30. And this thing became 1a sin; for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.

31. And he made a 2 house of high places, 3 and made priests of the lowest of the people which were not of the sons of Levi.

32. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Beth-el, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made : 5 and he placed in Beth-el the priests of the high places which he had made. 33. So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Beth-el the fifteenth 11 Kings 13:34. 2 Kings 17: 21. 3 Num. 3: 10. Ezek. 44: 7, 8.

4 Lev. 23: 33, 34.

21 Kings 13: 32.
Num. 29: 12.

Todd.

5 Amos 7:13.

from ancient associations, both heathen and Israelitish, as well as convenient geographically for all the northern tribes.

30. And this thing became a sin. (1) It was sinful in itself, breaking the second commandment. (2) It led to other sins, even to idolatry, breaking also the first commandment. (3) It led to the obscene rites often practised at idol shrines. (4) It cherished and strengthened the division of the kingdoms. (5) It degraded the service of God. For the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. It is better to connect the phrase "even unto Dan" with the word "people." The people even unto Dan- that is, the whole people — went to worship before the one; that is, before the one or the other. Todd.

-

31. He made an house of high places. That is to say, "he built a temple or sanctuary at each of the two cities where the calves were set up.' Cook. "A house of high places" means a place of worship, which were originally built on high places, and in groves upon hill-tops, and then came to mean any idolatrous shrine. Is it not more probable that a chapel or sanctuary already existed at Dan, where an irregular priesthood had ministered for more than four hundred years? This verse would then refer exclusively to Jeroboam's procedure at Bethel (see next verse). There he built a temple and ordained a number of priests, but Dan had both already (Jud. 18: 30, 31). — Pulpit Com.

(3) BY A NEW PRIESTHOOD. And made priests of the lowest of the people. This rendering (which our translators adopted from Luther) is now regarded by most critics as incorrect. Literally, the Hebrew is, "from the ends of the people," which appears to mean "from all ranks of the people." Jeroboam could have no motive for specially selecting persons of low condition, since such a choice would only have brought contempt upon his system. Cook. Which were not of the sons of Levi. The priestly tribe. Jeroboam would, doubtless, have been only too glad to have retained the services of the Levitical priests, but they went over in a body to Rehoboam (2 Chron. 11:13). The statement of ver. 14, that " Jeroboam and his sons" had "cast them out," suggests that they had refused to take part in his new cult, and that thereupon he banished them, and no doubt confiscated their possessions.- Pulpit Com.

(4) BY NEW FESTIVALS. 32. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah. That is, the Feast of Tabernacles, which was held on the fifteenth of the seventh month (cf. chap. 8:2). This was the great feast of the year, and, as the feast of harvest or ingathering, it was the most joyous. Had Jeroboam provided no counter attraction to this great festive gathering in Judah, he might have found it a formidable temptation to his subjects. Pulpit Com. It may also have been a feast of dedication, held at the same time with Tabernacles, after the example of Solomon (1 Kings 8: 2).- Cook. In the eighth month. The object of Jeroboam in changing the month, and yet keeping the day of the month, is not clear. It has been suggested that the change was made on account of the later vintage of the more northern regions. - Ewald, Stanley. He offered upon the altar. Literally, "he went up upon the altar"; ascended it; altars requiring to be ascended either by steps or by an inclined plane (see Ex. 20: 26). The expression shows that Jeroboam himself officiated as priest. Cook. The king himself inaugurated the new worship, and honored his new priesthood by his own presence. So did he in Beth-el. Not "as he had done in Dan, so did he in Bethel" (Patrick), but rather, "he did this — held this feast and offered this sacrifice at Bethel, not at Dan.". Cook. And he placed in Beth-el.

Dan being already provided with its priesthood.

33. So he offered, etc. This verse is a recapitulation of what has gone before.

day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had 1 devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, 2 and burnt incense.

Which he had devised of his own heart. The entire system of Jeroboam receives its condemnation in these words. His main fault was that he left a ritual and a worship where

all was divinely authorized, for ceremonies and services which were wholly of his own devising. Not being a prophet, he had no authority to introduce religious innovations. He was placed in difficult circumstances, but he met them with the arts of a politician, not with the single-mindedness of a saint. His arrangements had a certain cleverness, but they were not

really wise measures.— Cook.

