Wish Upon a Stone Wish Upon a Stone Victor Hurowitz Click here to purchase the October 1999 issue of Bible Review containing this article with all accompanying photos and illustrations. A recently published Assyrian text may shed light on an enigmatic and biblically forbidden cultic object. A maskit stone you shall not place in your land to bow down upon it. Scholars have long puzzled over the term even maskit and the object it designates. The prohibition against the maskit stone affects Jewish practice to this day.
Synagogue liturgy affords very few occasions for prostration in the course of worship.
However, in both instances the worshiper places a rug, a handkerchief or some other covering on the floor in front of him or her to avoid seeming to bow down directly upon a stone floor, as would have been done in the Temple. This venerated rabbinic interpretation and practice notwithstanding, the biblical prohibition must express more than a simple aversion to prostration. The context is clearly one of idolatrous practices, so the maskit stone must somehow be connected with idolatry. Most modern, as well as traditional, exegetes interpret the maskit stone as a decorated or inscribed stone, or a stone to be looked at because of the engravings upon it. This interpretation is based on Ezekiel's description of maskit chambers, the walls of which were covered with the forms of creeping things, disgusting beasts and idolatrous abominations.