it was necessary to destroy everything associated with the idolatry that the people had been practicing. At the same time, it was necessary to restore the worship of Jehovah God to the people.
It is worth noting that the faith of the king had a huge impact on the people of the time, much more so than a political leader would have today. We can see clearly in the books of Kings and Chronicles that the people followed the king in his faith. When there was a king who served Jehovah God, the people did so as well; but when there was a king who followed after false gods, so followed the entire nation.
As for the altars themselves, there are two references to how King Josiah destroyed them, in verses 12 and 15, as well as a separate reference in 16. The first two references talk about pulverizing the stone of the altars, crushing it to powder, rather than just disassembling or breaking the stone. Verse 16 says that he tombs nearby and ordered that the bones of the dead be removed from those tombs and burnt upon the altars, desecrating them. It is not clear whether this was done before pulverizing the stone or it was done to other altars which were not pulverized.
King Josiah’s religious reforms went so far that he ordered the execution of the priests to these false gods. While that might sound cruel to us, it is not the first time that such a thing happened in the Bible. Elijah killed the prophets of Baal that were in the palace of King Ahab (I Kings 18:40). Had those priests been allowed to live, they would have drawn the people away from Jehovah God once again, to serve false gods.
It is important that we realize that the concept of destroying an altar has to include much more than just the physical destruction of an altar. It must include destruction of everything that is associated with worshiping that false god, or the religion will simply grow up again. Even with complete destruction, the demons behind that false religion will not give up, but will manifest again in some other way.