who appears to feel that the Ephraimite kingdom was illegitimate in its origin and could only be kept separate from the south by artificial means.  The blessing of Jacob and the blessing of Moses show us what the sentiment of Northern Israel actually was.  In the former Joseph is called the crowned of his brethren, in the second we read “His first-born bullock, full of majesty (the king), has the horns of a buffalo, with which he thrusts down the peoples; these are the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh.”  Whence came the charm of the name of Ephraim but from its being the royal tribe, and the most distinguished representative of the proud name of Israel?  Of Judah we read in the same chapter, “Hear, Jehovah, the voice of Judah, and bring him back to his people.”  There can be no doubt what the people is to which Judah belongs:  we cannot but agree with Graf, that this tribe is here regarded as the alienated member, and its reunion with the greater kingdom spoken of as the desire of Judah itself, and this is not so remarkable when we reflect that the part belongs to the whole and not the whole to the part.  Only by long experience did Judah learn the blessing of a settled dynasty, and Ephraim the curse of perpetual changes on the throne.

Judah’s power of attraction for the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom is thought to lie in the cultus of the Solomonic temple; and Jeroboam is said to have tried to meet this by creating new sanctuaries, a new form of the worship of Jehovah, and a new order of priesthood.  The features in which the Samaritan worship differed from the Jewish pattern are represented as intentional innovations of the first king, in whose sin posterity persisted.  But in making Bethel and Dan temples of the kingdom—­that he set up high places, is a statement which need not be considered—­Jeroboam did nothing more than Solomon had done before him; only he had firmer ground under his feet than Solomon, Bethel and Dan being old sanctuaries, which Jerusalem was not.  The golden calves, again, which he set up, differed in their gold but not in their object from the ephods and idols of other kinds which were everywhere to be found in the older “houses of God”; e.g. from the brazen serpent at Jerusalem. l

***************************************** 1.  “Although Jeroboam had lived in Egypt, it would he wrong to say that he brought animal worship with him from that country, as wrong as to regard Aaron’s golden calf as a copy of Apis.  The peculiarity of the animal-worship of Egypt, and of its bull-worship in particular, was that sanctity was attributed to living animals.”  Vatke, p. 398.  Egyptian gods cannot help against Egypt, Exodus xxxii. 4; 1Kings xii. 28. ****************************************

Even Eichhorn remarked with force and point, that though Elijah and Elisha protested against the imported worship of Baal of Tyre, they were the actual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did not think of protesting against His pictorial representation; even Amos makes no such protest, Hosea is the first who does so.  As for the non-Levitical priests whom the king is said to have installed, all that is necessary has been said on this subject above (p. 138 seq.).