Deuteronomy 12 · a question people ask
Which place did the LORD choose?
Deuteronomy doesn't say. The chapter speaks six times of the place the LORD will choose (12:5, 12:11, 12:14, 12:18, 12:21, 12:26) and never names it. Later books of the Bible speak of two places. In Joshua, "The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the Tent of Meeting there" (Joshua 18:1), and in Jeremiah the LORD says, "go now to my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first" (Jeremiah 7:12). Solomon, blessing the assembly at the house he had built, quotes what the LORD spoke to David: "I chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to build a house in, that my name might be there" (2 Chronicles 6:5), "but now I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there" (2 Chronicles 6:6). And 1 Kings speaks of "Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there" (1 Kings 14:21), in words close to 12:5.
The verses
“But to the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there, you shall seek his habitation, and you shall come there.”
“The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the Tent of Meeting there. The land was subdued before them.”
““But go now to my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.”
“Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess.”