Temple. A succession of Priests ministered within it, and were buried in the long array of rock-hewn tombs in the valley beneath. Musical services resounded within its courts. But the altar still was considered, at least by the Southern Prophets, as an accursed spot The doom which Iddo had pronounced upon it was ful filled, if not before, at least when in one of the earth quake shocks in the time of Amos1 it was shaken to its foundations. And when at last the place was devastated on the fall of the kingdom with which it was connected, Josiah pulled down the whole structure, and had its very stones ground to dust, and mingled with the ashes of the bones which he found in the adjacent caves. One only monument was left standing. The story of Iddo was still remembered in the neighborhood. The oak, probably the consecrated oak of Deborah, under which he had sat, the spot, as it would seem, where, on the rocky road, the body had been found with the lion and the ass standing by, were still known; and over his grave had been raised a memorial which even the ardor of Josiah's reformation did not destroy.

The "Sin of

The details of Jeroboam's end are lost to us. It is overclouded by unsuccessful wars with Judah, Jeroboam." by wasting illness, and by the violent convulsion in which his remains and those of his children were torn from their sepulchres. To observe clearly wherein his sin consisted, is to observe the moral of the whole of this part of the history. It was against the house of Judah. narrative, had been put upon

1 That the rending of the altar took place in the time of Amos (ix. 1) is confirmed by the LXX. reading » 2 Kings xii. 3 : δώσει τέρας ἐν ἐκείνῃ

not that he had revolted For this, according to the him by the direct Provi

huέpg. In that case verse 5 is in serted proleptically.

2 1 Kings xiv. 10, 11; xv. 29.

dence and sanction of God. Nor that he had fallen into idolatry. This was the sin of Solomon and Rehoboam, against which his whole life was a perpetual protest. It was that to secure those good ends he adopted doubtful and dangerous means. The anticipations of the Prophets concerning him had been frustrated. Like the apostolic Las Casas in the sad history of South America, they saw with bitter grief the failure of the institution which they had fostered, and from which they had hoped so much. It is this reflection which gives a keenness of regret to the epithet so many times repeated, "The sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Is"rael to sin." To keep the first commandment, he broke the second; to preserve the belief in the unity of God, he broke the unity and tampered with the spiritual conception of the national worship. The ancient sanctity of Dan and Bethel, the time-honored Egyptian sanction of the Sacred Calf, were mighty precedents; the Golden Image was doubtless intended as a likeness of the One True God. But the mere fact of setting up such a likeness broke down the sacred awe which had hitherto marked the Divine Presence, and accustomed the minds of the Israelites to the very sin against which the new form was intended to be a safeguard. From worshipping God under a false and unauthorized form, they gradually learnt to worship other gods altogether; and the venerable sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel prepared the way for the Temples of Ashtaroth and Baal at Samaria and Jezreel; and the religion of the Kingdom of Israel at last sank lower even than that of the Kingdom of Judah, against which it had revolted.

"The sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat," is the sin again and again repeated in the policy, half-worldly, half-religious, which has prevailed through large tracts

of ecclesiastical history. Many are the forms of worship in the Christian Church, which, with high pretensions, have been nothing else but "so many various and "opposite ways of breaking the second commandment.” Many a time has the end been held to justify the means; and the Divine character been degraded by the pretence or even the sincere intention of upholding His cause for the sake of secular aggrandizement; for the sake of binding together good systems, which, it was feared, would otherwise fall to pieces; for the sake of supporting the faith of the multitude from the fear lest they should fall away to rival sects, or lest the enemy should come and take away their place and nation, false arguments have been used in support of religious truth, false miracles promulgated or tolerated, false readings in the sacred text defended. And so the faith of mankind has been undermined by the very means intended to preserve it. The whole subsequent history is a record of the mode by which, with the best intențions, a church and nation may be corrupted.

LECTURE XXX.

THE HOUSE OF OMRI.

ELIJAH.

THE revolution that planted the house of Omri on the throne can be traced with more or less distinctness from its resemblance to that by which the same dynasty was itself overthrown.

B. C. 961.

For the space of no less than twenty-seven years, there had continued one of those long sieges that have made the cities of Philistia famous. Ashdod was afterwards besieged by Psammeticus for exactly the same period, as was now the case with Gibbethon.' The camp before Gibbethon, as afterwards that at Ramoth-gilead, became as it were a separate power in the state. It was there that Baasha had surprised and murdered Nadab, and extirpated the whole of the royal family of Jeroboam. He himself had risen from the ranks,-"from the dust," -and a new Prophetic glory hung for a moment over his path. But he too adopted the policy of the dynasty which he had overthrown; and for this, as well as for his cruelty to the fallen family, the signal for his de struction was given by the Prophet Jehu.

The first who dealt the deadly blow was not the one who ultimately succeeded. The cavalry was divided into two portions, -one apparently at the camp, the other nearer the capital of Tirzah. It

1 1 Kings xv. 27; xvi. 15.

2 1 Kings xvi. 9, 16.

B. C. 935.

was over this body that the first conspirator presided. Zimri, possibly the descendant of the royal house of Saul,' attacked the King in a drunken revel in the house of the chief officer of his court, and murdered him and the whole of the royal family before assistance could be procured from the army.

of Omri.

B. C. 931.

It was but a brief victory. The rapid vengeance on The House Zimri was a tradition which long lingered in the memory of the royal family of Israel. As soon as the news reached the camp, the true successor to the house of Baasha was chosen in the person of Omri, the captain of the host. Zimri fled into the interior, perhaps into the harem, of the palace, and perished, Sardanapalus-like, in the His usurpa tion had lasted only for a week. But a civil war broke qut on his death, between Omri on the one side and two brothers, Tibni and Joram,5 on the other, which, after a duration of four years, ended in the triumph of Omri.

flames.*

His accession to the throne after such a succession of troubles would of itself have been an epoch. But it was significant in many ways. He must have been himself remarkable, from the emphatic manner in which his name is used as the founder of his family, and even of the monarchy itself, as well as from the one incident which is recorded of him.

11 Chr. viii. 36. See Lecture Ahab, is called the " daughter of Omri; " Samaria is styled in the

XXI. 21 Kings xvi. 9, 10; Josephus. Assyrian inscriptions "the house of

Ant. viii. 12, § 4.

3 2 Kings ix. 31.

Omri ;" and even Jehu, the destroyer of the dynasty of Omri, is called in

41 Kings xvi. 18. (See Ewald, the same documents "the son of

ii. 451.)

5 Ibid. 21, 22 (LXX.).

Omri." (Rawlinson, Five Monarchies, ii. 364.) The "Statutes of Omri"

Athaliah, though daughter of are mentioned by Micah (vi. 16).