1 Kings 12:31

And he made an house of high places [See on 1 Kings 3:2 , and cf. 2 Kings 17:29 . It is often assumed (Keil, Rawlinson, al. after Josephus) that Jeroboam built two temples for his cherubim, and the statement of the text, that he built one, is explained on the ground that the historian contrasts the "house of high places" with the "house of the Lord." Ewald, too, after 2 Kings 17:29 , 2 Kings 17:32 , understands the words as plural . But 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. We know that the Danite priests carried on the calf worship to the time of the captivity ( 18:30 ). This "house of high places" has grown in Ewald's pages into "a splendid temple in Canaanite style"], and made priests of the lowest of the people [Heb. מִקְצוֹת " from the ends, " i.e; from all classes, ex universe populo (Gesen.), and not, as the writer explains presently, from the tribe of Levi alone. Genesis 19:4 , 18:2 , Ezekiel 33:2 , prove this to be the correct interpretation of the word. Rawlinson, who remarks that "Jeroboam could have no motive for specially selecting persons of low condition," does not thereby dispose of the A.V. rendering, for the historian might mean that some of Jeroboam's priests were of the lowest stamp, because he could find no others, or because he was so little scrupulous as to take them. "Leaden priests are well fitted to folder. deities" (Hall)], which were not of the sons of Levi. [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 Chronicles 11:13 ). The statement of Ezekiel 33:14 , 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. The idea of Stanley, that "following the precedent of the deposition of Abiathar by Solomon, he removed from their places the whole of the sacerdotal order," is a wild conjecture for which Scripture affords not the slightest warrant.]