A STANDING STONE — an upright slab set up to make something permanent, from natsav, to stand. The word is morally neutral and the Bible uses it both ways, which is why it needs its own entry rather than a gloss. Jacob sets one up three times, each time to fix a moment in place: the stone he had slept on at Bethel, anointed with oil (Genesis 28:18), the heap at Galeed that witnesses a treaty (31:45), and Bethel again (35:14) — all already on these pages, none of them condemned. But a matzevah standing at a Canaanite shrine is a different object doing the same job for a different god, and Deuteronomy 12:3 orders them smashed, as 7:5 already had. ⚠ The English shelf is not consistent about it: this translation and the NWT read ‘standing stones’/‘sacred pillars’, while KJV and ASV print ‘images’ and ‘pillars’ — and ‘image’ is misleading, since the point of a matzevah is that it is UNCARVED. It is a stone that means something, not a stone shaped like something; that is what distinguishes it from the pesel, the carved image, standing beside it in the same verse. ⭐ Rows of them survive at Gezer and elsewhere, and their purpose is genuinely debated — see this chapter’s frontispiece. → first discussed at Deut 12:3