Whereupon the king took
counsel and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, Cease to
go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel
and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; for the
people went as one man, even unto Dan. And he made temples of
high places, and took priests from the midst of the people which
were not of the house of Levi; whomsoever he would he installed
as priest of the high places " (1Kings xii. 26-30, xiii. 33).
The perversion is scarcely so great as in Chronicles, but the
anachronism is sufficiently glaring in the mode of view
discernible in these reflections of Jeroboam, 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.
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