Mittens wrote:three times a year the Israelites would go to MT Zion at Jerusalem and offer sacrifice at the temple and because it was the highest spot in Israel they called these Psalms the songs of ascent which they would sing while going there.
The temple mount (Mt. Moriah) is not the highest spot in Israel. In fact, Mt. Scopus and the Mount of Olives--both right next to the temple mount--are higher than the temple mount. It's called an ascent because the temple was just on a mountain, and you thought of approaching the holy space as ascending spiritually, since the deity was on a higher plane than us.
Mittens wrote:Deuteronomy 16
16 Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:
Bible lesson for maklelan
Bible lesson for you, Mittens. The text actually says that three times a year Israelite males will go see the face of God. This commandment is referenced here as well as in Exod 23:15, 17; 34:20, 23, 24; Deut 31:11; Ps 42:2; and Isa 1:12. The verb rendered above as "appear" is the root ראה vocalized as a Niphal, which is the passive or reflexive binyan. It appears in the prefix form above and in other places, but also in the infinitive construct in Exod 34:24; Deut 31:11; and Isa 1:12. The odd thing about its appearance in the infinitive construct, however, is that all three of those occurrences lack the preformative he that appears in the Niphal infinitive construct. It reads לראות, but if it were really Niphal it would be להראות.
What this means is that the verb in all those verses is actually intended to be the active Qal binyan, but later editors added the wrong vowels to make it Niphal. This is verified in Isa 1:12, where the putative indirect object ("my face") completely lacks the preposition ("before"). According to the Masoretic vocalization, it should read, "when you come to appear my face." This is nonsensical. When we change it to the Qal, however, it reads perfectly: "when you come to see my face." This tradition was about going to the temple to see the image of the deity in the debir, or the holy of holies. We know exactly what this image looked like, too, because we have uncovered an Israelite temple from the first temple period, complete with the divine images, which were standing stones, or massebot, representing YHWH and his consort (also included were his and her incense altars). See below.
Don't waste your time trying to teach me anything about the Bible, Mittens. You're not going to get anywhere.