Another characteristic of the Deuteronomic Law is its insistence on a central sanctuary. It was to this central sanctuary that the God-fearing Israelite was commanded to ‘go up’ three times in the year at each of the great feasts, and there offer his firstlings and sacrifices to the Lord. This central sanctuary, however, did not exclude the existence of local altars or shrines. The Levite is described as living in the families of the other tribes throughout the land (xii. 19, xiv. 27), and as deciding cases at law, wherever they might occur, along with the judges (xvi. 18, xvii. 9, xix. 17, xxi. 6). Nor was it necessary when an animal was slaughtered, and its life-blood poured out before Yahveh, that this should be done in the one chief temple of the nation. It was only such offerings as had been specially vowed to the national God that were required to be brought there. They had been dedicated to Yahveh as God of the whole nation, and it was therefore to that sanctuary in which Yahveh was worshipped by the nation as a whole that they had to be taken. In his individual or local capacity the Israelite was free to offer his sacrifices where he would. For, it must be remembered, the very fact that the life-blood was shed made the death of the animal a sacrifice to the Lord, and the feast on its flesh which followed was a feast eaten in the presence of the Lord. The insistence on the central sanctuary implied an equal insistence on the absolute supremacy of Yahveh in Israel. Idolaters and enticers to idolatry were to be cut off without pity; even the prophet who spoke in the name of another god, and whose words came to pass, was to be stoned to death. The fulfilment of a prediction guaranteed its truth only if the prophet was the messenger of Yahveh. Yahveh would suffer no other gods to be worshipped at His side, and the Deuteronomic Law accordingly forbids all such practices as were connected with the heathenism of the neighbouring peoples. The Israelites were forbidden to tattoo themselves like the Syrian worshippers of Hadad, to scarify their flesh like the Egyptians in mourning for the dead, far less like the Canaanites around them to sacrifice their firstborn by fire. Every effort was made to preserve them from contact with their neighbours; their king was forbidden to ‘multiply’ horses and wives; for the one would lead to intercourse with Egypt, the other would introduce into Israel the worship and the images of foreign deities. The sacred trees which from time immemorial had been planted near the altars of the gods, some of them by the patriarchs themselves, were to be destroyed like the conical pillar of the goddess Asherah and the upright column which symbolised the sun-god.