"
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.
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