IV. The Bright Prospects of the Kingdom Blasted by the Worldly Wise Policy. (1) To him personally. In the very midst of the ceremony a man of God, sent by the word of Jehovah out of Judah, confronted Jeroboam at his altar. The enraged king called on his guards to seize the prophet, and put out his own hand to lay hold of him; but the hand was withered and fell helpless, and an earthquake rent the altar. On the prophet's prayer, entreated by the king, his hand was restored. Smith. (2) It left a blot upon his name. He is ever after branded as the man who made Israel to sin. (3) His kingly line was short, ending with his son. (4) The best and most religious people left his kingdom. The preserving salt was taken away. The departure of so large a body of learned and religious persons and teachers, and of the numerous right-minded and conscientious persons who followed them, added materially to the fixed population, and more to the moral strength and character of the southern kingdom, while it in the same degree weakened that of Jeroboam.Kitto. (5) Irreligion and idolatry and immorality prevailed in the kingdom. (6) The final result was the destruction of the nation one hundred years before the captivity of Judah.

PRACTICAL.

I. God gives us many bright prospects and blessed hopes for this life and for that to

come.

2. We can receive the fulfilment of them only on condition of obedience to God. 3. Worldly policy, that disobeys God, always proves folly in the end.

4. How often we forget, when God has granted to us the desire of our hearts, to walk

in his ways.

5. Religion, with its accompanying education and morality, is the surest safeguard of any people.

6.

One of our great dangers is that of seeking good ends in bad ways, — seeking to fulfil to ourselves God's promises, without waiting for his way of bringing them to pass. 7. The very plans wicked men rely on for prosperity and wealth doom them to disappointment and ruin.

8. Wrong-doing puts an everlasting blot upon our name.

9.

It has been remarked that the two tribes in whose inheritance the calves stood are not found among the number of the sealed in Revelation. The names of Ephraim and Dan are missing from that list. - Waller.

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS.

Have a BRIEF REVIEW of the last lesson, so as to enter upon this with a clear understanding of the circumstances.

By questioning the class, present a vivid picture of Jeroboam and his kingdom as they stood upon the threshold of their career. What bright prospects were before them! A bold, free, energetic, prosperous people; a talented and experienced king; promises of success from God; every reason to hope for a noble career.

SUBJECT, BRIGHT HOPES BLASTED BY DISOBEDIENCE.

I. THEY WERE DESTROYED BY A WORLDLY POLICY which distrusted God. Jeroboam went to work to bring about the things promised by a course which forfeited the promise itself.

Illustration. Jacob's course in obtaining the birthright blessing by fraud. It had been promised him, and instead of trusting God to fulfil this promise in his own way, he robbed Esau of it, fearing that in no other way could he obtain it. He obtained it, but a curse with it was the fruit of his method of obtaining it, instead of the unalloyed blessing God had for him.

There was reason in Jeroboam's fear of the dangers he foresaw. His own rebellion against Solomon in former days increased these fears.

trembling before the song of a stranger, “which full upon his conscience strook."

"For when within

Men shrink at sense of secret sin,

A feather daunts the brave;

A fool's wild speech confounds the wise,
And proudest princes veil their eyes

Before their meanest slave.'

There are many temptations to repeat in our day Jeroboam's worldly policy, especially in seeking wealth or honors.

II. THIS WORLDLY POLICY LED THE KING AND PEOPLE INTO IDOLATRY, as described in the text. It resulted much worse than the king intended. He meant still to worship Jehovah, only in a forbidden way. But when one commandment was broken, all evils could enter the broken wall of the fortress of righteousness.

Illustration. There was an abbot who desired a piece of ground that lay conveniently for him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion was contented to let it. The abbot hired it, and covenanted only to farm it for one crop; he had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns, - a crop that lasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our souls by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong, that seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground, and sins and evils multiply.

Illustration. Jeroboam's policy in keeping his people from going up to Jerusalem to worship was precisely the policy of Abderrahman, caliph of Spain, when he arrested the movement of his subjects to Mecca by the erection of the holy place of the Zeca at Cordova, and of Abd-el-Malik when he built the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, because of his quarrel with the authorities of Mecca. Stanley.

