that a prophet was now residing there, of the highest repute. It was Ahijah -the same who, according to the common version of the story, had already been in communication with Jeroboam, but who, according to the authority we are now following, appears for the first time on this occasion. He was sixty years of age, but was prematurely old, and his eyesight had already failed him. He was living, as it would seem, in poverty, with a boy who waited on him, and with his own little children. For him and for them, the Egyptian princess brought such gifts as were thought likely to be acceptable, —ten loaves, and two rolls for the children, a bunch of grapes, and a jar of honey. She had disguised herself, to avoid recognition; and perhaps these humble gifts were part of the plan. But the blind Prophet, at her first approach, knew who was coming; and bade his boy go out to meet her, and invite her to his house without delay. There he warned her of the uselessness of her gifts. There was a doom on the house of Jeroboam, not to be averted. The child alone would die before the calamities of the house arrived: "He shall "mourn for the child."-" Woe, O Lord, for in him "there is found a good word regarding the Lord," or, according to the other version, "All Israel shall mourn "for him, and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam shall "come to the grave."3 The mother returned. As she reëntered the town of Sarira, the child died. The loud wail of her attendant damsels greeted her on the threshold. The child was buried, as Ahijah had foretold, with all the state of the child of a royal house. "All 1 Ahijah, according to the tradition, died soon after, and was buried under an oak, still visible in the fourth centuary, at Shiloh (Epiphanius). His tomb is still shown. VOL 11. 20 21 Kings xiv. 3 (Heb. and LXX.) 3 1 Kings xiv. 13. 4 LXX., in the Hebrew, Tirzah. 5 LXX. "Israel mourned for him."1 This incident, if it really occurred at this time, seems to have been the turningpoint in Jeroboam's career. It drove him from his ancestral home, and it gathered the sympathies of the tribe of Ephraim round him. He left Sarira and came to Shechem.2 He was thus at the head of the northern tribes on Rehoboam's appearance. B. C. 985. ap Two Prophets presided over the formation of the new kingdom. One was Ahijah of Shiloh, the other was Shemaiah 3 "the Enlamite." The Prophet whichever it was, or at whatever juncture peared in a long royal garment, so new that it had never been washed. He stripped it off, tore it into twelve shreds, and gave ten of them to Jeroboam, in token of the ten tribes that were to fall to his sway. Immediately after the stormy conference with Rehoboam, Jeroboam, in accordance with this omen, was elevated to the throne, and then once more the Prophet Shemaiah threw his powerful protection over the new kingdom, and warned off the invading army from the south.5 Jeroboam lost no time in consolidating his power. His early architectural skill was brought into play. He was known as the great castle-builder of his time. Not Millo only, and Sarira, but the fortifications of Shechem, and of Penuel beyond the Jordan, were traced back to him." Down to this point, the religious unity of the nation 1 1 Kings xiv. 18. 2 The Hebrew text describes that he was sent for. The LXX. speaks of it as his own act. 8 Probably the Shemaiah of 1 Kings xii. 22; 2 Chr. xi 2. The title given him by the LXX. -"the Enlamite" does not however appear in the Hebrew. 4 The act which in the Hebrew text is ascribed to Ahijah years before, even in Solomon's lifetime, is in the Greek text ascribed to Shemaiah at this very crisis. 5 This is in accordance with the Hebrew text of 1 Kings xii. 22 and 2 Chr. xi. 2. 6 1 Kings xii. 25. had remained unimpaired. This unity appeared to the new King inconsistent with the separate frontier of his kingdom, The Priestly caste were closely linked with the founder of their glory in the house of David; they were, by the nature of their office, specially attached to the Temple at Jerusalem. Following, doubtless, the precedent of the deposition of Abiathar by Solomon, he removed from their places the whole, of the sacerdotal order as it was constituted in the north, and allowed the establishment of a new Priesthood,1 consecrated by peculiar rites of their own. He determined also on creating two new seats of the national worship, which should rival the newly established Temple of the rival dynasty. It was precisely the policy of Abderrahman, caliph of Spain, when