Jehovah forbade the unnatural strife. Accordingly Jeroboam, without opposition, became king of Israel, while Rehoboam and the house of David were forced to assume the title of kings of Judah. We have now reached a period of sacred history, when the stream of events breaks off into two branches, of which the channels are so interlaced by the chroniclers of old times, that it is not always easy to distinguish the one from the other. Rehoboam king of Judah, and Jeroboam king of Israel, began their reigns almost simultaneously. They mounted their respective thrones in the year B. c. 975. But while Jeroboam wore the crown two and twenty years, Rehoboam survived his accession only seventeen years; a difference which affects the chronology of the epoch just so far, as to render a perfect reconciliation of the occurrences that befell in both states somewhat difficult. Perhaps, therefore, I shall best consult the convenience of my readers, if as a general rule I confine my calculations in future to the annals of Judea. For Israel, though not absolutely cut off from the promises, became by the fact of its severance a distinct nation; and deserves ever after to be regarded, in its government, if not throughout all the arrangements of its society, as more than a semi-idolatrous state.

B. C. 975.. The first act of Jeroboam after his election by the ten tribes was to establish the seat of his government at Shechem; the next to set up stations for public worship, in order to prevent the periodical attendance of his subjects on the great national festivals at Jerusalem. With this view he consecrated at Dan and Bethel, on the northern and southern sides of his kingdom, golden calves, to represent the God who had brought the people out of the land of Egypt. And usurping to himself

the high priest's office, he offered upon altars erected before them costly sacrifices. We have no right to assume that Jeroboam intended more by this proceeding than that which he professed to seek. But to make of Jehovah "any likeness or similitude," was as contradictory of the second command in the Decalogue, as the practice of sacrificing or holding any of the national festivals, except in the place where the ark stood, was a breach of the ritual law delivered by Moses. His offence, therefore, if it scarcely deserve to be treated as idolatry, amounted to rebellion. And it led the way, as such beginnings always do, to crimes deeper and more debasing than itself. It did not long pass unreproved; for there came from Judea, on the occasion of Jeroboam's first great festival, a young prophet, who foretold the subjugation at a future day, of Israel by Judah, under circumstances which deserve to be detailed at length.

B. C. 974. The people of the ten tribes, though very immoral, were not at this time wholly given to idolatry. Many of them, including priests and Levites especially, refused to worship as the king directed; and one, an old prophet, dwelt with his family at Bethel, where Jeroboam conducted the profane festival of which I am speaking. The king was standing by his own altar, preparing to burn a sacrifice, when a voice from amid the throng exclaimed, "O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord; Behold, a child shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burned upon thee." The king turned round, saw the intruder, and stretching out his hand towards him, commanded that he should be seized. But the words were yet

in his mouth when his arm dried up, and at the same moment the altar rent asunder, and the ashes that lay upon it were spilled.

Indignation at once gave place to fear in the king's mind. The crowd also which surrounded him was awe-struck, while in a lowly voice he entreated the prophet of Judah to pray for him, and bowed the head, when his hand was restored to him as before. But he could not prevail on the young prophet to become his guest. "It was charged him by the Lord, saying, eat no bread in Bethel, nor drink water, nor turn again by the way that he came," in token that between Jehovah's servants and a people who had forsaken his covenant there could be no social intercourse; and so the young prophet, having accomplished the mission on which he had been sent, mounted his ass and rode away.

It would have been well for him had his perseverance been equal to his courage. Weariness, however, and hunger, seem to have clouded his intellect; for he had not ridden far ere an old man from Bethel overtook him, and prevailed upon him, by a false tale of an angelic mission, to return and dine. The individual who perpetrated this cruel act was, like the man of Judah, a propheta sure proof that the prophetic office was not always bestowed on persons morally upright before God. And no sooner was the meal concluded, than he avowed his cheat, and threatened his victim with the vengeance of Heaven. The threat was fulfilled, - for the wretched man being attacked by a lion that same night, was slain on the skirts of the desert. They brought back his body to Bethel and buried it there, the crafty old prophet charging it as a duty upon his sons, that when he died, his bones should be laid in the same grave with those of the stranger whom he had deceived to his ruin.

REHOBOAM'S IDOLATRY.

171

CHAP. XXIX.

FIRST BOOK OF KINGS AND SECOND BOOK OF CHRONICLES- continued.

REHOBOAM'S IDOLATRY. HIS PUNISHMENT AND DEATH. ABIJAM. ASA. JEHOSHAPHAT.

B. C. 971. WHILE Jeroboam thus began his reign with acts offensive both to God and man, Rehoboam applied himself to consolidate the wreck of his power; and was considerably strengthened by a large influx of priests and Levites from the territories of Israel into Judea. For Jeroboam, among other scandalous acts, slighted the house of Aaron and the tribe of Levi, and making priests of whomsoever he chose, provoked the men of the sacerdotal families to transfer their allegiance to his rival. And for several years the kingdom of Judah throve. Its frontier towns were fortified; the army was put into a state of discipline, justice was dispensed with impartiality, and the king's sons, of whom he had many, supported him zealously. But Rehoboam inherited the strong passions of his fathers; and, accumulating wives and concubines from the neighbouring states, he first connived at their idolatrous practices, and then himself took part in them. It was to no purpose that Shemaiah the prophet warned him of his danger. His reason and conscience might acknowledge the justice of the reproof, but his passions over-mastered them; and the example set by the prince was universally followed among the people. Judah soon became more grovelling

and sensual in its heathenism than Israel; and it reaped its reward.

B. C. 671.

Among other strange wives whom Solomon had married, was a daughter of the king of Egypt, and she seems to have been one of the most successful of the wise king's tempters in leading him into the pollutions of heathenism. Her father did not sit on his throne to the end of Solomon's reign: and his successor, Shishak the head, as it appears, of a new dynasty made war upon Judah. He prevailed in every encounter. One after another, the frontier towns fell; and Rehoboam met his counsellors in Jerusalem, vainly to consider how the march of the conqueror might be stayed. Again, Shemaiah reminded them of their apostacies, nor was to be scorned and driven away. A public fast and humiliation were ordered; and Shishak, moved to clemency by the entreaties of the king, spared the city. He exacted from it, however, a heavy ransom. All the gold and silver which David and Solomon had collected, including four hundred golden shields, which the body guard were accustomed on state occasions to wear, passed into the treasury of Egypt. But Jerusalem and the temple were spared; and throughout the residue of Rehoboam's reign, the formal worship of Jehovah was never again laid aside, nor the rites of heathenism sanctioned by the example of the monarch.

B. c. 960. Meanwhile, the political idolatry of Jeroboam in Israel deepened by degrees into positive heathenism. A brief shock seems, indeed, to have been given to the king's conscience, by the withering of his hand and the overthrow of his altar. But time and the restoration of the limb wrought their accustomed effects, and he grew year by year more reckless. That he ever succeeded in convincing himself of the fables which he pressed