We pass over a series of prophecies in a similar strain which occur regularly at the changes of dynasty in the northern kingdom, and cite only the concluding words which accompany the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes (2Kings xvii.).  This fall came about “because the children of Israel sinned against Jehovah their God, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom they had driven out, and in the innovations of the kings of Israel; and because the children of Israel imputed to Jehovah their God things which are not so, and built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city; and they set up pillars and Asheras on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they sacrificed in all the high places, as did the people whom Jehovah had driven out before them:  and wrought wicked things to provoke Jehovah to anger, and served the abominations which Jehovah had forbidden.  Yet Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets; but they would not hear, but hardened their necks like their fathers, that they did not believe in Jehovah their God; and they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies with which He warned them, and they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them.  And they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger.  And Jehovah was very wroth with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left but the men of Judah only.  But they of Judah also kept not the commandment of their God, but walked in the manner of Israel:  and Jehovah rejected the whole race of Israel, and humbled them, and delivered them unto the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight.”  No special concluding discourse is given for Judah, but that for Israel applies to Judah as well.  This we see both directly from the last words of the passage cited, and from the circumstance that two very characteristic abominations in the foregoing catalogue, the worship of the host of heaven and the sacrifice of children, were introduced, according to the testimony of the prophets, which alone can determine the point, not in the eighth but only in the seventh century, under Manasseh, and accordingly are not chargeable on Israel, but only on Judah.

The water accumulates, so to speak, at these gathering places of the more important historical epochs:  but from these reservoirs it finds its way in smaller channels on all sides. 1 The first