he arrested the movement of his subjects to Mecca, by the erection of the holy place of the Zeca at Cordova, and of Abd-el-Malik when he built the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem because of his quarrel with the authorities of Mecca. But he was not satisfied without another deviation from the Mosaic unity of the nation. His long stay in Egypt had familiarized him with the outward forms under which the Divinity was represented. A golden figure❜ of the sacred calf of Heliopolis was set up at each sanctuary, with the address, -"Behold thy God which "brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." The sanctuary at Dan, as the most remote from ConsecraJerusalem, was consecrated first. It was long Dan, afterwards held as a tradition in the north of Palestine, that one family, in the ancient sanctuary of Kadesh tion of 1 1 Kings xii. 31; xiii. 38; 2 Chr. ing down the people, and goring the xi. 15; xiii. 9. priests (Epiphanius, Vit. Proph.). 3 1 Kings xii. 28. 2 Ahijah had, according to the legend, seen in a dream two oxen tread and Bethel. Naphtali, that of Tobit, had refused to share in this strange worship of "the heifer." But the more famous shrine was at the southern frontier of the kingdom, in the consecrated patriarchal sanctuary of Bethel; there the grand inauguration was to take place, and a Festival, which though a month later in the year, was evidently intended to correspond to the Feast of Tabernacles.2 The fifteenth day of the eighth month arrived. Jeroboam was there doubtless in his royal state, as Solomon at Jerusalem, to offer incense on the altar, which, we may suppose, was raised within the temple that rose on the hill of Bethel," the House of God," oldest of all the sanctuaries of Israel and of the world. It was in this pause, that the first Prophetic protest was made against the new worship. It is as though the Sacred History wished to emphasize the precise moment at which the Prophetic order recovered its equilibrium, and at which the first beginnings of a long superstition were pointed out. Suddenly there rose Iddo. before the King a Prophet to whom the Sacred Book gives no name. He had come for this one special purpose. He was not to receive hospitality on coming or going. He was not even to address his message to the King, but to the dumb monument of division, the groundwork of future evil, which stood in the temple. "O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord." The rent in the altar, the withering of the King's hand, the urgency of the elder Prophet to induce the younger to break his vow, the untimely death of the younger Prophet in consequence are SO many additional touches of solemnity in the record of the disastrous inauguration of the Temple of Bethel. 1 Tobit i. 5, 6. 1 Kings xii. 32, 38. Like all that relates to Jeroboam's career, this story' is obscured by conflicting versions. Who was the mysterious Prophet? He has been called by many names, — Joam, according to Epiphanius; Abd-adonai, according to Clement; Jadon, according to Josephus.2 We can hardly mistake in the last of these names, the He was the author of Grecized form of Iddo the seer. a work of genealogies, as well as of histories of the reigns of Solomon, of Abijam,3 and of Jeroboam; and it adds to the impressiveness of the warning, if we may suppose that it came from the Chief Prophet of the time. The motives of the Prophet of Bethel are so obscurely given in the Sacred Narrative, and so differently related in the tradition of Josephus, as almost to defy our scrutiny. He seems to be one of those mixed characters, true to history and human nature, which perpetually appear amongst the sacred persons of the Old Testament; moved by a partial wavering inspira tion; aiming after good, yet failing to attain it; full of genuine tender admiration for the Prophet, of whose death he had been the unwilling cause, the mouthpiece of truths which he himself but faintly understood. The recollection of this scene lingered long on the spot. The sanctuary of Bethel outlived even the monarchy of Samaria. The "calf" was counted as the God of Israel. It was regarded as specially the Royal 1 That the narrative is long subsequent to the events related in it, ppears from the phrase "cities of Samaria" (1 Kings xiii. 32). 2 See Epiphanius, Vit. Proph. c. 3; Clemens Alexand. Hʊm. i. 21; and Josephus, Ant. viii. 8, § 5. 3 2 Chr. ix. 29; xii. 15; xiii. 22. He is possibly the same as Oded, 2 Chr. xv. 1, 8; LXX. 'Adda or 'Addw. Joseph. (Ant. viii. 9, § 1) de |