Altars have always played an important role in religious practice
and belief. In the Old Testament the verb from which the noun altar derives,
zbh (to sacrifice), demonstrates the primary function of altars as places
for offering sacrifice. Altars also served as places of deliverance. In ancient
Israel a person accused of committing a serious offense could flee to an altar
to avoid immediate death. The Old Testament refers to this tradition in the
so-called Covenant Code of Exodus:
He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to
death. And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I
will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee. But if a man come
presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him
from mine altar, that he may die. (Exodus 21:12-14)
Later variants of this statute make clear that the places of
refuge were cities appointed for that specific purpose (compare Deuteronomy
19:1—7; Numbers 35:9—28; Joshua 20). In a city of refuge an accused person could
find housing, food, and employment—none of which could be had at the altar. The
original place of asylum, however, was the altar of God.2 3 The Exodus
passage quoted above supports this view, as do the accounts in 1
Kings 1:50-51 and 2:28. which relate that Solomon's enemies Adonijah and Joab
fled to the tabernacle and “caught hold on the horns of the altar” in hopes of
deliverance, albeit with different results.
This information proves significant for an understanding of altars
in Nephite society, which as an heir to the customs of ancient Israel reflected
many of the traditions preserved in the Hebrew Bible. One of the four references
to altars in the Book of Mormon establishes a direct correlation between that
record and the Old Testament.
Alma 15:17 notes that after Alma established the church at Sidom,
the people “began to humble themselves before God, and began to assemble
themselves together at their sanctuaries to worship God before the altar, watching
and praying continually, that they might be delivered from Satan, and
from death, and from destruction.” (The words before God are equivalent to the
Hebrew phrase lipne YHWH and suggest a temple context as the original Sitz
im Leben, or “setting in life.”)
This verse invokes Israelite custom by identifying the altar as a
location of deliverance, a subtlety that provides further evidence that the
Book of Mormon clearly reflects the traditions of antiquity. (David E. Bokovoy
and John A. Tvedtnes, Testaments: Links Between the Book of Mormon and the
Hebrew Bible [Tooele, Utah: Heritage Press, 2003], 166-67)