III. SHOW THE DISASTROUS RESULT OF THIS SINFUL POLICY in Jeroboam's career, and that of the nation. He threw away all he might have been. He trampled the divine pearls under his feet. Show how this is the continual and necessary result of seeking success, or wealth, or happiness by doing wrong.

LESSON III. — JULY 19.

OMRI AND AHAB. I KINGS 16:23-34.

GOLDEN TEXT.

Prov. 15:9.

The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord.

TIME.- B.C. 929-914. Some 50 years after our last lesson.

PRONUNCIATIONS. — Abi'jăh; Abi'răm; A'hab; A'să; Ba'al; Ba'ǎshă; E'lǎh; Eth'baal; Hi'ěl; Jěz'ěběl; Om'ri; Sē'gūb; Shē'měr; Tîr'zăh; Tib'ni; Zīdō'nians; Zim'ri. INTERVENING EVENTS. — 1 Kings, chaps. 13-16; 2 Chron., chaps. 13-17. I. THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH. After a 17 years' reign Rehoboam died, and his son Abijah reigned for three years. He was wicked like his father, but he seems to have been a great warrior, and he assumed the state and pomp of an oriental monarch. He was followed by two good kings, Asa, who reigned 41 years, and Jehoshaphat, who reigned 25 years. Under them was a great reformation and revival of true religion. Idolatry was checked, the national religion was established in all its splendor and influence, and the kingdom rose to great power and influence.

THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL. On the other hand, the kingdom of Israel grew worse and worse. So many of the better people had left it for Judah, on account of the idolatrous policy of the rulers, that the more turbulent elements had too great ascendancy. Jeroboam died after a reign of 22 years. His son, who simply repeated his father's sins, reigned two years, and then was dethroned, and the whole lineage of Jeroboam was put to death by Baasha, who usurped the throne. He reigned 24 years, and maintained an almost constant war with Asa, king of Judah. His reign too was but a repetition of Jeroboam's sin. Elah, his son, succeeded him, and reigned two short years, when he was slain by Zimri, one of his chief generals. Zimri reigned but seven days, when he was destroyed, having set fire to the royal palace, and burnt himself and all the treasures in the flames. Then Omri, another general of the army, was chosen king by the army, B.C. 929.

23. In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah.

24. And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, 1 Samaria.

1 1 Kings 13: 32. 2 Kings 17: 24. John 4:4.

EXPLANATORY.

I. Omri's Reign. — Vers. 23-28. 23. In the thirty and first year of Asa. The fiftieth year of the divided kingdom, B.C. 925. This date marks the commencement of his possession of the whole kingdom, four years after his first election as king (1 Kings 16: 16, 21, 22). Began Omri to reign. Omri was the sixth king of Israel, and the founder of the third dynasty, which lasted for three generations and four kings. His father's name and tribe are unknown. Smith. He was the commanding general of the Israelite army. Twelve years. From his election as king. For four years he held a contested reign with Tibni, whom half the people chose for their king. But Omri had possession of the capital and the army, and at length Tibni died and Omri reigned. Tirzah, or delight. This city was only a few miles distant from Shechem, but its exact site is unknown. Jeroboam at first selected Shechem for his capital; but, after a few years, removed his residence to Tirzah, which from that time until the reign of Omri continued to be the royal city. It probably owed its name to the natural beauties of its situation, as well as to the magnificence of its buildings. When the palace was burned by Zimri the beauty of the place must have been injured; and, as it was necessary to erect a new palace, the king determined to select a new site, probably from the experienced impossibility of fortifying Tirzah so as to enable it to stand a siege.

Todd.

24. And he bought the hill Samaria. As Constantine's sagacity is fixed by his choice of Constantinople, so is that of Omri by his choice of Samaria. Six miles from Shechem, in the same well-watered valley, here opening into a wide basin, rises an oblong hill, with steep yet accessible sides, and a long, level top. This was the mountain of Samaria, so named after its owner, Shemer, who there lived in state, and who sold it to the king for the great sum of two talents of silver. It combined, in a union not elsewhere found in Palestine, strength, beauty, and fertility. It commanded a full view of the sea and the plain of Sharon on the one hand, and of the vale of Shechem on the other. It stood amidst a circle of hills, commanding a view of its streets and slopes, itself the crown and glory of the whole - Stanley. Many travellers have expressed a conviction that the spot was, in most respects, much preferable to the site of Jerusalem. Kitto. Politically it was rather more central than Shechem, and probably than Tirzah. In a military point of view, it was admirably calculated for defence. The country round it was peculiarly productive. The hill

scene.

25. But 1Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the LORD, and did worse than all that were before him.

26. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger with their 3 vanities.

27. Now the rest of the acts of Omri which he did, and his might that he shewed, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel?

Cook.

itself possessed abundant springs of water. Samaria continued to be the capital of Israel as long as the kingdom lasted, and was a marked town even in Christ's time. For two talents of silver. Worth in our money $ 3,285, according to Schaff. But the purchasing power of the money was at least ten times as great then as now. After the name of Shemer... Samaria. It is not improbable that the vendor bargained that the land should retain his name (cf. Psa. 49: 11). The reluctance of the Israelite to part with his patrimony, even to the king, is brought out very strikingly in chap. 21. Shemer, in selling his choice parcel of land for a capital, might well wish to connect his name with it. - Pulpit Com. While naming his city after Shemer, Omri may also have had in view the appropriateness of such a name to the situation of the place. It signifies watch-tower. Cook.

But

25. Omri wrought evil. Of Omri it is said that in the eyes of the Lord his conduct on the throne was worse than that of all the kings before him. The particulars are not in the history directly stated further than that he carried out with vigor the fatal and ruinous policy of Jeroboam. But if we refer to the prophecy of Micah (6: 16), we find this remarkable verse: "For the statutes of Omri are kept." We cannot doubt that these "statutes of Omri" were measures adopted for more completely isolating the people of Israel from the services of the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, and of perpetuating-perhaps of increasing their idolatrous practices. His encouragement of idolatry is incidentally confirmed by the fact that he brought about a marriage between Ahab, his son and heir, and Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre. Kitto. In the eyes of the Lord. In the eyes of men he was rich and prosperous, and may have seemed as good as others. the Lord knew better, and judged him by the standard of faithfulness to duty. A man may be skilful and useful to himself and others in all material and worldly things, whilst in spiritual and divine things he works only mischief and destruction. What, without religion, is so-called civilization? Lange. The wicked seem to think God does not know what they do. If their deeds are hidden from men, they are not hidden from him whose eyes are "in every place beholding the evil and the good." If they sin daringly, and men look on approvingly, God also looks on, who will bring every action into judgment. - Newman Hall. And did worse than all. In sin and departure from God there are always gradual advances, just as in godliness and well-doing, -one step follows another, and the slavery of sin is ever increasing (2 Tim. 3:13). — Col. Bib. Sin has ever a tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio. One sin begets many others. A little fire spreads rapidly where there is material to burn.-P. Probably, like Jeroboam and Baasha, he also had his opportunity of restoring the spiritual strength of his people by returning to the pure worship of God, and threw it away, doing "worse than all."- Alfred Barry.

26. Walked in all the way of Jeroboam. The other kings had done this, but probably Omri devoted himself to the new religion with greater earnestness and energy, and conducted it on a grander scale. - Todd. Here we have another illustration of the power of example; a power which is intended for good and leads many to heaven, but was here perverted and made an instrument of greater evil. Provoke the Lord... to anger. Not passion, but indignation against sin. Every good king must hate sin in proportion to his goodness, and be indignant at all who lead others to ruin by leading them into sin. If the anger does not flame and burn, then the goodness is feeble and cold.-P. With their vanities. Their idolatries. Idols are vanities because they have no power to help those who trust in them. All efforts to gain success by sin, by worldly policy, by plans which break God's laws, are vanities. They are vain efforts, for God and the universe are against them.-P.

27. Now the rest of the acts of Omri. Omri was a ruler as enterprising as he was prudent, and wisely took advantage of the times to secure greater prosperity for his kingdom. Omri's chief efforts were directed towards the furtherance of trade, commerce, etc. - Ewald.